Best Famous Oiled Poems

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

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• All Famous Oiled Poems

Written by Robert Browning | The Glove (PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.) ``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis, ``Distance all value enhances! ``When a man's busy, why, leisure ``Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: `` 'Faith, and at leisure once is he? ``Straightway he wants to be busy. ``Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm ``Caught thinking war the true pastime. ``Is there a reason in metre? ``Give us your speech, master Peter!'' I who, if mortal dare say so, Ne'er am at loss with my Naso, ``Sire,'' I replied, ``joys prove cloudlets: ``Men are the merest Ixions''--- Here the King whistled aloud, ``Let's ``---Heigho---go look at our lions!'' Such are the sorrowful chances If you talk fine to King Francis. And so, to the courtyard proceeding, Our company, Francis was leading, Increased by new followers tenfold Before be arrived at the penfold; Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen At sunset the western horizon. And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost With the dame he professed to adore most. Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed Her, and the horrible pitside; For the penfold surrounded a hollow Which led where the eye scarce dared follow, And shelved to the chamber secluded Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded. The King bailed his keeper, an Arab As glossy and black as a scarab,*1 And bade him make sport and at once stir Up and out of his den the old monster. They opened a hole in the wire-work Across it, and dropped there a firework, And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled; A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled, The blackness and silence so utter, By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter; Then earth in a sudden contortion Gave out to our gaze her abortion. Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot (Whose experience of nature's but narrow, And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist) I should study that brute to describe you _Illim Juda Leonem de Tribu_. One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy To see the black mane, vast and heapy, The tail in the air stiff and straining, The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning, As over the barrier which bounded His platform, and us who surrounded The barrier, they reached and they rested On space that might stand him in best stead: For who knew, he thought, what the amazement, The eruption of clatter and blaze meant, And if, in this minute of wonder, No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder, Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered, The lion at last was delivered? Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead! And you saw by the flash on his forehead, By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, He was leagues in the desert already, Driving the flocks up the mountain, Or catlike couched hard by the fountain To waylay the date-gathering negress: So guarded he entrance or egress. ``How he stands!'' quoth the King: ``we may well swear, (``No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere ``And so can afford the confession,) ``We exercise wholesome discretion ``In keeping aloof from his threshold; ``Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold, ``Their first would too pleasantly purloin ``The visitor's brisket or surloin: ``But who's he would prove so fool-hardy? ``Not the best man of Marignan, pardie!'' The sentence no sooner was uttered, Than over the rails a glove flattered, Fell close to the lion, and rested: The dame 'twas, who flung it and jested With life so, De Lorge had been wooing For months past; he sat there pursuing His suit, weighing out with nonchalance Fine speeches like gold from a balance. Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier! De Lorge made one leap at the barrier, Walked straight to the glove,---while the lion Neer moved, kept his far-reaching eye on The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire, And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir,--- Picked it up, and as calmly retreated, Leaped back where the lady was seated, And full in the face of its owner Flung the glove. ``Your heart's queen, you dethrone her? ``So should I!''---cried the King---``'twas mere vanity, ``Not love, set that task to humanity!'' Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing From such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing. Not so, I; for I caught an expression In her brow's undisturbed self-possession Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,--- As if from no pleasing experiment She rose, yet of pain not much heedful So long as the process was needful,--- As if she had tried in a crucible, To what ``speeches like gold'' were reducible, And, finding the finest prove copper, Felt the smoke in her face was but proper; To know what she had _not_ to trust to, Was worth all the ashes and dust too. She went out 'mid hooting and laughter; Clement Marot stayed; I followed after, And asked, as a grace, what it all meant? If she wished not the rash deed's recalment? ``For I''---so I spoke---``am a poet: ``Human nature,---behoves that I know it!'' She told me, ``Too long had I heard ``Of the deed proved alone by the word: ``For my love---what De Lorge would not dare! ``With my scorn---what De Lorge could compare! ``And the endless descriptions of death ``He would brave when my lip formed a breath, ``I must reckon as braved, or, of course, ``Doubt his word---and moreover, perforce, ``For such gifts as no lady could spurn, ``Must offer my love in return. ``When I looked on your lion, it brought ``All the dangers at once to my thought, ``Encountered by all sorts of men, ``Before he was lodged in his den,--- ``From the poor slave whose club or bare hands ``Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands, ``With no King and no Court to applaud, ``By no shame, should he shrink, overawed, ``Yet to capture the creature made shift, ``That his rude boys might laugh at the gift, ``---To the page who last leaped o'er the fence ``Of the pit, on no greater pretence ``Than to get back the bonnet he dropped, ``Lest his pay for a week should be stopped. ``So, wiser I judged it to make ``One trial what `death for my sake' ``Really meant, while the power was yet mine, ``Than to wait until time should define ``Such a phrase not so simply as I, ``Who took it to mean just `to die.' ``The blow a glove gives is but weak: ``Does the mark yet discolour my cheek? ``But when the heart suffers a blow, ``Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?'' I looked, as away she was sweeping, And saw a youth eagerly keeping As close as he dared to the doorway. No doubt that a noble should more weigh His life than befits a plebeian; And yet, had our brute been Nemean--- (I judge by a certain calm fervour The youth stepped with, forward to serve her) ---He'd have scarce thought you did him the worst turn If you whispered ``Friend, what you'd get, first earn!'' And when, shortly after, she carried Her shame from the Court, and they married, To that marriage some happiness, maugre The voice of the Court, I dared augur. For De Lorge, he made women with men vie, Those in wonder and praise, these in envy; And in short stood so plain a head taller That he wooed and won ... how do you call her? The beauty, that rose in the sequel To the King's love, who loved her a week well. And 'twas noticed he never would honour De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her) With the easy commission of stretching His legs in the service, and fetching His wife, from her chamber, those straying Sad gloves she was always mislaying, While the King took the closet to chat in,--- But of course this adventure came pat in. And never the King told the story, How bringing a glove brought such glory, But the wife smiled---``His nerves are grown firmer: ``Mine he brings now and utters no murmur.'' _Venienti occurrite morbo!_ With which moral I drop my theorbo. *1 A beetle.

Written by Anne Sexton | The Touch For months my hand was sealed off in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings. Perhaps it is bruised, I thought, and that is why they have locked it up. You could tell time by this, I thought, like a clock, by its five knuckles and the thin underground veins. It lay there like an unconscious woman fed by tubes she knew not of. The hand had collapse, a small wood pigeon that had gone into seclusion. I turned it over and the palm was old, its lines traced like fine needlepoint and stitched up into fingers. It was fat and soft and blind in places. Nothing but vulnerable. And all this is metaphor. An ordinary hand -- just lonely for something to touch that touches back. The dog won't do it. Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog. I'm no better than a case of dog food. She owns her own hunger. My sisters won't do it. They live in school except for buttons and tears running down like lemonade. My father won't do it. He comes in the house and even at night he lives in a machine made by my mother and well oiled by his job, his job. The trouble is that I'd let my gestures freeze. The trouble was not in the kitchen or the tulips but only in my head, my head. Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. They dance in the attic and in Vienna. My hand is alive all over America. Not even death will stop it, death shedding her blood. Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom and the kingdom come.

Written by Karl Shapiro | A Garden In Chicago In the mid-city, under an oiled sky, I lay in a garden of such dusky green It seemed the dregs of the imagination. Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence My face became a moon to absent suns. A low heat beat upon my reading face; There rose no roses in that gritty place But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out. Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds And one sweet statue of a child stood by. A gutter of poetry flowed outside the yard, Making me think I was a bird of prose; For overhead, bagged in a golden cloud, There hung the fatted souls of animals, Wile at my eyes bright dots of butterflies Turned off and on like distant neon signs. Assuming that this garden still exists, One ancient lady patrols the zinnias (She looks like George Washington crossing the Delaware), The janitor wanders to the iron rail, The traffic mounts bombastically out there, And across the street in a pitch-black bar With midnight mirrors, the professional Takes her first whiskey of the afternoon-- Ah! It is like a breath of country air.

Written by Elizabeth Bishop | The Map Land lies in water; it is shadowed green. Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges where weeds hang to the simple blue from green. Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, drawing it unperturbed around itself? Along the fine tan sandy shelf is the land tugging at the sea from under? The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still. Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays, under a glass as if they were expected to blossom, or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish. The names of seashore towns run out to sea, the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains --the printer here experiencing the same excitement as when emotion too far exceeds its cause. These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods. Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is, lending the land their waves' own conformation: and Norway's hare runs south in agitation, profiles investigate the sea, where land is. Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors? --What suits the character or the native waters best. Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

Written by Pablo Neruda | Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market Among the market greens, a bullet from the ocean depths, a swimming projectile, I saw you, dead. All around you were lettuces, sea foam of the earth, carrots, grapes, but of the ocean truth, of the unknown, of the unfathomable shadow, the depths of the sea, the abyss, only you had survived, a pitch-black, varnished witness to deepest night. Only you, well-aimed dark bullet from the abyss, mangled at one tip, but constantly reborn, at anchor in the current, winged fins windmilling in the swift flight of the marine shadow, a mourning arrow, dart of the sea, olive, oily fish. I saw you dead, a deceased king of my own ocean, green assault, silver submarine fir, seed of seaquakes, now only dead remains, yet in all the market yours was the only purposeful form amid the bewildering rout of nature; amid the fragile greens you were a solitary ship, armed among the vegetables, fin and prow black and oiled, as if you were still the vessel of the wind, the one and only pure ocean machine: unflawed, navigating the waters of death.

Written by Laurie Lee | Home From Abroad Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways, My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant, I set my face into a filial smile To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent. But shall I never learn? That gawky girl, Recalled so primly in my foreign thoughts, Becomes again the green-haired queen of love Whose wanton form dilates as it delights. Her rolling tidal landscape floods the eye And drowns Chianti in a dusky stream; he flower-flecked grasses swim with simple horses, The hedges choke with roses fat as cream. So do I breathe the hayblown airs of home, And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows, And as the twilight nets the plunging sun My heart's keel slides to rest among the meadows.

Written by George Meredith | Modern Love VII: She Issues Radiant She issues radiant from her dressing-room, Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere: --By stirring up a lower, much I fear How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls Can make known women torturingly fair; The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair, Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls. His art can take the eyes from out my head, Until I see with eyes of other men; While deeper knowledge crouches in its den, And sends a spark up:--is it true we are wed? Yea! filthiness of body is most vile, But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse. The former, it were not so great a curse To read on the steel-mirror of her smile.

Written by Ted Hughes | Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days She gives him his eyes, she found them Among some rubble, among some beetles He gives her her skin He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully And sets them in perfect order A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing Incredulous Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them So that his whole body lights up And he has fashioned her new hips With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily To test each new thing at each new step And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull So that the joints are invisible And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach With a single wire She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body He sets the little circlets on her fingertips She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck He sinks into place the inside of her thighs So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment Like two gods of mud Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care They bring each other to perfection.

Written by Wilfred Owen | Strange Meeting It seemed that out of the battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall; With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn." "None," said the other, "Save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world, Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, But mocks the steady running of the hour, And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something has been left, Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, The pity of war, the pity war distilled. Now men will go content with what we spoiled. Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress, None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress. Courage was mine, and I had mystery; Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery; To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled. Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. Let us sleep now . . ." (This poem was found among the author's papers. It ends on this strange note.) *Another Version* Earth's wheels run oiled with blood. Forget we that. Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought. Beauty is yours and you have mastery, Wisdom is mine, and I have mystery. We two will stay behind and keep our troth. Let us forego men's minds that are brute's natures, Let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures, Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress. Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress. Miss we the march of this retreating world Into old citadels that are not walled. Let us lie out and hold the open truth. Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels We will go up and wash them from deep wells. What though we sink from men as pitchers falling Many shall raise us up to be their filling Even from wells we sunk too deep for war And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were. *Alternative line --* Even as One who bled where no wounds were.

Written by Rudyard Kipling | What Happened Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, pride of Bow Bazaar, Owner of a native press, "Barrishter-at-Lar," Waited on the Government with a claim to wear Sabres by the bucketful, rifles by the pair. Then the Indian Government winked a wicked wink, Said to Chunder Mookerjee: "Stick to pen and ink. They are safer implements, but, if you insist, We will let you carry arms wheresoe'er you list." Hurree Chunder Mookerjee sought the gunsmith and Bought the tubes of Lancaster, Ballard, Dean, and Bland, Bought a shiny bowie-knife, bought a town-made sword, Jingled like a carriage-horse when he went abroad. But the Indian Government, always keen to please, Also gave permission to horrid men like these -- Yar Mahommed Yusufzai, down to kill or steal, Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer, Tantia the Bhil; Killar Khan the Marri chief, Jowar Singh the Sikh, Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat, Abdul Huq Rafiq -- He was a Wahabi; last, little Boh Hla-oo Took advantage of the Act -- took a Snider too. They were unenlightened men, Ballard knew them not. They procured their swords and guns chiefly on the spot; And the lore of centuries, plus a hundred fights, Made them slow to disregard one another's rights. With a unanimity dear to patriot hearts All those hairy gentlemen out of foreign parts Said: "The good old days are back -- let us go to war!" Swaggered down the Grand Trunk Road into Bow Bazaar, Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail; Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail; Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee As he ground the butcher-knife of the Khyberee. Jowar Singh the Sikh procured sabre, quoit, and mace, Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place, While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade from the scabbard. What became of Mookerjee? Smoothly, who can say? Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way, Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute. But the belts of all of them simply bulge with loot. What became of Ballard's guns? Afghans black and grubby Sell them for their silver weight to the men of Pubbi; And the shiny bowie-knife and the town-made sword are Hanging in a Marri camp just across the Border. What became of Mookerjee? Ask Mahommed Yar Prodding Siva's sacred bull down the Bow Bazaar. Speak to placid Nubbee Baksh -- question land and sea -- Ask the Indian Congressmen -- only don't ask me!