10 Best Famous Units Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Units poems. This is a select list of the best famous Units poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Units poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of units poems.

• All Famous Units Poems

 I MET a Seer, 
Passing the hues and objects of the world, 
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons. 
 Put in thy chants, said he, 
No more the puzzling hour, nor day—nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all, That of
 Eidólons. 
 Ever the dim beginning; 
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle; 
Ever the summit, and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) Eidólons!
 Eidólons! 
 Ever the mutable!
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering; 
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine, Issuing Eidólons! 
 Lo! I or you! 
Or woman, man, or State, known or unknown, 
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build Eidólons.
 The ostent evanescent; 
The substance of an artist’s mood, or savan’s studies long, 
Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils, To fashion his Eidólon. 
 Of every human life, 
(The units gather’d, posted—not a thought, emotion, deed, left out;)
The whole, or large or small, summ’d, added up, In its Eidólon. 
 The old, old urge; 
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo! newer, higher pinnacles; 
From Science and the Modern still impell’d, The old, old urge, Eidólons. 
 The present, now and here,
America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl, 
Of aggregate and segregate, for only thence releasing, To-day’s Eidólons. 
 These, with the past, 
Of vanish’d lands—of all the reigns of kings across the sea, 
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages, Joining Eidólons.
 Densities, growth, façades, 
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees, 
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, Eidólons everlasting. 
 Exaltè, rapt, extatic, 
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape, and shape, and shape, The mighty Earth-Eidólon. 
 All space, all time, 
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, 
Swelling, collapsing, ending—serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill’d with
 Eidólons only. 
 The noiseless myriads!
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty! 
The separate, countless free identities, like eyesight; The true realities,
 Eidólons. 
 Not this the World, 
Nor these the Universes—they the Universes, 
Purport and end—ever the permanent life of life, Eidólons, Eidólons.
 Beyond thy lectures, learn’d professor, 
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope, observer keen—beyond all mathematics, 
Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy—beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The
 entities of entities, Eidólons. 
 Unfix’d, yet fix’d; 
Ever shall be—ever have been, and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidólons, Eidólons,
 Eidólons. 
 The prophet and the bard, 
Shall yet maintain themselves—in higher stages yet, 
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy—interpret yet to them, God, and
 Eidólons. 
 And thee, My Soul!
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations! 
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, Thy mates, Eidólons. 
 Thy Body permanent, 
The Body lurking there within thy Body, 
The only purport of the Form thou art—the real I myself, An image, an
 Eidólon.
 Thy very songs, not in thy songs; 
No special strains to sing—none for itself; 
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, A round, full-orb’d
 Eidólon.

 After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another beginning. 
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say, 
though it might have been otherwise. 
What a story!
After the burial we returned to our units 
and here is where I am experiencing 
that lag kicking syndrome thing. 
My leg, for no apparent reason,
flies around the room kicking stuff, 
well, whatever is in its way, 
like a screen or a watering can.
Those are just two examples
and indeed I could give many more.
I could construct a catalogue 
of the things it kicks, 
perhaps I will do that later.
We'll just have to see if it's really wanted. 
Or I could do a little now 
and then return to listing later.
It kicked the scrimshaw collection, 
yes it did. It kicked the ocelot, 
which was rude and uncalled for,
and yes hurtful. It kicked 
the guacamole right out of its bowl, 
which made for a grubby 
and potentially dangerous workplace. 
I was out testing the new speed bump 
when it kicked the Viscountess, 
which she probably deserved, 
and I was happy, needless to say, 
to not be a witness.
The kicking subsided for a while, 
nobody was keeping track of time 
at that time so it is impossible 
to fill out the forms accurately. 
Suffice it to say we remained
at our units on constant alert.
And then it kicked over the little cow town
we had set up for punching and that sort of thing, 
a covered wagon filled with cover girls.
But now it was kicked over 
and we had a moment of silence, 
but it was clear to me 
that many of our minions 
were getting tetchy 
and some of them were getting tetchier.
And then it kicked a particularly treasured snuff box 
which, legend has it, once belonged to somebody 
named Bob Mackey, so we were understandably 
saddened and returned to our units rather weary. 
No one seemed to think I was in the least bit culpable. 
It was my leg, of course, that was doing the actual kicking, 
of that I am almost certain.
At any rate, we decided to bury it.
After the burial we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses.
A little bit of time passed, not much, 
and then John's leg started acting suspicious. 
It looked like it wanted to kick the replica 
of the White House we keep on hand 
just for situations such as this.
And then, sure enough, it did.

 Strong and slippery,
built for the midnight grass-party
confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away--
the detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding
to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds
or katydid-legs above each eye numbering all units
in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth
to droop or rise in unison like porcupine-quills.
He lets himself be flattened out by gravity,
as seaweed is tamed and weakened by the sun,
compelled when extended, to lie stationary.
Sleep is the result of his delusion that one must do as well
 as one can for oneself,
sleep--epitome of what is to him the end of life.
Demonstrate on him how the lady placed a forked stick
on the innocuous neck-sides of the dangerous southern snake.
One need not try to stir him up; his prune-shaped head
and alligator-eyes are not party to the joke.
Lifted and handled, he may be dangled like an eel
or set up on the forearm like a mouse;
his eyes bisected by pupils of a pin's width,
are flickeringly exhibited, then covered up.
May be? I should have said might have been;
when he has been got the better of in a dream--
as in a fight with nature or with cats, we all know it.
Profound sleep is not with him a fixed illusion.
Springing about with froglike accuracy, with jerky cries
when taken in hand, he is himself again;
to sit caged by the rungs of a domestic chair
would be unprofitable--human. What is the good of hypocrisy?
it is permissible to choose one's employment,
to abandon the nail, or roly-poly,
when it shows signs of being no longer a pleasure,
to score the nearby magazine with a double line of strokes.
He can talk but insolently says nothing. What of it?
When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
It is clear that he can see the virtue of naturalness,
that he does not regard the published fact as a surrender.
As for the disposition invariably to affront,
an animal with claws should have an opportunity to use them.
The eel-like extension of trunk into tail is not an accident.
To leap, to lengthen out, divide the air, to purloin, to pursue.
To tell the hen: fly over the fence, go in the wrong way
in your perturbation--this is life;
to do less would be nothing but dishonesty.

 Eggshell and Wedgwood Blue were just two

Of the range on the colour cards Dulux

Tailored to our taste in the fifties,

Brentford nylons, Formica table tops and

Fablon shelf-covering in original oak or

Spruce under neon tubes and Dayglo shades.



Wartime brown and green went out, along with

The Yorkist Range, the wire-mesh food safe

In the cellar, the scrubbed board bath lid

And marbled glass bowl over the light bulb

With its hidden hoard of dead flies and

Rusting three-tier chain.



We moved to the new estate, Airey semis

With their pebble-dash prefabricated slats,

Built-in kitchen units and made-to-measure gardens.

Every Saturday I went back to the streets,

Dinner at Auntie Nellie’s, Yorkies, mash and gravy,

Then the matinee at the Princess with Margaret,

The queen of my ten-year old heart.



Everybody was on the move, half the neighbours

To the new estates or death, newcomers with

Rough tongues from over the bridge slum clearance.

A drive-in Readymix cement works bruised the Hollows,

Ellerby Lane School closed, St. Hilda’s bulldozed.

The trams stopped for good after the Coronation Special

In purple and gold toured the city's tracks and

The red-white and blue on the cake at the street party

Crumbled to dust and the river-bank rats fed on it

Like Miss Haversham’s wedding feast all over again.



The cobbled hill past the Mansions led nowhere,

The buses ran empty, then the route closed.

I returned again and again in friends’ cars,

Now alone, on foot, again and again.

 Oh the airman's game is a showman's game, for we all of us watch him go 
With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below, 
Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk, 
You'll hear him mutter, "What ho, she bumps," when the Archies get to work. 
But not of him is the song I sing, though he follow the eagle's flight, 
And with shrapnel holes in his splintered wing comes home to his roost at night. 
He may silver his wings on the shining stars, he may look from the throne on high, 
He may follow the flight of the wheeling kite in the blue Egyptian sky, 
But he's only a hero built to plan, turned out by the Army schools, 
And I sing of the rankless, thankless man who hustles the Army mules. 
Now where he comes from and where he lives is a mystery dark and dim, 
And it's rarely indeed that the General gives a D.S.O. to him. 
The stolid infantry digs its way like a mole in a ruined wall; 
The cavalry lends a tone, they say, to what were else but a brawl; 
The Brigadier of the Mounted Fut like a cavalry Colonel swanks 
When he goeth abroad like a gilded nut to receive the General's thanks; 
The Ordnance man is a son of a gun and his lists are a standing joke; 
You order, "Choke arti Jerusalem one" for Jerusalem artichoke. 
The Medicals shine with a number nine, and the men of the great R.E., 
Their Colonels are Methodist, married or mad, and some of them all the three; 
In all these units the road to fame is taught by the Army schools, 
But a man has got to be born to the game when he tackles the Army mules. 

For if you go where the depots are as the dawn is breaking grey, 
By the waning light of the morning star as the dust cloud clears away, 
You'll see a vision among the dust like a man and a mule combined -- 
It's the kind of thing you must take on trust for its outlines aren't defined, 
A thing that whirls like a spinning top and props like a three legged stool, 
And you find its a long-legged Queensland boy convincing an Army mule. 
And the rider sticks to the hybrid's hide like paper sticks to a wall, 
For a "magnoon" Waler is next to ride with every chance of a fall, 
It's a rough-house game and a thankless game, and it isn't a game for a fool, 
For an army's fate and a nation's fame may turn on an Army mule. 

And if you go to the front-line camp where the sleepless outposts lie, 
At the dead of night you can hear the tramp of the mule train toiling by. 
The rattle and clink of a leading-chain, the creak of the lurching load, 
As the patient, plodding creatures strain at their task in the shell-torn road, 
Through the dark and the dust you may watch them go till the dawn is grey in the sky, 
And only the watchful pickets know when the "All-night Corps" goes by. 
And far away as the silence falls when the last of the train has gone, 
A weary voice through the darkness: "Get on there, men, get on!" 
It isn't a hero, built to plan, turned out by the modern schools, 
It's only the Army Service man a-driving his Army mules.

 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet of crisps in sight.

I parked my friend on a bench and wandered

Down Highgate Hill, realising where I was

From the Waterlow Unit and the Whittington’s A&E.

Some say they know their way by the pubs

But I find psychiatric units more useful.

At a reading like this you never know just who

Might have a do and need some Haldol fast.

(Especially if the poet hovering round sanity’s border

Should chance upon the critic who thinks his Word

Is law and order - the first’s a devotee of a Krishna cult

For rich retirees; the second wrote a good book once

On early Hughes, but goes off if you don’t share his

‘Thought through views’).



In the event the only happening was a turbanned Sikh

Having a go at an Arts Council guru leaning in a stick.

I remembered Martin Bell’s story of how Scannell the boxer

Broke - was it Redgrove’s brolly? - over his head and had

To hide in the Gents till time was called.

James Simmons boasted of how the pint he threw

At Anthony Thwaite hit Geoffrey Hill instead.



O, for the company of the missing and the dead

Martin Bell, Wendy Oliver, Iris and Ted.

 After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another beginning. 
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say, 
though it might have been otherwise. 
What a story!
After the burial we returned to our units 
and here is where I am experiencing 
that lag kicking syndrome thing. 
My leg, for no apparent reason,
flies around the room kicking stuff, 
well, whatever is in its way, 
like a screen or a watering can.
Those are just two examples
and indeed I could give many more.
I could construct a catalogue 
of the things it kicks, 
perhaps I will do that later.
We'll just have to see if it's really wanted. 
Or I could do a little now 
and then return to listing later.
It kicked the scrimshaw collection, 
yes it did. It kicked the ocelot, 
which was rude and uncalled for,
and yes hurtful. It kicked 
the guacamole right out of its bowl, 
which made for a grubby 
and potentially dangerous workplace. 
I was out testing the new speed bump 
when it kicked the Viscountess, 
which she probably deserved, 
and I was happy, needless to say, 
to not be a witness.
The kicking subsided for a while, 
nobody was keeping track of time 
at that time so it is impossible 
to fill out the forms accurately. 
Suffice it to say we remained
at our units on constant alert.
And then it kicked over the little cow town
we had set up for punching and that sort of thing, 
a covered wagon filled with cover girls.
But now it was kicked over 
and we had a moment of silence, 
but it was clear to me 
that many of our minions 
were getting tetchy 
and some of them were getting tetchier.
And then it kicked a particularly treasured snuff box 
which, legend has it, once belonged to somebody 
named Bob Mackey, so we were understandably 
saddened and returned to our units rather weary. 
No one seemed to think I was in the least bit culpable. 
It was my leg, of course, that was doing the actual kicking, 
of that I am almost certain.
At any rate, we decided to bury it.
After the burial we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses.
A little bit of time passed, not much, 
and then John's leg started acting suspicious. 
It looked like it wanted to kick the replica 
of the White House we keep on hand 
just for situations such as this.
And then, sure enough, it did.

 I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.

On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.

On the march of Miltiades’ phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle.

Red-headed Cæsar picked me for a teamster.
He said, “Go to work, you Tuscan bastard,
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses.”

The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.

I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.

Lincoln said, “Get into the game; your nation takes you.”
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.

I am an ancient reluctant conscript.

 These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,
And happy units of a numerous herd
Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,
Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose;
And where they fly for dinner no one knows—
The dew-drops feed them not—they love the shine
Of noon, whose suns may bring them golden wine
All day they're playing in their Sunday dress—
When night reposes, for they can do no less;
Then, to the heath-bell's purple hood they fly,
And like to princes in their slumbers lie,
Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all,
In silken beds and roomy painted hall.
So merrily they spend their summer-day,
Now in the corn-fields, now in the new-mown hay.
One almost fancies that such happy things,
With coloured hoods and richly burnished wings,
Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade
Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid,
Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still,
Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill.

 I do not question whether I am happy or unhappy.
Yet there is one thing that I keep gladly in mind --
that in the great addition (their addition that I abhor)
that has so many numbers, I am not one
of the many units there. In the final sum
I have not been calculated. And this joy suffices me.