Famous Black Dog Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Five Flights Up

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Still dark.
The unknown bird sits on his usual branch.
The little dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions--if that is what they are--
answered directly, simply,
by day itself.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins...
The bird still sits...Read more of this...

The Village

by R S Thomas
 Scarcely a street, too few houses
To merit the title; just a way between
The one tavern and the one shop
That leads nowhere and fails at the top
Of the short hill, eaten away
By long erosion of the green tide
Of grass creeping perpetually nearer 
This last outpost of time past.

So little happens; the black dog
Cracking his fleas in the hot sun
Is history....Read more of this...

The Village

by R S Thomas
 Scarcely a street, too few houses
To merit the title; just a way between
The one tavern and the one shop
That leads nowhere and fails at the top
Of the short hill, eaten away
By long erosion of the green tide
Of grass creeping perpetually nearer 
This last outpost of time past.

So little happens; the black dog
Cracking his fleas in the hot sun
Is history....Read more of this...

Soap Suds

by Louis MacNeice
 This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big
House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open
To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop 
To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a child.

And these were the joys of that...Read more of this...

Travels With John Hunter

by Les Murray
 We who travel between worlds 
lose our muscle and bone. 
I was wheeling a barrow of earth 
when agony bayoneted me. 

I could not sit, or lie down, 
or stand, in Casualty. 
Stomach-calming clay caked my lips, 
I turned yellow as the moon 

and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel 
in a hospital where I met no one 
so much...Read more of this...

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