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Famous Bricks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Aiken, Conrad
...ree
that this time died for you: it was a rock
and with it all its local web of love:
a chimney, spilling down historic bricks:
perhaps a skyful of Ben Franklin's kites.
And with them, us. For we must hear and bear
the news from everywhere: the hourly news,
infinitesimal or vast, from everywhere.

III

Sole pride and loneliness: it is the state
the kingdom rather of all things: we hear
news of the heart in weather of the Bear,
slide down the rungs of Cassiopeia's ...Read more of this...



by Betjeman, John
...a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley.
Swimming along -
Swimming along -
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to Heaven.

The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses' backs
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...snatches our voices
away from us too quickly
for our voices to be all

nonsense the house is dead
it can't harm us old bricks and wood
you're letting the darkness go to your head
shout if you don't believe us shout
 if anybody's there
 if anybody's there
 you won't get us afraid of you
 whoever you are
 whoever you are
 this is what we think of you
 boo boo boo
what's wrong
what's wrong
tell us what's wrong

listen

nothing

no nothing at all
your voices went
but they didn't...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,
That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.

The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and the West they drew --
Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and Crewe.
And some were black from the furnace, and some were brown from the soil,
And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were wearied of toil.

And the young King said: -- "I have found it, the road to...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...y spill glass towers

Of light over the horizon’s rim.





35



The railyard’s straights

Are buckled plates

Red bricks for aggregate

All lost like me

Ledsham and Ledston

Both belong to Leeds

But Ledston Luck

Is where Aire leads.



36



Held of the Crown

By seven thanes

In Saxon times

‘In regione Loidis’

Baeda scripsit

Leeds, Leeds,

You answer

All my needs.





37



A horse shoe stuck for luck

Behind a basement window:

Margaret, now we’ll see
...Read more of this...



by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...all look and live," they sighed;
And I sensed
The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
Yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood;
We built a day, a year, a thousand years,
Blood was the mortar,—blood and tears,
And, ah, the Thing, the Thing of wings,
The wingéd, folding Wing of Things
Did furnish much mad mortar
For that tower.
Slow and ever slower rose the towering task,
And with it rose the sun,
Until at last on one wild day,
Wind-whirled, cloud-swept and...Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise
...for me
what southampton was - i am

i'm an ecological liar
a trickster with mother earth
dreaming grass may ravel me -
bricks nourish my birth...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...tent, 
The pious people have so eased their own 
With coming to say prayers there in a rage: 
We get on fast to see the bricks beneath. 
Expect another job this time next year, 
For pity and religion grow i' the crowd-- 
Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools! 
--That is--you'll not mistake an idle word 
Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot, 
Tasting the air this spicy night which turns 
The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine! 
Oh, the church knows! don't m...Read more of this...

by Bidart, Frank
..., some bastard
had hurt a little girl--; the motel
 I could see again, it had been
itself all the time, a lousy
pile of bricks, plaster, that didn't seem to
have to be there,--but was, just by chance ...

--Once, on the farm, when I was a kid,
I was screwing a goat; and the rope around his neck
when he tried to get away
pulled tight;--and just when I came,
he died ...
 I came back the next day; jacked off over his body;
but it didn't do any good .....Read more of this...

by Komunyakaa, Yusef
...ughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks 
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...tand before them dumb,
Just like a child that sucks its thumb,
And stares forlorn and turns away,
With dolls or painted bricks to play.

They glour at me, my tomes of learning.
"You dolt!" they jibe; "you undiscerning
Moronic oaf, you make a fuss,
With highbrow swank selecting us;
Saying: "I'll read you all some day' -
And now you yawn and turn away.

"Unwanted wait we with our store
Of facts and philosophic lore;
The scholarship of all the ages
Snug packed within...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...oken? Had the 
weeds Been duly taken out
Under the 'spaliered pears, and were these lying
Nailed snug against the sunny bricks and drying
Their leaves and satisfying all their needs?

VI
She picked a stone up with a little pout, Stones 
looked so ill in well-kept flower-borders.
Where should she put it? All the paths about Were 
strewn with fair, red gravel by her orders.
No stone could mar their sifted smoothness. So She 
hurried to the river. At the edge
She...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...g Joshua ordered the sun to stand still,
 For he was a Captain of Engineers, etc.

When the Children of Israel made bricks without straw,
They were learnin' the regular work of our Corps,
 The work of, etc.

For ever since then, if a war they would wage,
Behold us a-shinin' on history's page --
 First page for, etc.

We lay down their sidings an' help 'em entrain,
An' we sweep up their mess through the bloomin' campaign,
 In the style of, etc.

They send us in...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hundred feet from front to rear, 
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the
 bricks, 
The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock
 of
 the
 trowel-handle, 
The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by
 the
 hod-men;
—Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, 
The swing of their axes on the square-hew’d log, shapin...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...n.

This too I know - and wise it were
If each could know the same -
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!


The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison-air;
It is only what is g...Read more of this...

by Levertov, Denise
...Bricks of the wall, 
so much older than the house - 
taken I think from a farm pulled down 
when the street was built - 
narrow bricks of another century. 

Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, 
a wall behind the flowers - 
roses and hollyhocks, the silver 
pods of lupine, sweet-tasting 
phlox, gray 
lavender - 
unnoticed - 
but I discovered 
...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...d food.

29
Against the high, encircling walls were grapes,
Nailed close to feel the baking of the sun
From glowing bricks. Their microscopic shapes
Half hidden by serrated leaves. And one
Old cherry tossed its branches near the door.
Bordered along the wall, in beds between,
Flickering, streaming, nodding in the air,
The pride of all the garden, there were more
Tulips than Max had ever dreamed or seen.
They jostled, mobbed, and danced. Max stood at he...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...s the cloke of knavery.

Shame is Prides cloke. 


PLATE 8

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of
Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God. 

Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the
stormy sea, and the dest...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...grass: and this 
A mere love-poem! O for such, my friend, 
We hold them slight: they mind us of the time 
When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, 
That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, 
And dress the victim to the offering up, 
And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 
And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 
Poor soul! I had a maid of honour once; 
She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, 
A rogue of canzonets and serenades. 
I loved her. Pea...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...ame in
To part them, others stayed them, and the fight
Spread among dozens; many valiant souls
Went down from clubs and bricks.
But tell me, Muse,
What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?
With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp
The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.
Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all
The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side
Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face
Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.
And tho...Read more of this...

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