Famous Bark Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bark poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bark poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bark poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Bernadette Geyer
Train. Distant Train. Praise the glorious distance of Train.
Dogs bark, reply to the mournful echo of Train's whistle. Train looks back, keeps moving. Train carries its boxcars of secrets further and further away (and even further still) from those who profess to love Train, but who do not run after him. Eyes brimmed with glassy reflections of Train.
To watch...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
It was built of bark and poles, and the floor was full of holes
Where each leak in rainy weather made a pool;
And the walls were mostly cracks lined with calico and sacks –
There was little need for windows in the school.
Then we rode to school and back by the rugged gully-track,
On the old grey...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I think that though the clouds be dark,
That though the waves dash o'er the bark,
Yet after while the light will come,
And in calm waters safe at home
The bark will anchor.
Weep not, my sad-eyed, gray-robed maid,
Because your fairest blossoms fade,
That sorrow still o'erruns your cup,
And even though you root them up,
The weeds grow ranker.
For after while your tears shall cease,
And sorrow...Read more of this...
by
Henry Vaughan
Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Pass'd o'er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.
And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies,
While the...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
MOSES ON THE NILE.
("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.")
{TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.}
"Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray
Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep;
The river bank is lonely: come away!
The early murmurs of old Memphis creep
Faint on...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE I. Che debb' io far? che mi consigli, Amore? HE ASKS COUNSEL OF LOVE, WHETHER HE SHOULD FOLLOW LAURA, OR STILL ENDURE EXISTENCE. What should I do? what, Love, dost thou advise?Full time it is to die:And longer than I wish have I delay'd.My mistress is no more, and with her...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
"HERE POPE FIRST SUNG!" O, hallow'd Tree !
Such is the boast thy bark displays;
Thy branches, like thy Patron's lays,
Shall ever, ever, sacred be;
Nor with'ring storm, nor woodman's stroke,
Shall harm the POET'S favourite Oak.
'Twas HERE, he woo'd his MUSE of fire,
While Inspiration's wond'rous art,
Sublimely stealing thro' his heart
Did Fancy's proudest themes inspire:
'Twas HERE he wisely learnt...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
If my Bark sink
'Tis to another sea --
Mortality's Ground Floor
Is Immortality --...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
"Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
I know that David’s with me here again.
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Caressingly I stroke
Rough bark of the friendly oak.
A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.
Turf burns with pleasant smoke;
I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
All that is simple, happy,...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Turner Smith
Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,
Night on the ocean settles dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone
Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell
The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone
Singing the hour, and bidding "Strike...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Four hundred years ago a tangled waste
Lay sleeping on the west Atlantic's side;
Their devious ways the Old World's millions traced
Content, and loved, and labored, dared and died,
While students still believed the charts they conned,
And revelled in their thriftless ignorance,
Nor dreamed of other lands that lay beyond
Old Ocean's dense, indefinite expanse.
But deep within her heart old Nature knew
That she had once...Read more of this...
by
Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O MEIKLE thinks my luve o’ my beauty,
And meikle thinks my luve o’ my kin;
But little thinks my luve I ken brawlie
My tocher’s the jewel has charms for him.
It’s a’ for the apple he’ll nourish the tree,
It’s a’ for the hinny he’ll cherish the bee,
My laddie’s sae meikle in luve wi’ the siller,
He canna hae...Read more of this...
by
Larry Levis
--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brother
Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
The poet fears failure
& so she says
"Hold on pen--
what if the critics
hate me?"
& with that question
she blots out more lines
than any critic could.
The critic is only doing his job:
keeping the poet lonely.
He barks
like a dog at the door
when the master comes home.
It's in his doggy nature.
If he didn't know the poet
for the boss,
he wouldn't bark so loud.
& the poet?
It's...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!"
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,
where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;
where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Whether my bark went down at sea --
Whether she met with gales --
Whether to isles enchanted
She bent her docile sails --
By what mystic mooring
She is held today --
This is the errand of the eye
Out upon the Bay....Read more of this...
by
Horace
O LUCKLESS bark! new waves will force you back
To sea. O, haste to make the haven yours!
E'en now, a helpless wrack,
You drift, despoil'd of oars;
...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark....Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees,
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange,
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range.
Still I see in my fancy the dark-green and blue
Of the box-covered...Read more of this...
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