Famous Axe Poems by Famous Poets

...tter
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the ...Read More

...corner for the goods and stores.
So all day long till Enoch's last at home,
Shaking their pretty cabin, hammer and axe,
Auger and saw, while Annie seem'd to hear
Her own death-scaffold raising, shrill'd and rang,
Till this was ended, and his careful hand,--
The space was narrow,--having order'd all
Almost as neat and close as Nature packs
Her blossom or her seedling, paused; and he,
Who needs would work for Annie to the last,
Ascending tired, heavily slept till morn....Read More

...nd unclaimed in the prairies;
Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, and forests of timber
With a few blows of the axe are hewn and framed into houses.
After your houses are built, and your fields are yellow with harvests,
No King George of England shall drive you away from your homesteads,
Burning your dwellings and barns, and stealing your farms and your cattle."
Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his nostrils,
While his huge, brown hand came t...Read More

...night 
 Raise suppliant hands. His lance loved not the plight 
 Of mouldering in the rack, of no avail, 
 His battle-axe slipped from supporting nail 
 Quite easily; 'twas ill for action base 
 To come so near that he the thing could trace. 
 The steel-clad champion death drops all around 
 As glaciers water. Hero ever found 
 Eviradnus is kinsman of the race 
 Of Amadys of Gaul, and knights of Thrace, 
 He smiles at age. For he who never asked 
 For quarter from m...Read More

...iry
Of water waits;
All shrunk and wizen,
In iron prison,
Till spring re-risen
Unbar the gates;
Till, as with clamor
Of axe and hammer,
Chained streams that stammer
And struggle in straits
Burst bonds that shiver,
And thaws deliver
The roaring river in stormy spates.

In fierce March weather
White waves break tether,
And whirled together
At either hand,
Like weeds uplifted,
The tree-trunks rifted
In spars are drifted,
Like foam or sand,
Past swamp and sallow
And reed-beds...Read More

...ve swallowed a ruler, being man. 
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing. 
Jehovah pleasures himself with his axe 
before we are both overthrown. 
Skeezix, you are me. La de dah. 
You grow a beard but our drool is identical. 

Forgive us, Father, for we know not. 

Today is November 14th, 1972. 
I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County, 
U.S.A., and it rains steadily 
in the pond like white puppy eyes. 
The pond is waitin...Read More

...0pt;">     and move with foot and wings! It would not suffer the axe blows      and not the pain of saws! For would the sun not wander      away in every night ? How could at ev’ry morning 


Last Instructions to a Painter

...e through all the yards their orders run 
To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun. 
The timber rots, and useless axe doth rust, 
Th' unpracticed saw lies buried in its dust, 
The busy hammer sleeps, the ropes untwine, 
The stores and wages all are mine and thine. 
Along the coast and harbours they make care 
That money lack, nor forts be in repair. 
Long thus they could against the House conspire, 
Load them with envy, and with sitting tire. 
And the loved ...Read More

...al blade 
Clutched in his desperate gripe. 

'Twas near that long deserted hut, 
Which in the wood decays, 
Death's axe, self-wielded, struck his root, 
And lopped his desperate days. 

You know the spot, where three black trees, 
Lift up their branches fell, 
And moaning, ceaseless as the seas, 
Still seem, in every passing breeze, 
The deed of blood to tell. 

They named him mad, and laid his bones 
Where holier ashes lie; 
Yet doubt not that his spirit groans, ...Read More

...lesome young man. 

In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ice—I have
 a
 small axe to cut holes in the ice; 
Behold me, well-clothed, going gaily, or returning in the afternoon—my brood of tough
 boys
 accompaning me, 
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so well as they
 love to
 be with me, 
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.

Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, ...Read More

...en that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods, 
Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders of axes and mauls, and
 the drivers of horses; 
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. 

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me;
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns; 
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me; 
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will; 
Scattering it freely fo...Read More

..., lands of the manly and rugged ores; 
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc; 
LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe! 

3
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;
The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for a garden, 
The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is lull’d, 
The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea, 
The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam ends, and the cutti...Read More

...ange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.

When the ends of the earth came marching in
To torch and cresset gleam.
And the roads of the world that lead to Rome
Were filled with faces ...Read More

...red,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
You might have cut as an axe chops a log---
Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;
And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,
And a sinking at the lower abdomen
Begins the day with indifferent omen.
And lo, as he looked around uneasily,
The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
This way and that from the valley un...Read More

...armour*
And some will have a Prusse* shield, or targe; *Prussian
Some will be armed on their legges weel;
Some have an axe, and some a mace of steel.
There is no newe guise*, but it was old. *fashion
Armed they weren, as I have you told,
Evereach after his opinion.
There may'st thou see coming with Palamon
Licurgus himself, the great king of Thrace:
Black was his beard, and manly was his face.
The circles of his eyen in his head
They glowed betwixte yellow an...Read More

...ound, the walls to grace,
     Hung trophies of the fight or chase:
     A target there, a bugle here,
     A battle-axe, a hunting-spear,
     And broadswords, bows, and arrows store,
     With the tusked trophies of the boar.
     Here grins the wolf as when he died,
     And there the wild-cat's brindled hide
     The frontlet of the elk adorns,
     Or mantles o'er the bison's horns;
     Pennons and flags defaced and stained,
     That blackening streaks of bl...Read More

...oresight, providence
And when thou hast done thus as I have said,
And hast our vitaille fair in them y-laid,
And eke an axe to smite the cord in two
When that the water comes, that we may go,
And break an hole on high upon the gable
Into the garden-ward, over the stable,
That we may freely passe forth our way,
When that the greate shower is gone away.
Then shalt thou swim as merry, I undertake,
As doth the white duck after her drake:
Then will I clepe,* 'How, Alison? How,...Read More

...of shaggy hide; 
Bared to the sun and soft warm air, 
Streams back the Northmen's yellow hair. 
I see the gleam of axe and spear, 
A sound of smitten shields I hear, 
Keeping a harsh and fitting time 
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme; 
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, 
His gray and naked isles among; 
Or mutter low at midnight hour 
Round Odin's mossy stone of power. 
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling rune; 
The Gael has heard its...Read More

...industry gladly is kindled.
And from the sedge of the stream smilingly signs the blue god.
Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly;
Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load.
Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened;
Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends.
Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer;
Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel...Read More

...canst tell to me
What thing is it that women most desiren:
Beware, and keep thy neck-bone from the iron* *executioner's axe
And if thou canst not tell it me anon,
Yet will I give thee leave for to gon
A twelvemonth and a day, to seek and lear* *learn
An answer suffisant* in this mattere. *satisfactory
And surety will I have, ere that thou pace,* *go
Thy body for to yielden in this place."
Woe was the knight, and sorrowfully siked;* *sighed
But what? he might not do al...Read More

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