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Famous Beaks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...of the night? - 
All night through without sleep 
We weep, and we weep, and we weep. 
Who shall give us our sons ? 
Beaks of raven and kite,
Mouths of wolf and of hound, 
Give us them back whom the guns 
Shot for you dead on the ground.

Dead men, what of the night? - 
Cannon and scaffold and sword,
Horror of gibbet and cord, 
Mowed us as sheaves for the grave, 
Mowed us down for the right. 
We do not grudge or repent. 
Freely to freedom we gave
Pledges, till ...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...praise,
who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On atounged puffball)
But animals thick as theives
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood!).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, i...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...urthen round Sig?um's steep, 
And cast on Lemnos' shore: 
The sea-birds shriek above the prey, 
O'er which their hungry beaks delay, 
As shaken on his restless pillow, 
His head heaves with the heaving billow; 
That hand, whose motion is not life, 
Yet feebly seems to menace strife, 
Flung by the tossing tide on high, 
Then levell'd with the wave — 
What recks it, though that corse shall lie 
Within a living grave? 
The bird that tears that prostrate form 
Hath only robb'd th...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...stellation
under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers' windows. For sale,

glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,
the birds lined up like the endless flowers
and cheap gems, the makeshift tables

of secondhand magazines
and shoes the hawkers eye
while they shelter in the doorways of banks.

So many pockets and pap...Read more of this...

by Ransom, John Crowe
...t 
That got the Captain finally on his back 
And took the red red vitals of his heart 
And made the kites to whet their beaks clack clack....Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...brown flour that you kiss each day.
There are dark stars in the cool evening and
you fondle them like killer birds' beaks.
But what I want to know is why when small boys
dig you up for curiosity and cut you in half
why each half lives and crawls away as if whole.
Have you no beginning and end? Which heart is
the real one? Which eye the seer? Why
is it in the infinite plan that you would
be severed and rise from the dead like a gargoyle
with two heads?...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ings
More dead than Morpheus' imaginings:
Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large
Of gone sea-warriors; brazen beaks and targe;
Rudders that for a hundred years had lost
The sway of human hand; gold vase emboss'd
With long-forgotten story, and wherein
No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin
But those of Saturn's vintage; mouldering scrolls,
Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls
Who first were on the earth; and sculptures rude
In ponderous stone, developing the mood...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...he great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...s:
they were expecting the death of a boy on a Japanese schooner.
They all kept to themselves-
dreaming of the open beaks of dying birds,
the sharp parasol that punctures
a recently flattened toad,
beneath silence with a thousand ears
and tiny mouths of water
in the canyons that resist
the violent attack on the moon.
The boy on the schooner was crying and hearts were breaking
in anguish for the witness and vigilance of all things,
and because of the sky blue ground of...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...m death had put her in his scroll
Down on the execution-roll;
And Gallic crows, as she grew weaker,
Began to whet their beaks to pick her.


"And now her powers decaying fast,
Her grand climact'ric had she pass'd,
And just like all old women else,
Fell in the vapors much by spells.
Strange whimsies on her fancy struck,
And gave her brain a dismal shock;
Her memory fails, her judgment ends;
She quite forgot her nearest friends,
Lost all her former sense and knowledge,
...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...inks, nature's refreshment sweet.
Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn—
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought;
He saw the Prophet also, how he fled 
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper—then how, awaked,
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the Angel was bid rise and eat,
And eat the second time after repose,
The strength whereof suf...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...he mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
 Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
 And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
 He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
 Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the lo...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...blue blur 
their rusting wives admire,
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare

with stupid eyes
while from their beaks there rise
the uncontrolled, traditional cries.

Deep from protruding chests
in green-gold medals dressed,
planned to command and terrorize the rest,

the many wives 
who lead hens' lives
of being courted and despised;

deep from raw throats
a senseless order floats
all over town. A rooster gloats

over our beds
from rusty irons sheds
and fence...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...urthen round Sig?um's steep, 
And cast on Lemnos' shore: 
The sea-birds shriek above the prey, 
O'er which their hungry beaks delay, 
As shaken on his restless pillow, 
His head heaves with the heaving billow; 
That hand, whose motion is not life, 
Yet feebly seems to menace strife, 
Flung by the tossing tide on high, 
Then levell'd with the wave — 
What recks it, though that corse shall lie 
Within a living grave? 
The bird that tears that prostrate form 
Hath only robb'd th...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...d gather shape, 
And spread great pinions and escape; 
And each great bird of clanging shrieks 
O Fire! Fire, from iron beaks. 
My shoulders cracked to send around 
Those shrieking birds made out of sound 
With news of fire in their bills. 
(They heard 'em plain beyond Wall Hills.). 

Up go the winders, out come heads, 
I heard the springs go creak in beds; 
But still I heave and sweat and tire, 
And still the clang goes "Fire, Fire!" 
"Where is it, then? Who ...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...nd desires once more to walk among those trees.
Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.
Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.
And soon the pond must freeze.

The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter,
Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight;
A girl's laugh rings like a silver bell.
But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears
More in his secret heart than in his ears,—
A hammer's steady crescendo, like a knel...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...in the pan
here comes a voice saying something dull
here comes a newspaper stuffed with small red birds
with flat brown beaks
here comes a **** carrying a torch
a grenade
a deathly love
here comes a victory carrying
one bucket of blood
and stumbling over the berry bush
and the sheets hang out the windows
and the bombers head east west north south
get lost
get tossed like salad
as all the fish in the sea line up and form
one line
one long line
one very long thin line
the longe...Read more of this...

by Kilmer, Joyce
...and in the 
sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never 
done,
Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again."...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
..., worry crocodiles through their cuirasses 
And prick the metal fishes when they bask. 
You'll feel them soon, with beaks like sturdy pins, 
Treating their stinging thirsts with your best blood. 
A man can't walk a mile in India 
Without being the business of a throng'd 
And moving town of flies; they hawk at a man 
As bold as little eagles, and as wild. 
And, I suppose, only a fool will blame them. 
Flies have the right to sink wells in our skin 
All as men t...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...ark,
but not the pelican , the gull;
pelicans dip and dive, rise,
shaking shocked half-dead
radioactive fish from their beaks;
indeed, indeed, the waters wash
the rocks with slime; and on wall st.
the market staggers like a lost drunk
looking for his key; ah,
this will be a good one,by God:
it will take us back to the
sabre-teeth, the winged monkey
scrabbling in pits over bits
of helmet, instrument and glass;
a lightning crashes across
the window and in a million rooms
lo...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things