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Famous Bat Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They w...Read more of this...



by Shakespeare, William
...sh'd woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride
For some, untuck'd...Read more of this...

by Moody, William Vaughn
...sundered yet. 


IV 

Alas! what sounds are these that come 
Sullenly over the Pacific seas, -- 
Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb 
The season's half-awakened ecstasies? 
Must I be humble, then, 
Now when my heart hath need of pride? 
Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men; 
By loving much the land for which they died 
I would be justified. 
My spirit was away on pinions wide 
To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood 
And ease it of its ache of g...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...eeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who to...Read more of this...

by Thayer, Ernest Lawrence
.... 
They thought, "if only Casey could but get a whack at that. 
We'd put up even money now, with Casey at the bat." 

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake; 
and the former was a hoodoo, while the latter was a cake. 

So upon that stricken multitude, grim melancholy sat; 
for there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat. 

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all. 
And Blake, the much despised, tore th...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...the day and morning's prime--
Because into his depth Cimmerian
There came a dream, shewing how a young man,
Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin,
Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win
An immortality, and how espouse
Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house.
Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate,
That he might at the threshold one hour wait
To hear the marriage melodies, and then
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semil...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...man.
One had a cat's face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat's pace,
One crawled like a snail,
One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry-scurry.
Lizzie heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...clapping door; 
The rustling tapestry, and the echoing floor; 
The long dim shadows of surrounding trees, 
The flapping bat, the night song of the breeze; 
Aught they behold or hear their thought appals 
As evening saddens o'er the dark gray walls. 

XVI. 

Vain thought! that hour of ne'er unravell'd gloom 
Came not again, or Lara could assume 
A seeming of forgetfulness that made 
His vassals more amazed nor less afraid — 
Had memory vanish'd then with sense restored...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...ll.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The sc...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...like a good idea.

 I was supposed to launder the old socks and send them in

with the guarantee. Right off the bat, new socks would be on

their way, traveling across America with my name on the

package. Then all I would have to do, would be to open the

package, take those new socks out and put them on. They

would look good on my feet.

 I wish I hadn't lost that guarantee. That was a shame. I've

had to face the fact that new socks are not goi...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...ine,

in those good old days when oleo was white like lard.

 The huge black car pulled out and went up the street, bat-

light shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream

parlor at Filbert and Stockton.

 An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred

double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow

to get them back to the car.








 THE LAST TIME I SAW

 TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA







The last time we met was in July on th...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...worst, age vexes age; 
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am
 silent, and go bathe and admire myself. 

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean; 
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar
 than the rest.

I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing: 
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and
 withdraws at the pe...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...rth, the elements! 
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity; 
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests! 

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer. 

Allons! yet take warning! 
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance; 
None may come to the trial, till he or she bring courage and health.

Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself; 
Only those may come, w...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...You've heard of "Casey at The Bat,"
 And "Casey's Tabble Dote";
 But now it's time
 To write a rhyme
 Of "Casey's Billy-goat."

Pat Casey had a billy-goat he gave the name of Shamus,
Because it was (the neighbours said) a national disgrace.
And sure enough that animal was eminently famous
For masticating every rag of laundry round the place.
For shirts to skirts prodigiously ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...sed from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly cre...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...> 
Time! 

There was Bill as grim as death, 
He rushed, I clinched, to get more breath, 
And breath I got, though Billy bats 
Some stinging short-arms in my slats. 
And when we broke, as I foresaw, 
He swung his right in for the jaw. 
I stopped it on my shoulder bone, 
And at the shock I heard Bill groan 
A little groan or moan or grunt 
As though I'd hit his wind a bunt. 
At that, I clinched, and while we clinched, 
His old time right arm dig was flinched, 
And w...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!
Attest it many a deathless age!
While Kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a namesless pyramid,
Thy Heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of thy native...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...all dark, like those that are all light,
They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,
Crying to one another like the bats;
And having no desire they cannot tell
What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph
At the perfection of one's own obedience;
And yet they speak what's blown into the mind;
Deformed beyond deformity, unformed,
Insipid as the dough before it is baked,
They change their bodies at a word.

Aherne. And then?

Rohartes. When all the dough has bee...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...to reflect,
That thro' the still globe's awful solitude,
No being wakes but me! till stealing sleep
My drooping temples bathes in opiate dews.
Nor then let dreams, of wanton folly born
My senses lead thro' flow'ry paths of joy;
But let the sacred Genius of the night
Such mystic visions send, as Spenser saw,
When thro' bewild'ring Fancy's magic maze,
To the fell house of Busyrane, he led
Th' unshaken Britomart; or Milton knew,
When in abstracted thought he first conceiv'd
...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...ater-music 
of the country dancers, the fiddlers like fifes 
put aside. He had to heal 
this malarial island in its bath of bay leaves, 
its forests tossing with fever, the dry cattle 
groaning like winches, the grass that kept shaking 
its head to remember its name. No vowels left 
in the mill wheel, the river. Rock stone. Rock stone. 

The mountains rolled like whales through phosphorous stars, 
as he swayed like a stone down fathoms into sleep, 
drawn b...Read more of this...

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