Famous Blocks Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Blocks poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous blocks poems. These examples illustrate what a famous blocks poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Bradstreet, Anne
...From crying bloods yet cleansed am not I,
108 Martyrs and others dying causelessly.
109 How many Princely heads on blocks laid down
110 For nought but title to a fading Crown!
111 'Mongst all the cruelties which I have done,
112 Oh, Edward's Babes, and Clarence's hapless Son,
113 O Jane, why didst thou die in flow'ring prime?--
114 Because of Royal Stem, that was thy crime.
115 For Bribery, Adultery, for Thefts, and Lies
116 Where is the Nation I can't paralyze?
117 ...Read more of this...
by
Kenyon, Jane
...to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated."
I only appeared to belong to my mother,
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours -- the anti-urge,
the mutilator of souls.
2BOTTLES
Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.
The coated ones smell sweet or have
no smell; the powder...Read more of this...
by
Harcombe, Dale
...This time I know
I will never see him again.
For a time he played the game,
like a child experimenting with blocks,
building towers and fortresses
but never bridges.
Bridges are hard.
Invariably his feet would slip,
before he found
the acceptance parents had denied
and other children refused him.
Acceptance he couldn't recognise
even when it came, like waves
gentling in his life.
Institutions, foster homes,
he knew them all...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...rysler Building's silver fins
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State's
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks
black and white apartmenting veil'd sky over Manhattan,
offices new built dark glassed in blueish heaven--The East
50's & 60's covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied
tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green trees
surrounding Rockefellers' blue domed medical arbor--
Geodesic science at the waters edge--Cars running...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...ith its osier-clustered banks.
The Mekong is beginning to thaw out a little
And the Donets gurgles beneath the
Huge blocks of ice. The Manzanares gushes free.
The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.
But the Dnieper is still ice-bound. Somewhere
The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt's
Frozen. The Oka is frozen solider
Than the Somme. The Minho slumbers
In winter, nor does the Snake
Remember August. Hilarious, the Canadian
Is so...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...in ancient days
Receiv'd at second hand their praise,
Stood imaged forth in stones and stocks,
And deified in barber's blocks:
So Gage was chose to represent
Th' omnipotence of Parliament.
As antient heroes gain'd by shifts,
From gods, as poets tell, their gifts;
Our General, as his actions show,
Gain'd like assistance from below,
By satan graced with full supplies
From all his magazine of lies.
Yet could his practice ne'er impart
The wit to tell a lie with art.
...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...es to the rocks,
And the whole flight with pestering wing
Vanish and end their murmuring,
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which, who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Replacing frieze and architrave;
Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave,
Still is the haughty pile erect
Of the old building Intellect.
Complement of human kind,
Having us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,
O barren mound! thy plenties fill.
We fool and...Read more of this...
by
Kendall, Henry
...Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air;
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud,
Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud;
Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines,
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens.
Underneath these regal ridges - underneath the gnarly trees,
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely bre...Read more of this...
by
Soto, Gary
...,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...he pyramids and obelisks;
I look on chisel’d histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on
granite-blocks;
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm’d, swathed in linen cloth, lying
there
many centuries;
I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands
folded
across the breast.
I see the menials of the earth, laboring;
I see the prisoners in the prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of th...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...the railway bridge,
Which was built upon a perpendicular rocky ridge.
The bridge was composed of iron and wooden blocks,
And crossed o'er the Devil's Gulch, an immense cleft of rocks,
Two hundred feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet deep,
And enough to make one's flesh to creep.
Far beneath the bridge a mountain-stream did boil and rumble,
And on that night did madly toss and tumble;
Oh! it must have been an awful sight
To see the great cataract falling from ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...encampment—we pass with still feet and
caution;
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city;
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the
globe.)
I am a free companion—I bivouac by invading watchfires.
I turn the bridegroom out of bed, and stay with the bride myself;
I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs;
They fetch my m...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...m, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance;
None may come to the trial, till he or she bring courage and health.
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself;
Only those may come, who come in sweet and determin’d bodies;
No diseas’d per...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...nd launched from land
What the elder head had planned.
"Thus," said he, "will we build this ship!
Lay square the blocks upon the slip,
And follow well this plan of mine.
Choose the timbers with greatest care;
Of all that is unsound beware;
For only what is sound and strong
To this vessel shall belong.
Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine
Here together shall combine.
A goodly frame, and a goodly fame,
And the Union be her name!
For the day that gives he...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...dim flight
Of insects, and the smell of aconite,
And stocks, and Marvel of Peru. She flitted
Along the path, where blocks of shadow pitted
The even flags. She let herself go dreaming
Of Theodore her husband, and the tune
From `Orfeo' swam through her mind, but seeming
Changed -- shriller. Of a sudden, the clear moon
Showed her a passer-by, inopportune
Indeed, but here he was, whistling and striding.
Lotta squeezed in between the currants, hiding.
"The bes...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...wonderful music with shouting and laughter.
The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by—
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper's back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack,
And the wretched Council's bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...bowed as if to veil a noble tear;
And up we came to where the river sloped
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods,
And danced the colour, and, below, stuck out
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roared
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said,
'As these rude bones to us, are we to her
That will be.' 'Dare we dream of that,' I asked,
'Which wrought us, as the workman and his work,
That prac...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...e the yawing S-boats splash
The bellbuoy, with ballooning spinnakers,
As the entangled, screeching mainsheet clears
The blocks: off Madaket, where lubbers lash
The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids
For blue-fish? Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids
Seaward. The winds' wings beat upon the stones,
Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush
At the sea's throat and wring it in the slush
Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones
Cry out in the long night for the h...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her Father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone
In their own golden beams--each like a flower
Out of whose depth a firefly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Clothing themselves or ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...butter.
"Let's go," he said.
We left the house with him still eating the sandwich. The
store was three blocks away, on the other side of a field
covered with heavy yellow grass. There were many pheasants
in the field. Fat with summer they barely flew away when we
came up to them.
"Hello, " said the grocer. He was bald with a red birthmark
on his head. The birthmark looked just like an old car
parked on his head. He automatically...Read more of this...
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