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Famous Anvils Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...t beasts
Howl at our backs by night,
And thunder-forging priests
Blow their dead bale-fires bright,
And on their broken anvils beat out bolts for fight.

Inside their sacred smithies
Though hot the hammer rings,
Their steel links snap like withies,
Their chains like twisted strings,
Their surest fetters are as plighted words of kings.

O nations undivided,
O single people and free,
We dreamers, we derided,
We mad blind men that see,
We bear you witness ere ye come tha...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...ack hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On atounged puffball)
But animals thick as theives
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood!).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms ina throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors finned
Felled and quilled, flas...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...to his mate, the digger's cry, "Below!"
From many a busy pointing-forge the sound of labour swells,
The tinkling of the anvils is as clear as silver bells.
I hear the broken English from the mouth of many a one
From every state and nation that is known beneath the sun;
The homely tongue of Scotland and the brogue of Ireland blend
With the dialects of England, right from Berwick to Lands End;
And to the busy concourse here the States have sent a part,
The land of gulches t...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...eshed
with musically falling waters; 

Or he sat for a while at the blacksmith's door,
and heard the cling-clang of the anvils; 
Or he rested beneath old steeples full of bells,
that showered their chimes upon him;
Or he walked along the border of the sea, 
drinking in the long roar of the billows; 

Or he sunned himself in the pine-scented ship-
yard, amid the tattoo of the mallets;
Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting
his thoughts flow with the whispering river; ...Read more of this...

by Lux, Thomas
...down, unreeled,
until the bottom's oozy silt, the sucking
baby-soft muck,
welcomes you
to the deep sea's bed,
a million anvils per square inch
pressing on your skull.
How silent here, how much life,
few places deeper on earth,
none with more width....Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...that have ever touched the world
Must ring to tell it -- ring like hammer-blows,
Right-echoed of a chime primordial,
On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge. 

XX 

The prophet of dead words defeats himself:
Whoever would acknowledge and include
The foregleam and the glory of the real,
Must work with something else than pen and ink
And painful preparation: he must work
With unseen implements that have no names,
And he must win withal, to do that work,
Good fortitude, cl...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...song for to-morrow.
Make us one new dream, us who forget,
Out of the storm let us have one star.

 Struggle, Oh anvils, and help her.
Weave with your wool. Oh winds and skies.
Let your iron and copper help,
 Oh dirt of the old dark earth.

Wandering oversea singer,
Singing of ashes and blood,
Child of the scars of fire,
 Make us one new dream, us who forget.
 Out of the storm let us have one star....Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...swim in a pot of red steel.
Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel:
Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils
And the sucking plungers of sea-fighting turbines.
Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless station.
So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in mirrors.
Peepers, skulkers—they shadow-dance in laughing tombs.
They are always there and they never answer.

One of them said: “I like my job, the company is good to me, America...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...cornfields rustle,
Niagaras roar their way,
Vast thunderstorms and rainbows
Are in my thought to-day.

Ten thousand anvils sound there
By forges flaming white,
And many books I read there,
And many books I write;

And freedom's bells are ringing,
And bird-choirs chant and fly—
The whole world works in me to-day
And all the shining sky,

Because of one small lady
Whose smile is my chief sun.
She gives not any gift to me
Yet all gifts, giving one. . . .
...Read more of this...

by Twain, Mark
...rty year,
On Erie, boy and man,
I never yet saw such a storm,
Or one't with it began!"

So overboard a keg of nails
And anvils three we threw,
Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,
Two hundred pounds of glue,
Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,
A box of books, a cow,
A violin, Lord Byron's works,
A rip-saw and a sow.

A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!
"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so!--
Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee!
Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee!
Luff!--br...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...know what Master laid thy keel, 
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'T is of the wave and not the rock; 
'T is but the flapping of the sail, 
And not a rent made by the gale! 
In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
In spite of false lights on the shore, 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ng crash,
     As when the whirlwind rends the ash;
     I heard the broadsword's deadly clang,
     As if a hundred anvils rang!
     But Moray wheeled his rearward rank
     Of horsemen on Clan-Alpine's flank,—
               "My banner-man, advance!
          I see," he cried, "their column shake.
          Now, gallants! for your ladies' sake,
               Upon them with the lance!"—
     The horsemen dashed among the rout,
          As deer break through the...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...house; 
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 
Of fountains spouted up and showering down 
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose: 
And all about us pealed the nightingale, 
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, 
By two sphere lamps blazoned like Heaven and Earth 
With constellation and with continent, 
Above an entry: ...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...f calico 
That dotted all the scene. 

I hear the fall of timber 
From distant flats and fells, 
The pealing of the anvils 
As clear as little bells, 
The rattle of the cradle, 
The clack of windlass-boles, 
The flutter of the crimson flags 
Above the golden holes. 

. . . . . 

Ah, then our hearts were bolder, 
And if Dame Fortune frowned 
Our swags we'd lightly shoulder 
And tramp to other ground. 
But golden days are vanished, 
And altered i...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...s the same!

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares:--in a band
The jailors sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis--much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

And timid lovers, who had been so coy
They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
Would rise out of their ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire.
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny r...Read more of this...

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