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Famous Beaked Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Levertov, Denise
...th five leafless twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or golden grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
more like a flower's.
He carried a burden made of some cut branch bent while it was green, strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this, when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a rip...Read more of this...



by Walcott, Derek
...of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues

Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.

One I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there is no room at the trough.

I watch the best minds rot like dogs
for scraps of flavour.
I am nearing middle
age, burnt skin
peels from my hand like paper, onion-thin,
like Peer Gynt's riddle.

At heart there is nothing, not the dread
of death...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
..., 
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain? 
And question'd every gust of rugged wings 
That blows from off each beaked Promontory, 
They knew not of his story, 
And sage Hippotades their answer brings, 
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd, 
The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine, 
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd. 
It was that fatall and perfidious Bark 
Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, 
That sunk so low that sacred head of thi...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...read from my hand in great mouthfuls,
Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, pristine face
Into an enormously wide-beaked mouth
Like sudden curved scissors,
And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue,
And having the bread hanging over her chin.

O Mistress, Mistress,
Reptile mistress,
Your eye is very dark, very bright,
And it never softens
Although you watch.

She knows,
She knows well enough to come for food,
Yet she sees me no...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of...Read more of this...



by Brown, Thomas Edward
...al storms. 

But tenfold one is he, who feels all pains 
Not partial, knowing them 
As ripples parted from the gold-beaked stem, 
Wherewith God’s galley onward ever strains. 

To him the sorrows are the tension-thrills 
Of that serene endeavour, 
Which yields to God for ever and for ever 
The joy that is more ancient than the hills....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...e rain 
Impetuous; and continued, till the earth 
No more was seen: the floating vessel swum 
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow 
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else 
Flood overwhelmed, and them with all their pomp 
Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea, 
Sea without shore; and in their palaces, 
Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelped 
And stabled; of mankind, so numerous late, 
All left, in one small bottom swum imbarked. 
How didst thou grieve...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...in lonely misery!
No longer now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria's purple waters used to flow.

O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia's royal warrior hath passed
Rome's lordliest entrance, and hath worn his ...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--
in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum,
or, more often,
iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird,
dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.

 5

Dulce ridens, dulce loquens,
she shaves her legs until they gleam
like petrified mammoth-tusk.

 6

When to her lute Corinna sings
neither words nor music are her own;
only the long hair dipping 
over her cheek, only the song
of silk against her knees
and these 
...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green.
A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, 
sharp-beaked, irresistible,
shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and 
sunshine
tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky 
is quiet and high,
and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air.

Midday and Afternoon
Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and 
recoil of traffic. The stock-still
brick facade of an old church, against w...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...Fowle proceed
"Of shedding Leaves, that with their Ocean breed.
"Theirs are not Ships, but rather Arks of War,
"And beaked Promontories sail'd from far;
"Of floting Islands a new Hatched Nest;
"A Fleet of Worlds, of other Worlds in quest;
"An hideous shole of wood Leviathans,
"Arm'd with three Tire of brazen Hurricans;
"That through the Center shoot their thundring side
"And sink the Earth that does at Anchor ride.
'What refuge to escape them can be found,
"Whose watr...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...mused and drank sweet wine;
A herdsman came from inland valleys,
Crying, the pirates drove his swine
To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys.
I called my battle-breaking men
And my loud brazen battle-cars
From rolling vale and rivery glen;
And under the blinking of the stars
Fell on the pirates by the deep,
And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:
These hands won many a torque of gold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.

But sl...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...onoured the sunlight
and passed by the moon

from a treetop nearby
a sharp-singing blackbird
trilled its objective
gold-beaked lullay

the grave was filled in
the high hill deserted
and down in the valley
a rare christmas came...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...outright.

These were tame pleasures.--She would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time,
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fireballs roar behid.

And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round
She would as...Read more of this...

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