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Best Famous Headless Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Headless poems. This is a select list of the best famous Headless poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Headless poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of headless poems.

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Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Courage

 Ten little brown chicks scattered and scuffled,
Under the blue-berries hiding in fear;
Mother-grouse cackling, feathers all ruffled,
Dashed to defend them as we drew near.
Heart of a heroine, how I admired her! Of such devotion great poets have sung; Homes have been blest by the love that inspired her, Risking her life for the sake of her young.
Ten little chicks on her valour reliant, Peered with bright eyes from the bilberry spray; Fiercely she faced us, dismayed but defiant, Rushed at us bravely to scare us away.
Then my companion, a crazy young devil (After, he told me he'd done it for fun) Pretended to tremble, and raised his arm level, And ere I could check him he blazed with his gun.
Headless she lay, from her neck the blood spouted, And dappled her plumage, the poor, pretty thing! Ten little chicks - oh, I know for I counted, Came out and they tried to creep under her wing.
Sickened I said: "Here's an end to my killing; I swear, nevermore bird or beast will I slay; Starving I may be, but no more blood-spilling .
.
.
" That oath I have kept, and I keep it to-day.


Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

A Late Walk

 When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that lingered brown, Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought, Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

A Ballad of Jakkko Hill

 One moment bid the horses wait,
 Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
 You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly And loosed -- an idle hour to kill -- A headless, armless armory That smote us both on Jakko Hill.
Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait Through Time and to Eternity! Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate With more than Godlike constancy I cut the date upon a tree -- Here stand the clumsy figures still: "10-7-85, A.
D.
" Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.
What came of high resolve and great, And until Death fidelity! Whose horse is waiting at your gate? Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me? No Saint's, I swear; and -- let me see To-night what names your programme fill -- We drift asunder merrily, As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.
L'ENVOI.
Princess, behold our ancient state Has clean departed; and we see 'Twas Idleness we took for Fate That bound light bonds on you and me.
Amen! Here ends the comedy Where it began in all good will; Since Love and Leave together flee As driven mist on Jakko Hill!
Written by Dylan Thomas | Create an image from this poem

Then Was My Neophyte

 Then was my neophyte,
Child in white blood bent on its knees
Under the bell of rocks,
Ducked in the twelve, disciple seas
The winder of the water-clocks
Calls a green day and night.
My sea hermaphrodite, Snail of man in His ship of fires That burn the bitten decks, Knew all His horrible desires The climber of the water sex Calls the green rock of light.
Who in these labyrinths, This tidethread and the lane of scales, Twine in a moon-blown shell, Escapes to the flat cities' sails Furled on the fishes' house and hell, Nor falls to His green myths? Stretch the salt photographs, The landscape grief, love in His oils Mirror from man to whale That the green child see like a grail Through veil and fin and fire and coil Time on the canvas paths.
He films my vanity.
Shot in the wind, by tilted arcs, Over the water come Children from homes and children's parks Who speak on a finger and thumb, And the masked, headless boy.
His reels and mystery The winder of the clockwise scene Wound like a ball of lakes Then threw on that tide-hoisted screen Love's image till my heartbone breaks By a dramatic sea.
Who kills my history? The year-hedged row is lame with flint, Blunt scythe and water blade.
'Who could snap off the shapeless print From your to-morrow-treading shade With oracle for eye?' Time kills me terribly.
'Time shall not murder you,' He said, 'Nor the green nought be hurt; Who could hack out your unsucked heart, O green and unborn and undead?' I saw time murder me.
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

A CALL TO ARMS

 It was like chucking-out time

In a rough Victorian pub

Cherubic Dylan was first to go

Lachrymose but with a show

Of strength, yelling "Buggerall,

Buggerall, this is my boat-house

In Laugherne, these are my books,

My prizes, I ride every wave-crest,

My loves are legion.
What’s this You’re saying about fashion? Others follow where I lead, Schoolchildren copy my verse, No anthology omits me Put me down! Put me down! George Barker was too far gone To take them on And moaned about a list In a crystal cave of making beneath The basement of the Regent Street Polytechnic.
Edith Sitwell was rigid in a carved High-backed chair, regally aloof, Her ringed fingers gripping the arms, Her eyes flashing diamonds of contempt.
"A la lampe! A la lampe!" A serious fight broke out in the saloon bar When they tried to turf Redgrove out: His image of the poet as violent man Broke loose and in his turtle-necked Seaman’s jersey he shouted, "Man the barricades!" A tirade of nature-paths and voters For a poetry of love mixed it with The chuckers-out; Kennedy, Morley And Hulse suffered a sharp repulse.
Heath-Stubbs was making death stabs With his blindman’s stick at the ankles Of detractors from his position under The high table of chivalry, intoning A prayer to raise the spirit Of Sidney Keyes.
Geoffrey Hill had Merlin and Arthur Beside him and was whirling an axe To great effect, headless New Gen poets Running amok.
Andrew Crozier was leading a counter-attack With Caddy and Hinton neck and neck And Silkin was quietly garrotting While he kept on smiling.
Price Turner was so happy at the slaughter He hanged himself in a corner And Hughes brought the Great White Boar To wallow in all the gore While I rode centaur Charles Tomlinson had sent for.


Written by Craig Raine | Create an image from this poem

The Onion Memory

 Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs, prehistoric, crenelated, cast between the tractor ruts in mud.
On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks, swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier, defies the corporation spears-- a single rank around the bole, rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance A gust--the old flag blazes on its pole.
In the village bakery the pastry babies pass from milky slump to crusty cadaver, from crib to coffin--without palaver.
All's over in a flash, too silently.
.
.
Tonight the arum lilies fold back napkins monogrammed in gold, crisp and laundered fresh.
Those crustaceous gladioli, on the sly, reveal the crimson flower-flesh inside their emerald armor plate.
The uncooked herrings blink a tearful eye.
The candles palpitate.
The Oistrakhs bow and scrape in evening dress, on Emi-tape.
Outside the trees are bending over backwards to please the wind : the shining sword grass flattens on its belly.
The white-thorn's frillies offer no resistance.
In the fridge, a heart-shaped jelly strives to keep a sense of balance.
I slice up the onions.
You sew up a dress.
This is the quiet echo--flesh-- white muscle on white muscle, intimately folded skin, finished with a satin rustle.
One button only to undo, sewn up with shabby thread.
It is the onion, memory, that makes me cry.
Because there's everything and nothing to be said, the clock with hands held up before its face, stammers softly on, trying to complete a phrase-- while we, together and apart, repeat unfinished festures got by heart.
And afterwards, I blunder with the washing on the line-- headless torsos, faceless lovers, friends of mine.
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Picture-Writing

 In those days said Hiawatha,
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!
"Great men die and are forgotten,
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
Perish in the ears that hear them,
Do not reach the generations
That, as yet unborn, are waiting
In the great, mysterious darkness
Of the speechless days that shall be!
"On the grave-posts of our fathers
Are no signs, no figures painted;
Who are in those graves we know not,
Only know they are our fathers.
Of what kith they are and kindred, From what old, ancestral Totem, Be it Eagle, Bear, or Beaver, They descended, this we know not, Only know they are our fathers.
"Face to face we speak together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us To the friends that dwell afar off; Cannot send a secret message, But the bearer learns our secret, May pervert it, may betray it, May reveal it unto others.
" Thus said Hiawatha, walking In the solitary forest, Pondering, musing in the forest, On the welfare of his people.
From his pouch he took his colors, Took his paints of different colors, On the smooth bark of a birch-tree Painted many shapes and figures, Wonderful and mystic figures, And each figure had a meaning, Each some word or thought suggested.
Gitche Manito the Mighty, He, the Master of Life, was painted As an egg, with points projecting To the four winds of the heavens.
Everywhere is the Great Spirit, Was the meaning of this symbol.
Gitche Manito the Mighty, He the dreadful Spirit of Evil, As a serpent was depicted, As Kenabeek, the great serpent.
Very crafty, very cunning, Is the creeping Spirit of Evil, Was the meaning of this symbol.
Life and Death he drew as circles, Life was white, but Death was darkened; Sun and moon and stars he painted, Man and beast, and fish and reptile, Forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers.
For the earth he drew a straight line, For the sky a bow above it; White the space between for daytime, Filled with little stars for night-time; On the left a point for sunrise, On the right a point for sunset, On the top a point for noontide, And for rain and cloudy weather Waving lines descending from it.
Footprints pointing towards a wigwam Were a sign of invitation, Were a sign of guests assembling; Bloody hands with palms uplifted Were a symbol of destruction, Were a hostile sign and symbol.
All these things did Hiawatha Show unto his wondering people, And interpreted their meaning, And he said: "Behold, your grave-posts Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol, Go and paint them all with figures; Each one with its household symbol, With its own ancestral Totem; So that those who follow after May distinguish them and know them.
" And they painted on the grave-posts On the graves yet unforgotten, Each his own ancestral Totem, Each the symbol of his household; Figures of the Bear and Reindeer, Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver, Each inverted as a token That the owner was departed, That the chief who bore the symbol Lay beneath in dust and ashes.
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, The Wabenos, the Magicians, And the Medicine-men, the Medas, Painted upon bark and deer-skin Figures for the songs they chanted, For each song a separate symbol, Figures mystical and awful, Figures strange and brightly colored; And each figure had its meaning, Each some magic song suggested.
The Great Spirit, the Creator, Flashing light through all the heaven; The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek, With his bloody crest erected, Creeping, looking into heaven; In the sky the sun, that listens, And the moon eclipsed and dying; Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk, And the cormorant, bird of magic; Headless men, that walk the heavens, Bodies lying pierced with arrows, Bloody hands of death uplifted, Flags on graves, and great war-captains Grasping both the earth and heaven! Such as these the shapes they painted On the birch-bark and the deer-skin; Songs of war and songs of hunting, Songs of medicine and of magic, All were written in these figures, For each figure had its meaning, Each its separate song recorded.
Nor forgotten was the Love-Song, The most subtle of all medicines, The most potent spell of magic, Dangerous more than war or hunting! Thus the Love-Song was recorded, Symbol and interpretation.
First a human figure standing, Painted in the brightest scarlet; `T Is the lover, the musician, And the meaning is, "My painting Makes me powerful over others.
" Then the figure seated, singing, Playing on a drum of magic, And the interpretation, "Listen! `T Is my voice you hear, my singing!" Then the same red figure seated In the shelter of a wigwam, And the meaning of the symbol, "I will come and sit beside you In the mystery of my passion!" Then two figures, man and woman, Standing hand in hand together With their hands so clasped together That they seemed in one united, And the words thus represented Are, "I see your heart within you, And your cheeks are red with blushes!" Next the maiden on an island, In the centre of an Island; And the song this shape suggested Was, "Though you were at a distance, Were upon some far-off island, Such the spell I cast upon you, Such the magic power of passion, I could straightway draw you to me!" Then the figure of the maiden Sleeping, and the lover near her, Whispering to her in her slumbers, Saying, "Though you were far from me In the land of Sleep and Silence, Still the voice of love would reach you!" And the last of all the figures Was a heart within a circle, Drawn within a magic circle; And the image had this meaning: "Naked lies your heart before me, To your naked heart I whisper!" Thus it was that Hiawatha, In his wisdom, taught the people All the mysteries of painting, All the art of Picture-Writing, On the smooth bark of the birch-tree, On the white skin of the reindeer, On the grave-posts of the village.
Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

Riders

 The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.
What is this talked-of mystery of birth But being mounted bareback on the earth? We can just see the infant up astride, His small fist buried in the bushy hide.
There is our wildest mount--a headless horse.
But though it runs unbridled off its course, And all our blandishments would seem defied, We have ideas yet that we haven't tried.
Written by George (Lord) Byron | Create an image from this poem

Saul

 Thou whose spell can raise the dead, 
Bid the prophet's form appear.
'Samuel, raise thy buried head! King, behold the phantom seer!' Earth yawn'd; he stood the centre of a cloud: Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud.
Death stood all glassy in his fixed eye: His hand was wither'd, and his veins were dry; His foot, in bony whiteness, glitter'd there, Shrunken and sinewless, and ghastly bare; From lips that moved not and unbreathing frame, Like cavern'd winds, the hollow acccents came.
Saul saw, and fell to earth, as falls the oak, At once, and blasted by the thunderstroke.
'Why is my sleep disquieted? Who is he that calls the dead? Is it thou, O King? Behold, Bloodless are these limbs, and cold: Such are mine; and such shall be Thine to-morrow, when with me: Ere the coming day is done, Such shalt thou be, such thy son.
Fare thee well, bur for a day, Then we mix our mouldering clay.
Thou, thy race, lie pale and low, Pierced by shafts of many a bow; And the falchion by thy side To thy heart thy hand shall guide: Crownless, breathless, headless fall, Son and sire, the house of Saul!'
Written by George (Lord) Byron | Create an image from this poem

Thou Whose Spell Can Raise the Dead

 Thou whose spell can raise the dead, 
Bid the prophet's form appear.
"Samuel, raise thy buried head! "King, behold the phantom seer!" Earth yawn'd; he stood the centre of a cloud: Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud.
Death stood all glassy in the fixed eye: His hand was withered, and his veins were dry; His foot, in bony whiteness, glitterd there, Shrunken and sinewless, and ghastly bare; From lips that moved not and unbreathing frame, Like cavern'd winds the hollow acccents came.
Saul saw, and fell to earth, as falls the oak, At once, and blasted by the thunder-stroke.
"Why is my sleep disquieted? "Who is he that calls the dead? "Is it thou, Oh King? Behold "Bloodless are these limbs, and cold: "Such are mine; and such shall be "Thine, to-morrow, when with me: "Ere the coming day is done, "Such shalt thou be, such thy son.
"Fare thee well, but for a day, "Then we mix our mouldering clay.
"Thou, thy race, lie pale and low, "Pierced by shafts of many a bow; "And the falchion by thy side, "To thy heart, thy hand shall guide: "Crownless, breathless, headless fall, "Son and sire, the house of Saul!"