Famous Arithmetic Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Arithmetic poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous arithmetic poems. These examples illustrate what a famous arithmetic poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lawrence, D. H.
...Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;
They have taught you to see
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,
A cunning algebra in the faces of men,
And God like geometry
Completing his circles, and working cleverly.
I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;
If I can—if any one could.
Then perhaps in the dark you'll have got what you want to find.
You've discovered so many bits, with your clever eyes, ...Read more of this...
by
Burgess, Gelett
...His Muddy Footprints Tracked the Hall.
31 Just fancy KADESH for a Name! Yet he was Clever All the Same;
32 He knew Arithmetic, at Four, as Well as Boys of Nine or More!
33 But I Prefer far Duller Boys, who do Not Make such Awful Noise!
34 Oh, Laugh at LABAN, if you Will, but he was Brave when he was Ill.
35 When he was Ill, he was so Brave he Swallowed All his Mother Gave!
36 But Somehow, She could never Tell why he was Worse when he was Well!
37 If MICAH's Mother ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...e less perfect than the front page of a morning newspaper?
the answers are not computed and attested in the back of an arithmetic for the verifications of the lazy
there is no authority in the phone book for us to call and ask the why, the wherefore, and the howbeit it’s … a riddle … by God....Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees,
In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass....Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
CHORUS: If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ore.
And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?
To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel.
And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather....Read more of this...
by
Owen, Wilfred
...eling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on Armies' decimation.
III
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the c...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ery day she was impossible in a new way,
Stamping her foot like a naughty Enid Blyton child,
Shouting "Poets don’t do arithmetic!"
Or drawing caricatures of me in her book.
Then there were the ‘moments of vision’, her eyes
Dissolving the blank walls and made-up faces,
Genius painfully going through her paces,
The skull she drew, the withered chrysanthemum
And scarlet rose, ‘Descensus averno’, like Virgil,
I supposed.
Now three years later, in nylons and tigh...Read more of this...
by
Wylie, Elinor
...that lying in the dust?
Second Traveller: A crooked stick.
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust to arithmetic?
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle?
First Traveller: No, a trick.
Second Traveller:It's worthless, leave it where it lies.
First Traveller: Wait; count ten;
Rub a little dust upon your eyes;
Now, look again.
Second Traveller: Well, and what the devil is it, then?
First Traveller: It's the sort of crooked stick that shepherd...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Nature -- stranded then
In our Economy
Our Estimates a Scheme --
Our Ultimates a Sham --
We let go all of Time without
Arithmetic of him --...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...
That winter she came
part way back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise of the X-ray,
the cells' arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
them say.
During the sea blizzards
she had here
own portrait painted.
A cave of mirror
placed on the south wall;
matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me; unacquainted
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
after all.
I wintered in...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...never on earth made in so little space,
For in the land there was no craftes-man,
That geometry or arsmetrike* can**, *arithmetic **knew
Nor pourtrayor*, nor carver of images, *portrait painter
That Theseus ne gave him meat and wages
The theatre to make and to devise.
And for to do his rite and sacrifice
He eastward hath upon the gate above,
In worship of Venus, goddess of love,
*Done make* an altar and an oratory; *caused to be made*
And westward, in the mind and in mem...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...heard I of such mattere;
I trow* the Devil put it in his mind. *believe
In all arsmetrik* shall there no man find, *arithmetic
Before this day, of such a question.
Who shoulde make a demonstration,
That every man should have alike his part
As of the sound and savour of a fart?
O nice* proude churl, I shrew** his face. *foolish **curse
Lo, Sires," quoth the lord, "with harde grace,
Who ever heard of such a thing ere now?
To every man alike? tell me how.
It is i...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...twixt God His Law
And Man's infirmity,
A shadow kind to dumb and blind
The shambles where we die;
A rule to trick th' arithmetic
Too base of leaguing odds --
The spur of trust, the curb of lust,
Thou handmaid of the Gods!
O Charity, all patiently
Abiding wrack and scaith!
O Faith, that meets ten thousand cheats
Yet drops no jot of faith!
Devil and brute Thou dost transmute
To higher, lordlier show,
Who art in sooth that lovely Truth
The careless angels know!
Thy fac...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...I stood there in front of forty-five faces
The first day of term, not especially fancying
"Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic" and so instead
I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky,
Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper.
Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl
In search of her first job around London schools,
A Head-of-English announced "You wouldn’t get away
With that now!" as though I had committed
A crime-against-society.
I remember send...Read more of this...
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