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Famous Bleat Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...or dear
 In Mailie dead.


 Thro’ a’ the town she trotted by him;
A lang half-mile she could descry him;
Wi’ kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
 She ran wi’ speed:
A friend mair faithfu’ ne’er cam nigh him,
 Than Mailie dead.


 I wat she was a sheep o’ sense,
An’ could behave hersel’ wi’ mense:
I’ll say’t, she never brak a fence,
 Thro’ thievish greed.
Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence
 Sin’ Mailie’s dead.


 Or, if he wanders up the howe,
Her living imag...Read more of this...



by Herrick, Robert
...t their shapes, while fantasy discloses
Millions of Lilies mix'd with Roses.
Then dream, ye hear the lamb by many a bleat
Woo'd to come suck the milky teat;
While Faunus in the vision comes, to keep
From rav'ning wolves the fleecy sheep:
With thousand such enchanting dreams, that meet
To make sleep not so sound as sweet;
Nor call these figures so thy rest endear,
As not to rise when Chanticlere
Warns the last watch;--but with the dawn dost rise
To work, but first to sacri...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ar from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Af...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...wipe it off.

Hold up those hands of innocence -- go, scare your sheep together,
The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether;
And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen,
Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them yours again!

"The charge is old"? -- As old as Cain -- as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments -- have ye talked those laws away?
If words are words, or death is death, or powder sends the ball,
You spoke...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...lint-stone weighs upon my feet;
"Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed
"Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
"Comes from beyond the river to my bed:
"Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
"And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

XXXIX.
"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
"Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling
"Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,
"While little sounds of life are round me knelling,
"And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
"And ma...Read more of this...



by Southey, Robert
...
His lean rough dog from some near cliff to drive
The straggler; while his barkings loud and quick
Amid their trembling bleat arising oft,
Fainter and fainter from the hollow road
Send their far echoes, till the waterfall,
Hoarse bursting from the cavern'd cliff beneath,
Their dying murmurs drown. A little yet
Onward, and I have gain'd the upmost height.
Fair spreads the vale below: I see the stream
Stream radiant on beneath the noontide sky.
Where the town-spires...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
And he looked like Ellick Garry.
And as I driv up, I heerd him bleat
To hisself, like a lamb: "Hauh? nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry?"

And Ellick's bull-cart was standin'
A cross-wise of the way,
And the little bull was a-expandin',
Hisself on a wisp of hay.
But Ellick he sat with his head bent down,
A-studyin' and musin' powerfully,
And his forrud was creased with a turrible frown,
And he was a...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
And he looked like Ellick Garry.
And as I driv up, I heerd him bleat
To hisself, like a lamb: "Hauh? nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry?"

And Ellick's bull-cart was standin'
A cross-wise of the way,
And the little bull was a-expandin',
Hisself on a wisp of hay.
But Ellick he sat with his head bent down,
A-studyin' and musin' powerfully,
And his forrud was creased with a turrible frown,
And he was a...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies....Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...d Deuteronomy sits in the street,
He sits in the High Street on market day;
The bullocks may bellow, the sheep they may bleat,
But the dogs and the herdsmen will turn them away.
The cars and the lorries run over the kerb,
And the villagers put up a notice: ROAD CLOSED--
So that nothing untoward may chance to distrub
Deuteronomy's rest when he feels so disposed
Or when he's engaged in domestic economy:
And the Oldest Inhabitant croaks: "Well, of all . . .
Thing...Read more of this...

by Meredith, George
...the snow-wreath melt, 
That haunts the farmer's look abroad, 
Who sees what tomb a white night built, 
Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod. 
For iron Winter held her firm; 
Across her sky he laid his hand; 
And bird he starved, he stiffen'd worm; 
A sightless heaven, a shaven land. 
Her shivering Spring feign'd fast asleep, 
The bitten buds dared not unfold: 
We raced on roads and ice to keep 
Thought of the girl we love from cold. 

 But now the North win...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...oaks, and stately pines,
Bend your high branches and adore:
Praise him, ye beasts, in diff'rent strains;
The lamb must bleat, the lion roar.

Birds, ye must make his praise your theme;
Nature demands a song from you;
While the dumb fish that cut the stream
Leap up, and mean his praises too.

Mortals, can you refrain your tongue,
When nature all around you sings?
O for a shout from old and young,
From humble swains and lofty kings!

Wide as his vast dominion lies
Make...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...unregardful what snow chills
Thy foldless flock, or what rains beat?
Lo, in thine ears, before thy feet,
Thy lost sheep bleat.

"And strange men feed on faultless lives,
And there is blood, and men put knives,
Shepherd, unto the young lamb's throat;
And one hath eaten, and one smote,
And one had hunger and is fed
Full of the flesh of these, and red
With blood of these as who drinks wine
And God knoweth, who hath sent thee a sign,
If these were thine."

But the Pope's ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...to that goatish mind, maybe, a sense of fell disaster
Came stealing like a spectre in the dim and dreary dawn;
For his bleat of warning blended with the snoring of his master
In a chorus of calamity - but Casey slumbered on.

Yet oh, that goat was troubled, for his efforts were redoubled;
Now he tugged at Casey's whisker, now he nibbled at his ear;
Now he shook him by the shoulder, and with fear become bolder,
He bellowed like a fog-horn, but the sleeper did not hear.Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...with all his might
 And chews and chews.

Upon the hill so thymy sweet
 With joy of Spring,
He hails me with a tiny bleat
 Of welcoming.
Though half the globe is drenched with blood
 And cities flare,
Contentedly he chews the cud
 And does not care.

Oh gentle friend, I know not what
 Your age may be,
But of my years I'd give the lot
 Yet left to me,
To chew a thistle and not choke,
 But bright of eye
Gaze at the old world-weary bloke
 Who hobbles by.

Alas! t...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...one
And he looked on the ground,
As if in the weeds
There was something profound.
His pipe seemed to neigh,
Then to bleat like a sheep,
Then sound like a stream
Or a waterfall deep.
It whispered strange tales,
Human words it spoke not.
Told fair things to come,
And our marvellous lot
If now with fawn-steps
Unshod we advanced
To the midst of the grove
And in reverence danced.
We obeyed as he piped
Soft grass to young feet,
Was a medicine mighty,
A remedy meet.<...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...birds
Kept time with their bright wings and feet;
Like drops of honey came their words,
But fainter than a young lamb's bleat.

'An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,
In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother.
He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,
Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;
He hears the storm in the chimney above,
And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,
While his heart still dreams of battle and love,
And the cry of the houn...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...
Better a loaf that's wet with tears
Than cold, unsalted bread."

Back of my back, they wag their chins,
Whinny and bleat and sigh;
But better a heart a-bloom with sins
Than hearts gone yellow and dry!...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...s mourn 
Among the river sallows borne aloft 
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30 
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. ...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...nd running away from the sound of a woman in labour, something like an owl whooing,
And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb,
The first wail of an infant,
And my mother singing to herself,
And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death,
The first elements of foreign speech
On wild dark lips.

And more than all these,
And less than all these,
This last,
Strange, faint coition yell
Of the male to...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things