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Famous Backed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...n there were could tell 
What gave the verdict extra force. 
The stewards -- and the judge as well -- 
They all had backed the second horse. 
For things like this they sometimes do 
In larger towns than Dandaloo. 

They ran it off, the stranger won, 
Hands down, by near a hundred yards. 
He smiled to think his troubles done; 
But Dandaloo held all the cards. 
They went to scale and -- cruel fate -- 
His jockey turned out under weight. 

Perhaps they's ...Read More



by Thomas, Dylan
...d Alps
Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep,
Deep the great bushed bait with raining lips
Slipped the fins of those humpbacked tons

And fled their love in a weaving dip.
Oh, Jericho was falling in their lungs!
She nipped and dived in the nick of love,
Spun on a spout like a long-legged ball

Till every beast blared down in a swerve
Till every turtle crushed from his shell
Till every bone in the rushing grave
Rose and crowed and fell!

Good luck to the hand on the rod,
Th...Read More

by Rich, Adrienne
...g sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions

and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings

intend to refuse shelter
to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with...Read More

by Bukowski, Charles
...

i kissed her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the 
hill
past the houses
full and emptey
of
people,
i saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me....Read More

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...The boys had come back from the races 
All silent and down on their luck; 
They'd backed 'em, straight out and for places, 
But never a winner they's struck. 
They lost their good money on Slogan, 
And fell most uncommonly flat 
When Partner, the pride of the Bogan, 
Was beaten by Aristocrat. 
And one said, "I move that instanter 
We sell out our horses and quit; 
The brutes ought to win in a canter, 
Such trials they do when they...Read More



by Milton, John
...might behold
Another plain, long, but in breadth not wide,
Washed by the southern sea, and on the north
To equal length backed with a ridge of hills
That screened the fruits of the earth and seats of men 
From cold Septentrion blasts; thence in the midst
Divided by a river, off whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,
Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts,
Statues and trophies, and tr...Read More

by Atwood, Margaret
...the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
fractured coke bottles and the smell
of backed-up drains, too sweet,
like a mango on the verge
of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
& their tracks; birds & elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one
day after the other rolling on;
I move up, it's called
awake, then down into the uneasy
nights but never
forward. The roosters crow
for hours before dawn, an...Read More

by Hacker, Marilyn
...
body is eighteen months paper: the past
a fragile eighteen months regime of trust
in slash-and-burn, in vitamin pills, backed
by no statistics. Each day I enact
survivor's rituals, blessing the crust
I tear from the warm loaf, blessing the hours
in which I didn't or in which I did
consider my own death. I am not yet
statistically a survivor (that
is sixty months). On paper, someone flowers
and flares alive. I knew her. But she's dead.

She flares aliv...Read More

by Taylor, Edward
...s from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I was just making a stab at conversation.
It is not my intention to alarm anyone, but dear Lord
if I find a dead man in the road and his eyes
are crawling with maggots, I refuse to say
have a nice day Suzie just because she's desperate
and her life is a runaway carriage rushing toward a cliff
now can I? Wou...Read More

by Hall, Donald
...ts screeched around his head. His eyes rolled crazily. He trumpeted. The ice-cap was breaking up!

The lion backed off, whining. The boy ran for the house. I covered his retreat, locked all the doors and pulled the bars across them. An old lady tried to open a door to get a better look. I spoke sharply to her, she sat down grumbling and pulled a blanket over her knees.

Out of the window I saw zebras and rattlesnakes and wildebeests and cougars...Read More

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ften on
 Black rum when that was red.

They told their tales of wreck and wrong,
 Of shame and lust and fraud,
They backed their toughest statements with
 The Brimstone of the Lord,
And crackling oaths went to and fro
 Across the fist-banged board.

And there was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,
 Bull-throated, bare of arm,
Who carried on his hairy chest
 The maid Ultruda's charm --
The little silver crucifix
 That keeps a man from harm.

And there was Jake Withouth-the-E...Read More

by Kipling, Rudyard
...d-sea course was ta'en
Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon
Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.

"Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
I waked the palms to laughter -- I tossed the scud in the breeze --
Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.

"I have wrenched it free from the halli...Read More

by Masefield, John
...f I could only think I had. 
But no. I put the thought away 
For fear of what my friends would say. 
They'd backed me, see? O Lord, the sin 
Done for things there's money in. 

The stakes were drove, the ropes were hitched, 
Into the ring my hat I pitched. 
My corner faced the Squire's park 
Just where the fir trees make it dark; 
The place where I begun poor Nell 
Upon the woman's road to hell. 
I thought of't, sitting in my corner 
After the time-kee...Read More

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...ike a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed 
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping 
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip 
grim,...Read More

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...

And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of
the Laodiceans.



THE BROAD-BACKED hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.

Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gat...Read More

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...ads down; and a man 
On a great yawing chestnut trying to cast ’em 
While I was in a corner pounded by 
The ugliest hog-backed stile you’ve clapped your eyes on.
There was an iron-spiked fence round all the coverts, 
And civil-spoken keepers I couldn’t trust, 
And the main earth unstopp’d. The fox I found 
Was always a three-legged ’un from a bag, 
Who reeked of aniseed and wouldn’t run.
The farmers were all ploughing their old pasture 
And bellowing at me when I ...Read More

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...sperers: at the further end 
Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats 
Close by her, like supporters on a shield, 
Bow-backed with fear: but in the centre stood 
The common men with rolling eyes; amazed 
They glared upon the women, and aghast 
The women stared at these, all silent, save 
When armour clashed or jingled, while the day, 
Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 
A flying splendour out of brass and steel, 
That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, 
Now...Read More

by Lanier, Sidney
...for an inward shame;
And that place of the lashing full quiet became;
And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he.
"There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath.
Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death,
He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dea...Read More

by Kipling, Rudyard
...d they saw the sun-dogs in the haze and the seal upon the shore.
Silver and gray ran spit and bay to meet the steel-backed tide,
And pinched and white in the clearing light the crews stared overside.
O rainbow-gay the red pools lay that swilled and spilled and spread,
And gold, raw gold, the spent shell rolled between the careless dead --
The dead that rocked so drunkenwise to weather and to lee,
And they saw the work their hands had done as God had bade them see....Read More

by Hugo, Victor
...the wind blows often here; 
 The gnomes that squat the ceiling near, 
 In corners made by old books dim; 
 The long-backed dwarfs, those goblins grim 
 That seem at home 'mong vases rare, 
 And chat to them with friendly air— 
 Oh, how the joyous demon throng 
 Must all have laughed with laughter long 
 To see you on my rough drafts fall, 
 My bald hexameters, and all 
 The mournful, miserable band, 
 And drag them with relentless hand 
 From out their box, with ...Read More

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