Famous Block Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Block poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous block poems. These examples illustrate what a famous block poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...t, amok with a knife,
caught up,
cut him down ¨C
out with him!
The stroke of twelve fell
like a head from a block.
On the windowpanes, grey raindrops
howled together,
piling on a grimace
as though the gargoyles
of Notre Dame were howling.
Damn you!
Isn¡¯t that enough?
Screams will soon claw my mouth apart.
Then I heard,
softly,
a nerve leap
like a sick man from his bed.
Then,
barely moving,
at first,
it soon sc...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...me
Or falter in their stride.
6
At dawn in Leeds
I was lost
Once I had left
The lock
Car park, office block,
Grand hotel looming
And no path
But then I found
Back Lane, every
Window blocked,
Every inch cobbled,
A road to nowhere
Built a hundred
Years ago.
I found a gas lamp
Anchored to a corner
Rusty and forgotten
In the glare
Of the million watt
Yorkshire Electricity
Tower of Steel for
The new museum
‘Guns before butter’
And I wonde...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...gorge and it
By boulder-stones where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.
XI.
Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,
And thorny balls, each three in one,
The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,
XII.
That crimson the creeper's leaf across
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ice-saw, and all the work with ice,
The implements for daguerreotyping—the tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker,
block-maker,
Goods of gutta-percha, papier-maché, colors, brushes, brush-making, glazier’s
implements,
O you robust, sacred!
I cannot tell you how I love you;
All I love America for, is contained in men and women like you.
The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner’s ornaments, the decanter and glasses, the
shears and
flat-iron,
The awl and knee...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...even now:
I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.
The master of thy galley still unlades
Gift after gift; they block my court at last
And pile themselves along its portico
Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee:
And one white she-slave from the group dispersed
Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work
Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift,
Now covered with this settle-down of doves),
One lyric woman, in her crocus vest
Woven of sea-wools, with...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call
C...Read more of this...
by
Bowers, Edgar
...pine twenty feet high, banana shrub,
The owls’ tall pine curved like a flattened S.
The pump house Mort and I built block by block,
Smooth concrete floor, roof pale aluminum
Half-covered by a clematis, the pump
Thirty feet down the mountain’s granite foot.
Mort was the hired man sent to us by Fortune,
Childlike enough to lead us. He brought home,
Although he could not even drive a tractor,
Cheated, a worthless car, which we returned.
When, at the trial to g...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...allest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived" ......Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...at really looked
good, right on the lake.
Unit 4 had a stove. It was a square metal box mounted on
a cement block. There was a stove pipe on top of the box,
but there were no bullet holes in the pipe. I was amazed. Al-
most all the camp stoves we had seen in Idaho had been full
of bullet holes. I guess it's only reasonable that people,
when they get the chance, would want to shoot some old stove
sitting in the woods.
Unit 4 had a big woo...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...oubt if
they will ever want vanilla pudding again.
ROOM 208, HOTEL
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
Half a block from Broadway and Columbus is Hotel Trout
Fishing in America, a cheap hotel. It is very old and run by
some Chinese. They are young and ambitious Chinese and
the lobby is filled with the smell of Lysol.
The Lysol sits like another guest on the stuffed furniture
reading a copy of the Chronicle, the Sports Section. It is the
only f...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...mp
To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,
Or blow a rumple in the collie’s coat.
You make a little foursquare block of air,
Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all
The illimitable dark and cold and storm,
And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,
And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;
Though for all anyone can tell, repose
May be the thing you haven’t, yet you give it.
So false it is that what we haven’t we can’t give;
So false, that what we alway...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...re:
They do not hasten—each man hits in his place.
13
The ***** holds firmly the reins of his four horses—the block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain;
The ***** that drives the dray of the stone-yard—steady and tall he stands,
pois’d on one leg on the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band;
His glance is calm and commanding—he tosses the slouch of his hat away from
his forehead;
The sun falls...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...d of art! and, lo!
Out of the matter which thy pains control
The statue springs!--not as with labor wrung
From the hard block, but as from nothing sprung--
Airy and light--the offspring of the soul!
The pangs, the cares, the weary toils it cost
Leave not a trace when once the work is done--
The Artist's human frailty merged and lost
In art's great victory won! [40]
If human sin confronts the rigid law
Of perfect truth and virtue [41], awe
Seizes and saddens thee to see how f...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...e death-axe sound.
As on the noblest of the land
Fell the stern headsmen's bloody hand,—
The dungeon, block, and nameless tomb
Prepare—for Douglas seeks his doom!
But hark! what blithe and jolly peal
Makes the Franciscan steeple reel?
And see! upon the crowded street,
In motley groups what masquers meet!
Banner and pageant, pipe and drum,
And merry morrice-dancers come.
I guess, by all this quaint array,
...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...he steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!
Who from its bed of primal rock
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
Thy rude and savage outline wrought?
The waters of my native stream
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam;
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar
The circles widen to its shore;
And cultured field and peopled town
Slope to its willowed margin down.
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing
The home-li...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...w,
Would make his compliments and bow,
And every Swine with congees come,
To know how did all friends at home.
Each Block sublime could make a speech,
In style and eloquence as rich,
And could pronounce it and could pen it,
As well as Chatham in the senate.
Nor prose alone.--In these young times,
Each field was fruitful too in rhymes;
Each feather'd minstrel felt the passion,
And every wind breathed inspiration.
Each Bullfrog croak'd in loud bombastic,
Each ...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..., and backward, and below
I count, as god of avenues and gates,
The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.
February
I am lustration, and the sea is mine!
I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;
Before my chariot-wheels...Read more of this...
by
Johnson, Samuel
...lace or sequester'd rent;
169 Mark'd out by dangerous parts he meets the shock,
170 And fatal Learning leads him to the block:
171 Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep,
172 But hear his death, ye blockheads, hear and sleep.
...
253 Enlarge my life with multitude of days,
254 In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays;
255 Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know,
256 That life protracted is protracted woe.
257 Time hovers o'er, impatien...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...e arching spumes
Or white water fountains and the steel barricades of Novotel
Rise from the ruins of a sixties office block.
I hurry past and join Boar Lane’s Friday crew
From Keighley and Dewsbury’s mills, hesitating
At the thought of being told I’m past my
Sell-by-date and turned away by the West Indian
Bouncers, black-suited and city-council badged
Who checked my bag but smiled at ‘The Lights of
Leeds’ and ‘Poets of Our Time’ tucked away as carefully as cond...Read more of this...
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