Famous Blink Poems by Famous Poets

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

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377. Song—The Country Lass

by Robert Burns
 IN simmer, when the hay was mawn,
 And corn wav’d green in ilka field,
While claver blooms white o’er the lea
 And roses blaw in ilka beild!
Blythe Bessie in the milking shiel,
 Says—“I’ll be wed, come o’t what will”:
Out spake a dame in wrinkled eild;
 “O’ gude advisement comes nae ill.


“It’s ye hae wooers mony ane,
 And lassie, ye’re but...Read more of this...

San Sebastian

by Thomas Hardy
 And your sunny years with a gracious wife
Have brought you a daughter dear.

"I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,
As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,
Round a Hintock maypole never gayed."
--"Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,
As it happens," the Sergeant said.

"My daughter is now," he again began,
"Of just such an age as one I knew
When...Read more of this...

owl power

by Rg Gregory
 they say in the local sanctuary
owls are the stupidest creatures
all this wisdom business is
the mythological media at work
but the shortest nosing into books
tells you even the mythic world
is bamboozled by the creature - no
two cultures being able to agree

the bird was cherished by minerva
hebrews loathed it as unclean
buddhists treasure its seclusion
elsewhere night-hag evil omen

the baker's daughter's silly cry
ungrateful chinese...Read more of this...

Awake To Smile

by Robert William Service
 When I blink sunshine in my eyes
 And hail the amber morn,
Before the rosy dew-drop dries
 With sparkle on the thorn;
When boughs with robin rapture ring,
 And bees hum in the may,--
Then call me young, with heart of Spring,
 Though I be grey.

But when no more I know the joy
 And urgence of that hour,
As like a happy-hearted boy
...Read more of this...

Sorry I Missed You

by Barry Tebb
 (or ‘Huddersfield the Second Poetry Capital of England Re-visited’)



What was it Janice Simmons said to me as James lay dying in Ireland?

“Phone Peter Pegnall in Leeds, an ex-pupil of Jimmy’s. He’s organising

A benefit reading, he’d love to hear from you and have your help.”



‘Like hell he would’ I thought but I phoned him all the same

At his converted farmhouse...Read more of this...

79. Adam Armour's Prayer

by Robert Burns
 GUDE pity me, because I’m little!
For though I am an elf o’ mettle,
An’ can, like ony wabster’s shuttle,
 Jink there or here,
Yet, scarce as lang’s a gude kail-whittle,
 I’m unco *****.


An’ now Thou kens our waefu’ case;
For Geordie’s jurr we’re in disgrace,
Because we stang’d her through the place,
 An’ hurt her spleuchan;
For whilk we daurna show our face
 Within...Read more of this...

536. Song—This is no my ain lassie

by Robert Burns
 Chorus—This is no my ain lassie,
 Fair tho, the lassie be;
Weel ken I my ain lassie,
 Kind love is in her e’re.


I SEE a form, I see a face,
Ye weel may wi’ the fairest place;
It wants, to me, the witching grace,
 The kind love that’s in her e’e.
 This is no my ain, &c.


She’s bonie, blooming, straight, and tall,
And...Read more of this...

290. Song—A Waukrife Minnie

by Robert Burns
 WHARE are you gaun, my bonie lass,
 Whare are you gaun, my hinnie?
She answered me right saucilie,
 “An errand for my minnie.”


O whare live ye, my bonie lass,
 O whare live ye, my hinnie?
“By yon burnside, gin ye maun ken,
 In a wee house wi’ my minnie.”


But I foor up the glen at e’en.
 To see my bonie lassie;
And...Read more of this...

87. The Twa Dogs

by Robert Burns
 ’TWAS 1 in that place o’ Scotland’s isle,
That bears the name o’ auld King Coil,
Upon a bonie day in June,
When wearin’ thro’ the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather’d ance upon a time.
 The first I’ll name, they ca’d him Caesar,
Was keepit for His Honor’s pleasure:
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Shew’d he was nane o’...Read more of this...

Perseus: The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering

by Sylvia Plath
Head alone shows you in the prodigious act
Of digesting what centuries alone digest:
The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow,
Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts
Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white
Into salt seas. Hercules had a simple time,
Rinsing those stables: a baby's tears would do it.
But who'd volunteer to gulp the Laocoon,
The Dying Gaul and those innumerable pietas
Festering...Read more of this...

The Last Chantey

by Rudyard Kipling
 "And there was no more sea."


Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
 Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
 "Lo! Earth has passed away
 On the smoke of Judgment Day.
 That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 "Plague upon the...Read more of this...

Earth the Healer Earth the Keeper

by William Morris
 So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time unproved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!

What! are we not glad-hearted?
Is there no deed to do?
Is not all fear departed
And Spring-tide blossomed new?

The sails swell out above us,
The sea-ridge lifts the keel;
For They have called who love us,
Who bear the gifts that heal:

A crown for him that winneth,
A bed for him...Read more of this...

419. Bonie Jean: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 THERE was a lass, and she was fair,
 At kirk or market to be seen;
When a’ our fairest maids were met,
 The fairest maid was bonie Jean.


And aye she wrought her mammie’s wark,
 And aye she sang sae merrilie;
The blythest bird upon the bush
 Had ne’er a lighter heart than she.


But hawks will rob the tender joys
 That bless...Read more of this...

The Blessed

by William Butler Yeats
 Cumhal called out, bending his head,
Till Dathi came and stood,
With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth,
Between the wind and the wood.

And Cumhal said, bending his knees,
'I have come by the windy way
To gather the half of your blessedness
And learn to pray when you pray.

'I can bring you salmon out of the streams
And heron out of the skies.'
But...Read more of this...

Ars Poetica?

by Czeslaw Milosz
 I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as...Read more of this...

Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward

by Anne Sexton
 Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You...Read more of this...

427. Song—Whistle and I'll come to you

by Robert Burns
 Chorus.—O WHISTLE, an’ I’ll come to ye, my lad,
O whistle, an’ I’ll come to ye, my lad,
Tho’ father an’ mother an’ a’ should gae mad,
O whistle, an’ I’ll come to ye, my lad.


But warily tent when ye come to court me,
And come nae unless the back-yett be a-jee;
Syne up the back-stile, and let naebody see,
And come as ye were...Read more of this...

Everything In Its Place

by Barry Tebb
 Desks are straining on all fours, flanks

Heaving to hurl the hunched riders

Down crack and cranny, buck

Finger-snapping lids, consume

Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth.



The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me,

Making my neck prick as it scatters dust

Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clich?,

Anoints its carved channels and cavities

With infinite black ooze and sap.



And I don’t trust that corner...Read more of this...

Smile You Are On Cctv

by Barry Tebb
 Even the charity shops boast of the surveillance

Mr Average is caught on camera a hundred times a day

To provide unending footage for reality TV

But in a decade where will we all be?

Big Brother’s eye will see our every step,

The blink of every eye, the tears we cry....Read more of this...

Cows

by Paul Muldoon
 Even as we speak, there's a smoker's cough
from behind the whitethorn hedge: we stop dead in our tracks;
a distant tingle of water into a trough.

In the past half-hour—since a cattle truck
all but sent us shuffling off this mortal coil—
we've consoled ourselves with the dregs

of a bottle of Redbreast. Had Hawthorne been a Gael,
I insist, the scarlet A on Hester...Read more of this...

Little Jamie

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ither laddies may ha's finer claes, and may be better fed,
But nane o' them a'has sic a bonnie curly heid,
O sie a blythe blink in their e'e,
As my ain curly fair-hair'd laddie, Little Jamie. 

When I gang oot tae tak' a walk wi' him, alang the Magdalen Green,
It mak's my heart feel lichtsome tae see him sae sharp and...Read more of this...

68. The Holy Fair

by Robert Burns
 UPON 1 a simmer Sunday morn
 When Nature’s face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
 An’ snuff the caller air.
The rising sun owre Galston muirs
 Wi’ glorious light was glintin;
The hares were hirplin down the furrs,
 The lav’rocks they were chantin
 Fu’ sweet that day.


As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad,
 To see a scene sae gay,
Three hizzies, early...Read more of this...

61. Second Epistle to J. Lapraik

by Robert Burns
 WHILE new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake
An’ pownies reek in pleugh or braik,
This hour on e’enin’s edge I take,
 To own I’m debtor
To honest-hearted, auld Lapraik,
 For his kind letter.


Forjesket sair, with weary legs,
Rattlin the corn out-owre the rigs,
Or dealing thro’ amang the naigs
 Their ten-hours’ bite,
My awkart Muse sair pleads and begs
 I would na write.


The tapetless, ramfeezl’d...Read more of this...

Current

by Anna Piutti
 Fibers,
flesh. Electricity

transudes through a
sigh.

Sun-bordered clouds migrate from
your eyes to my core:

swooshing of curtains, temples
like drums.

Hypnotic pulsations mark lines
between dreams

and life, as
time contracts in us.

And with the last loud blink
of a light bulb,

the shadows withdraw,
and kaleidoscopes convulse.


Copyright © 2005 Anna Piutti...Read more of this...

Maturity

by Philip Larkin
 A stationary sense... as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
 Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful -
 Some say, desired.

And this must be the prime of life... I blink,
As if at pain; for it is pain, to think
 This pantomime
Of compensating act and counter-act
Defeat and counterfeit, makes up,...Read more of this...

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