Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Blinking Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...h obnoxious care, 
Things that I wished he wouldn’t. Killigrew, 
Drowsed with a fond abstraction, like an ass, 
Lay blinking at me while he grinned and made 
Remarks. The learned Plunket made remarks.

It may have been for smoke that I cursed cats 
That night, but I have rather to believe 
As I lay turning, twisting, listening, 
And wondering, between great sleepless yawns, 
What possible satisfaction those dead leaves
Could find in sending shadows to my room 
And...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...orrors through the shield,
And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold
In passion impotent, while with blind gaze
The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze.

The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp
Far out at sea off Sunium, or cast
The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp
Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast
Divide the folded curtains of the night,
And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright.

And guilty lovers in their venery
...Read more of this...

by Emanuel, James A
...m ants and fishbone flies,
Twitching as the strike of bass and snarling reel
Uncoiled my shouts not quit
Till he jerked blinking up on all-fours,
Swaying with the winking leaves.
Strong awake, he shook his cane pole like a spoon
And dipped among the wagging perch
Till, tired, he drew his silver rubber blade
And poked the winding fins that tugged our string,
Or sprayed the dimpling minnows with his plastic gun,
Or, rainstruck, squirmed to my armpit in the poncho.

Then...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...ckyard green tree cemetery 
 dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, 
 storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon 
 blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree 
 vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook- 
 lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, 
who chained themselves to subways for the endless 
 ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine 
 until the noise of wheels and children brought 
 them down shuddering mouth-wracked and 
 battered bleak of br...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart....Read more of this...



by Clare, John
...his barn dust forcd to stand
Swings his frail round wi weary hand
While oer his head shades thickly creep
And hides the blinking owl asleep
And bats in cobweb corners bred
Sharing till night their murky bed
The sunshine trickles on the floor
Thro every crevice of the door
And makes his barn where shadows dwell
As irksome as a prisoners cell
And as he seeks his daily meal
As schoolboys from their tasks will steal
ile often stands in fond delay
To see the daisy in his way
And w...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...glass. 

Outside in Florida shopping plazas 
loudspeakers blared Christmas carols 
and palm trees were decked with blinking 
lights. Except by the tourist 
hotels, the beaches were empty. 

Pelicans with pregnant pouches 
flapped overhead like pterodactyls. 
In my mind I felt you die. 
First the pain lifted and then 
you flickered and went out. 


2.

I walk through the rooms of memory. 
Sometimes everything is shrouded in dropcloths, 
every c...Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...hical novelties?
And without a turn
 of their cabbage heads,
their feelings
 hidden in lower regions,
they take without blinking,
 the passports from Swedes
and various
 old Norwegians.
Then sudden
 as if their mouths were
 aquake
those gentlemen almost
 whine
Those very official gentlemen
 take
that red-skinned passport
 of mine.
Take-
 like a bomb
 take - like a hedgehog,
like a razor
 double-edge stropped,
take -
 like a rattlesnake huge and long
with at least
 20 ...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...(published on BLINKING EYE, http://www.blinking-eye.co.uk/writer/padel2.html )



Then spoke the thunder, shattering the looming blackness of our national life. The rumble that breaks a spell of the dry season

 – Saro-Wiwa, "The Storm Breaks"



Does a zebra foal dream? Head lower, lower
under lenticular dark cloud,
he drags harlequin fetlocks, porcel...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...door,
And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:
Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long years - a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,
Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen,
'Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.
For from the East there came a mighty cry,
And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty,
And ca...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...ng spear,
And shouted: Rustum!--Sohrab heard that shout,
And shrank amazed; back he recoil'd one step,
And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form,
And then he stood bewilder'd; and he dropp'd
His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side.
He reel'd, and staggering back, sank to the ground;
And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell,
And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all
The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair--
Saw Rustum standing, safe upon ...Read more of this...

by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...r
Stir as if in pain.
May never hear the roaches
Falling like fat rain.

"Where never wife and children need
Go blinking through the gloom.
Where every room of many rooms
Will be full of room.

"Oh my home may have its east or west
Or north or south behind it.
All I know is I shall know it,
And fight for it when I find it."

The agent's steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!

Nary...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...own on Africa 
The living darkness of devouring green 
The loathsome smell of life unquenchable, 
Look on low brows and blinking eyes between, 
On the dark heart where white folk find no place, 
On the dark bodies of an antic race, 
On all that fear thy light and love thy shadow, 
Turn thou the mercy of thy midnight face. 

This also is in thy spectrum; this dark ray; 
Beyond the deepening purples of thy Lent 
Darker than violet vestment; dark and secret 
Clot of old nigh...Read more of this...

by Field, Edward
...ing at all
where he sewed on the head of a raped and murdered beauty queen.

He sets his liquids burping, and coils blinking and buzzing,
and waits for an electric storm to send through the equipment
the spark vital for life.
The storm breaks over the castle
and the equipment really goes crazy
like a kitchen full of modern appliances
as the lightning juice starts oozing right into that pretty corpse.

He goes to get the monster
so he will be right there when she o...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...boom boom!
Thor is angry: we don't care!'
But those ladies broke the panes.

When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
Blinking flashlights like fireflies
And singing the glowworm song, I could
Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
But, heavy-footed, stood aside
In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.

Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each t...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.

'I am the one who rode beside you, blinking
At a dazzle of golden lights.
Tempests of music swept me: I was thinking
Of the gorgeous promise of certain nights:
Of the woman who suddenly smiled at me this day,
Smiled in a certain delicious sidelong way,
And turned, as she reached the door,
To smile once more . . .
Her hands are whiter than snow on midnight water.
Her throat...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...s and marked that some
Did glitter with a flame of lunacy,
And some were soft and false as feigning love,
And some were blinking with hypocrisy,
And some were overfilmed by sense, and some
Blazed with ambition's wild, unsteady fire,
And some were burnt i' the sockets black, and some
Were dead as embers when the fire is out.
A curious zone circled the Spectre's waist,
Which seemed with strange device to symbol Time.
It was a silver-gleaming thread of day
Spiral about a...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...ng 
In a steep sandy warren, riddled with holes, 
And I’ve just pulled the terrier out and left 
A sharp-nosed cub-face blinking there and snapping, 
Then in a moment seen him mobbed and torn 
To strips in the baying hurly of the pack. 
I picture it so clear: the dusty sunshine 
On bracken, and the men with spades, that wipe 
Red faces: one tilts up a mug of ale. 
And, having stopped to clean my gory hands, 
I whistle the jostling beauties out of the wood. 

I’m b...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...r cold morning 
barely ruffles his tail feathers. 
When he turns his attention 
toward me, I face his eyes 
without blinking. A week ago 
my wife called me to come see 
this same bird chase a rat 
into the thick leaves 
of an orange tree. We came as 
close as we could and watched 
the rat dig his way into an orange, 
claws working meticulously. 
Then he feasted, face deep 
into the meal, and afterwards 
washed himself in juice, paws 
scrubbing soberly. Sur...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...never ceased to obey the commands
Of her will— only finding new hold
Of bandage and needle and pen.
And not for the blinking
Of an eye did she ever stop thinking
Of the suffering of Englishmen
And her two sons in the trenches. Now and then
I could forget for an instant in a book or a letter,
But she never, never forgot— either one—
Percy and John—though I knew she loved one better—
Percy, the wastrel, the gambler, the eldest son.
I think I shall always remember
Un...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Blinking poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs