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Famous Backs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...
Rob, stownlins, prie’d her bonie mou’,
 Fu’ cozie in the neuk for’t,
 Unseen that night.


But Merran sat behint their backs,
 Her thoughts on Andrew Bell:
She lea’es them gashin at their cracks,
 An’ slips out-by hersel’;
She thro’ the yard the nearest taks,
 An’ for the kiln she goes then,
An’ darklins grapit for the bauks,
 And in the blue-clue 9 throws then,
 Right fear’t that night.


An’ ay she win’t, an’ ay she swat—
 I wat she made nae jaukin;
Till something held wit...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...6 That cried destruction to my wicked Land.
127 These Prophets' mouths (all the while) was stopt, 
128 Unworthily, some backs whipt, and ears crept; 
129 Their reverent cheeks bear the glorious marks
130 Of stinking, stigmatizing Romish Clerks; 
131 Some lost their livings, some in prison pent,
132 Some grossly fined, from friends to exile went:
133 Their silent tongues to heaven did vengeance cry,
134 Who heard their cause, and wrongs judg'd righteously,
135 And will repay i...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne
...I was jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit
I deceived my women
I never talked my friends' backs
I drank but not every day
I earned my bread money honestly what happiness
out of embarrassment for others I lied
I lied so as not to hurt someone else
 but I also lied for no reason at all
I've ridden in trains planes and cars
most people don't get the chance
I went to opera
 most people haven't even heard of the opera
and since '21 I haven't gone to t...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these, 
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.


(2)

This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot,

The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest
Who plumbs the well of...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...youth's graces shorn.



XLV.
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs; 
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe 
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.



XLVI.
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the fade...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler



...stood upon our stapled feet—
Condemned—but just—to see—

Permission to recant—
Permission to forget—
We turned our backs upon the Sun
For perjury of that—

Not Either—noticed Death—
Of Paradise—aware—
Each other's Face—was all the Disc
Each other's setting—saw—

479

She dealt her pretty words like Blades—
How glittering they shone—
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone—

She never deemed—she hurt—
That—is not Steel's Affair—
A vulgar gri...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...n age's mask
Went forward with the Carian side by side:
Resuming quickly thus; while ocean's tide
Hung swollen at their backs, and jewel'd sands
Took silently their foot-prints. "My soul stands
Now past the midway from mortality,
And so I can prepare without a sigh
To tell thee briefly all my joy and pain.
I was a fisher once, upon this main,
And my boat danc'd in every creek and bay;
Rough billows were my home by night and day,--
The sea-gulls not more constant; for I had
No...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
 Nor care for wind and tide.

"Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three days' journey in a moment done:
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive ********!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...of Jacques Molay.

Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes. No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.

The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
Th...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...d some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neig...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ged great soul of an ancient Master.

VII.

For oh, this world and the wrong it does
They are safe in heaven with their backs to it,
The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz
Round the works of, you of the little wit!
Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope,
Now that they see God face to face,
And have all attained to be poets, I hope?
'Tis their holiday now, in any case.

VIII.

Much they reck of your praise and you!
But the wronged great souls---can they be quit
Of...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...ansion was built

before there was even a road down at Big Sur. The mansion

had been brought over the mountains on the backs of mules,

strung out like ants, bringing visions of the good life to the

poison oak, the ticks, and the salmon.

 The mansion was on a promontory, high over the Pacific.

Money could see farther in the 1920s and one could look out

and see whales and the Hawaiian Islands and the Kuomintang

in China.

 The mansion burned down years ago.

 The actor d...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...gasp
And laughed. Then she climbed slowly to her feet,
And walked off, talking to herself or Paul,
Across the logs like backs of alligators,
Paul taking after her around the pond.

 Next evening Murphy and some other fellows
Got drunk, and tracked the pair up Catamount,
From the bare top of which there is a view
TO other hills across a kettle valley.
And there, well after dark, let Murphy tell it,
They saw Paul and his creature keeping house.
It was the only glimpse that anyo...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ke tools,
Spurn'd them to death by Troops. The bold Ascalonite
Fled from his Lion ramp, old Warriors turn'd
Thir plated backs under his heel; 
Or grovling soild thir crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to Hand,
The Jaw of a dead Ass, his sword of bone,
A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestin
In Ramath-lechi famous to this day:
Then by main force pull'd up, and on his shoulders bore
The Gates of Azza, Post, and massie Bar
Up to the Hill b...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...also pass’d over their bodies; 
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the
 sun—they do not ask who seizes fast to them; 
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch; 
They do not think whom they souse with spray. 

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
 in the market; 
I loiter, enjoying his repartee, and his shuf...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...r right hands, rapidly laying the long
 side-wall, two
 hundred feet from front to rear, 
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the
 bricks, 
The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock
 of
 the
 trowel-handle, 
The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by
 the
 hod-men;
—Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance, 
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles, 100 
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files, 
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil 
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil: 
With toying oars and silken sails they glide, 
Nor care for wind and tide. 105 

Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes, 
From rear to van they scour about the plains; 
A three days' journey in a moment done; 
And always, at the rising of the s...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...silence, I renew'd my theme:"Lightning and storm, red battle, age, disease,Backs, prisons, poison, famine,—make not theseDeath, even to the bravest, bitter seem?"She answer'd: "I deny not that the strifeIs great and sore which waits on parting life,And then of death eternal the sharp dread!But if the soul with hope from hea...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco
...Some clichty folks
don't know the facts,
posin' and preenin'
and puttin' on acts,
stretchin' their backs.

They move into condos
up over the ranks,
pawn their souls
to the local banks.
Buying big cars
they can't afford,
ridin' around town
actin' bored.

If they want to learn how to live life right
they ought to study me on Saturday night.

My job at the plant
ain't the biggest bet,
but I pay my bills
and stay out of debt.
I get my hair done
for my own sel...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry