Famous Brittle Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Brittle poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous brittle poems. These examples illustrate what a famous brittle poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Federico García Lorca
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
I shall tread, another year,
Ways I walked with Grief,
Past the dry, ungarnered ear
And the brittle leaf.
I shall stand, a year apart,
Wondering, and shy,
Thinking, "Here she broke her heart;
Here she pled to die."
I shall hear the pheasants call,
And the raucous geese;
Down these ways, another Fall,
I shall walk with Peace.
But the pretty path I trod
Hand-in-hand with Love-
Underfoot, the nascent sod,
Brave young...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old—
October—November—
How she disliked the cold!
She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.
And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound,
She had a look about her
That I...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given--
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes--
For him new suns are in the skies!
Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into...Read more of this...
by
Robert Francis
Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-subtle its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.
A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence.
Words should be looked through, should be windows.
The best word were invisible.
The poem is the thing the poet thinks.
If the impossible were not,
And...Read more of this...
by
Countee Cullen
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive...Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart singing like
an idiot whispering like drunken man
who(at a certain corner suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.
awake
being not asleep elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner
-"Ici?"-"Ah non mon chéri;il fait trop froid"-
they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind br
inging
rain and leaves filling...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A prompt -- executive Bird is the Jay --
Bold as a Bailiff's Hymn --
Brittle and Brief in quality --
Warrant in every line --
Sitting a Bough like a Brigadier
Confident and straight --
Much is the mien of him in March
As a Magistrate --...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn L Taylor
One in 250 Cambodians, or 40,000 people,
have lost a limb to a landmine.
—Newsfront, U.N. Development Programme Communications Office
On both sides of the screaming highway, the world
is made of emerald silk—sumptuous bolts of it,
stitched by threads of water into cushions
that shimmer and float on the Mekong's munificent glut.
In between them plods the ancient buffalo—dark blue
in the steamy distance,...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glasse:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers ; then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, & more doth win:
Which else shows...Read more of this...
by
Pam Ayres
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.
When I think of the lollies...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Though I defy the howling horde
As bloody-browed I smite,
Back to the wall with shattered sword
When darkly dooms the night;
Though hoarse they cheer as I go down
Before their bitter odds,
'Tis I who win the victor's crown,
The guerdon of the gods.
For all who fall in fearless fight
Alight a deathless flame,
That glorifies the godless night
And fills the foe with shame.
'Tis they...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
Wherein to dwell;
An little house, whose humble roof
Is weather-proof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry;
Where Thou my chamber for to ward
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch as is my fate,...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
On sweet young earth where the myrtle presses,
Long we lay, when the May was new;
The willow was winding the moon in her tresses,
The bud of the rose was told with dew.
And now on the brittle ground I'm lying,
Screaming to die with the dead year's dead;
The stem of the rose is black and drying,
The willow is tossing the wind from...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
When they shall close my careless eyes
And look their last upon my face,
I fear that some will say: "her lies
A man of deep disgrace;
His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle,
He dreamed so much, he did so little.
When they shall seal y coffin lid
And this worn mask I know as ME,
Shall from the sight of man be hid
...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
"I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
flash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.
A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by...Read more of this...
by
R S Thomas
To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
He fumbles at your Soul
As Players at the Keys
Before they drop full Music on --
He stuns you by degrees --
Prepares your brittle Nature
For the Ethereal Blow
By fainter Hammers -- further heard --
Then nearer -- Then so slow
Your Breath has time to straighten --
Your Brain -- to bubble Cool --
Deals -- One -- imperial -- Thunderbolt --
That scalps your naked...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
We hear a great commotion
'Bout the ship that comes to grief,
That founders in mid-ocean,
Or is driven on a reef;
Because it's cheap and brittle
A score of sinners drown.
But we hear but mighty little
Of the ships that won't go down.
Here's honour to the builders –
The builders of the past;
Here's honour to...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread --
No Bridge below doth totter so --
Yet none hath such a Crowd.
It is as old as God --
Indeed -- 'twas built by him --
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm....Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,-- call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw...Read more of this...
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