Famous Curse Poems | Examples of Famous Curse Poetry (2024)

These are examples of famous Curse poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous curse poems. These examples illustrate what a famous curse poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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...one living man has drained, who now,Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feelsNo proud exemption in the blighting curseHe bears, over the world wanders forever, Lone as incarnate death! Oh, that the dreamOf dark magician in his visioned cave,Raking the cinders of a crucibleFor life and power, even when his feeble handShakes in its last decay, were the true lawOf this so lovely world! But thou art fled,Like some frail exhalation, which the dawnRobes in its golde...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

...lm intrepid tone, Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power, Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.XX.Again they charge! and now among the killedLies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled, Brave Elliott pursues across the fieldThe flying foe, his own young life to yield.But like the leaves in some autumnal galeThe red men fall in Washita's wild vale.Each painted face and black befeathered headStill more repulsive...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

...health is the diseaseIf we obey the dying nurseWhose constant care is not to pleaseBut to remind of our, and Adam's curse,And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse. The whole earth is our hospitalEndowed by the ruined millionaire,Wherein, if we do well, we shallDie of the absolute paternal careThat will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere. The chill ascends from feet to knees,The fever sings in mental wires.If to be warmed, then I ...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

...ess, the slave of each extreme, How woke he from the wildness of that dream? Alas! he told not — but he did awake To curse the wither'd heart that would not break. IX. Books, for his volume heretofore was Man, With eye more curious he appear'd to scan, And oft, in sudden mood, for many a day From all communion he would start away: And then, his rarely call'd attendants said, Through night's long hours would sound his hurried tread O'er the dark gallery, w...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

...Comptroller, all men laugh To see a tall louse brandish the white staff. Else shalt thou oft thy guiltless pencil curse, Stamp on thy palette, not perhaps the worse. The painter so, long having vexed his cloth-- Of his hound's mouth to feign the raging froth-- His desperate pencil at the work did dart: His anger reached that rage which passed his art; Chance finished that which art could but begin, And he sat smiling how his dog did grin. So mayst thou p...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew

...r confusion, and our joy upraise In his disturbance; when his darling sons, Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse Their frail original, and faded bliss-- Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires." Thus beelzebub Pleaded his devilish counsel--first devised By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence, But from the author of all ill, could spring So deep a malice, to confound the race Of mankind i...Read more of this...

by Milton, John

...sfer The guilt on him, who made him instrument Of mischief, and polluted from the end Of his creation; justly then accursed, As vitiated in nature: More to know Concerned not Man, (since he no further knew) Nor altered his offence; yet God at last To Satan first in sin his doom applied, Though in mysterious terms, judged as then best: And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall. Because thou hast done this, thou art accursed Above all cattle, each beast of the f...Read more of this...

by Milton, John

...e little thrift,Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:And oft, when sitting all alone, his faceWould darken, as he cursed his credulousness,And that one unctuous mount which lured him, rogue,To buy strange shares in some Peruvian mine.Now seaward-bound for health they gain'd a coast,All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning cave,At close of day; slept, woke, and went the next,The Sabbath, pious variers from the church,To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer,Not preac...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

...eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee—and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hym...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William

...not thy brother!" XI. "Oh! not my brother! — yet unsay — God! am I left alone on earth To mourn — I dare not curse the day That saw my solitary birth? Oh! thou wilt love me now no more! My sinking heart foreboded ill; But know me all I was before, Thy sister — friend — Zuleika still. Thou ledd'st me hear perchance to kill; If thou hast cause for vengeance see My breast is offer'd — take thy fill! Far better with the dead to be Than live thus nothing n...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

...hat mine hates; Thy heaven doors are my hell gates. Socrates taught what Meletus Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse, And Caiaphas was in his own mind A benefactor to mankind. Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white. Was Jesus gentle, or did He Give any marks of gentility? When twelve years old He ran away, And left His parents in dismay. When after three days’ sorrow found, Loud as Sinai’s trumpet-sound: ‘...Read more of this...

by Blake, William

...ound the Duke, and his mother like him:The lady hardly got a rebuff---That had not been contemptuous enough,With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause,And kept off the old mother-cat's claws.IX.So, the little lady grew silent and thin,Paling and ever paling,As the way is with a hid chagrin;And the Duke perceived that she was ailing,And said in his heart, ``'Tis done to spite me,``But I shall find in my power to right me!''Don't swear, friend! The old o...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert

...The breathing summer sloth, the scented fall: Could I forget, then were the fight not hard,Press'd in the mêlée of accursed things,Having such help in love and such reward:But that 'tis I who once--'tis this that stings--Once dwelt within the gate that angels guard,Where yet I'd be had I but heavenly wings. 42When I see childhood on the threshold seizeThe prize of life from age and likelihood,I mourn time's change that will not be withstood,Thinking how Chris...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour

...ore Mixed in the charms he muttered o'er. The hallowed creed gave only worse And deadlier emphasis of curse. No peasant sought that Hermit's prayer His cave the pilgrim shunned with care, The eager huntsman knew his bound And in mid chase called off his hound;' Or if, in lonely glen or strath, The desert-dweller met his path He prayed, and signed the cross between, While terror took devotion's mien. V....Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter

...ay go forward like a stoic Roman Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie,— Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman,Curse God and die. Or maybe there, like many another one Who might have stood aloft and looked ahead, Black-drawn against wild red, He may have built, unawed by fiery gulesThat in him no commotion stirred, A living reason out of molecules Why molecules occurred, And one for smiling when he might have sighed Had he seen far enough,And in the sa...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

...enius. lift upthy head!As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggson, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys. To create a little flower is the labour of ages.Damn. braces: Bless relaxes.The best wine is the oldest. the best water the newest.Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not! PLATE 10The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, thehands & feet Proportion.Read more of this...

by Blake, William

...ship abused,The iridescent bubbles he blewInto lovely existence, poor and fewIn the shadowed eyes. Then he would curseHimself and her! The Universe!And more, the beauty he could not make,And give her, for her comfort's sake!He would beat his weary, empty handsUpon the table, would hold up strandsOf silver and gold, and ask her whyShe scorned the best which he could buy.He would pray as to some high-niched saint,That she would cure him of the taintOf failu...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy

...hat hell has nothing better left to do Than leave them to themselves: so much more mad And evil by their own internal curse, Heaven cannot make them better, nor I worse. XLII 'Look to the earth, I said, and say again: When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm Began in youth's first bloom and flush to reign, The world and he both wore a different form, And must of earth and all the watery plain Of ocean call'd him king: through many a storm His isle...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

...uld have my [love] 14 alone?Why, take it all: lo, have it every deal,* *whitPeter! 19 shrew* you but ye love it well *curseFor if I woulde sell my *belle chose*, *beautiful thing*I coulde walk as fresh as is a rose,But I will keep it for your owen tooth.Ye be to blame, by God, I say you sooth."Such manner wordes hadde we on hand.Now will I speaken of my fourth husband.My fourthe husband was a revellour;This is to say, he had a paramour,And I was yo...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey

...d,I still wander in rooms dark and blearyAnd his crib still attempt to find."x x xHow often did I curseThis sky, this earth as well,The slowly waving armsOf this ancient windmill.In a wing there lies a dead man,Straight and grayhaired, on a bench,As he did three years ago.Thus the mice whet with their teethBooks, thus the stearine candleLeans its flame to the left.And the odious tambourineFrom the Nizhny NovgorodSings ...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna

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