Famous Brush Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Brush poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous brush poems. These examples illustrate what a famous brush poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Henry Lawson
It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep, --
They are trav'lers for the most part in a straight 'n' honest path;
But their linen's rather scanty, an' there isn't any bath --
Stowed away like ewes and wethers that is shore 'n' marked 'n'...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
I.
Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to...Read more of this...
by
Ann Taylor
Ah! why will my dear little girl be so cross,
And cry, and look sulky, and pout?
To lose her sweet smile is a terrible loss,
I can't even kiss her without.
You say you don't like to be wash'd and be dress'd,
But would you not wish to be clean?
Come, drive that long sob from your dear little breast,
This face...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
(Goya, an old man in exile, looks at his self-portrait)
A bull’s neck, still much needed,
Deserving exile or the guillotine,
‘Because you are an artist we forgave you’,
Thus his royal highness gave thanks,
My fingers itching for brush and canvas,
Floury cheeks and rouge, legs a donkey would be ashamed of,
A wife who’s been to bed with everything in Madrid.
First I was ‘untalented’,...Read more of this...
by
Norman Dubie
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights
He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns
And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience
Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I sit inside the train of tears
The station mellow in shade
Unoriginal phrases air-brush the canvas.
Puzzling minds I wonder
If all are like my own
Closed to stillness.
From girders hang the acrobats of gone
Pearl grey Whistlers. We sat on
A train like this once, you and I,
Face to face but travelling
In opposite directions-
Or was it you alone I watched depart,
Stood on the platform...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.
Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART
1
The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days
Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two
Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?
I am the mad poet first love
You never got over
You are my blue-eyed
Madonna virgin bride
I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’
On the bark of every
Wind-bent tree in
East End Park
2
The park itself will blossom
And...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My daughter Susie, aged two,
Apes me in every way,
For as my household chores I do
With brooms she loves to play.
A scrubbing brush to her is dear;
Ah! Though my soul it vex,
My bunch of cuteness has, I fear,
Kitchen complex.
My dream was that she might go far,
And play or sing or dance;
Aye, even be a movie...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
O'er the dark pines she sees the silver moon,
And in the west, all tremulous, a star;
And soothing sweet she hears the mellow tune
Of cow-bells jangled in the fields afar.
Quite listless, for her daily stent is done,
She stands, sad exile, at her rose-wreathed door,
And sends her love eternal with the sun
That goes to gild the land...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Existing things were already predestined upon the
tablet of creation. The brush [of the universe] did not
paint good and bad. With destiny God imprinted whatever
should be so imprinted, and the efforts that we
make in these directions are wholly lost....Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
I WALKED down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.
The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.
The...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
The sun came up before breakfast,
perfectly round and yellow, and we
dressed in the soft light and shook out
our long blond curls and waited
for Maid to brush them flat and place
the part just where it belonged.
We came down the carpeted stairs
one step at a time, in single file,
gleaming in our sailor suits,...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of
Darby at Harefield, by som Noble persons of her Family, who
appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat
of State with this Song.
I. SONG.
Look Nymphs, and Shepherds look,
What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry
Too divine to be mistook:
This this is she
To whom our vows...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
AULD chuckie Reekie’s 1 sair distrest,
Down droops her ance weel burnish’d crest,
Nae joy her bonie buskit nest
Can yield ava,
Her darling bird that she lo’es best—
Willie’s awa!
O Willie was a witty wight,
And had o’ things an unco’ sleight,
Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight,
And trig an’ braw:
But now they’ll busk her like a fright,—
Willie’s awa!
The stiffest o’...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
A Load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs. --
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turk's-head brush (in a drum-major's...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
Darling you think it's love it's just a midnightjourney.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh stopit Bernie "
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures
alias cigars smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches
and the phones...Read more of this...
by
Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
And Betty otherwise employed,
Stole in and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
The squatter saw his pastures wide
Decrease, as one by one
The farmers moving to the west
Selected on his run;
Selectors took the water up
And all the black soil round;
The best grass-land the squatter had
Was spoilt by Ross's Ground.
Now many schemes to shift old Ross
Had racked the squatter's brains,
But Sandy had the...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Your children grow from you apart,
Afar and still afar;
And yet it should rejoice your heart
To see how glad they are;
In school and sport, in work and play,
And last, in wedded bliss
How others claim with joy to-day
The lips you used to kiss.
Your children distant will become,
And wide the gulf will grow;
The lips of loving will...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
I was but what you'd brush
with your palm what your leaning
brow would hunch to in evening's
raven-black hush.
I was but what your gaze
in that dark could distinguish:
a dim shape to begin with
later - features a face.
It was you on my right
on my left with your heated
sighs who molded my helix
whispering at my side.
It was you by that black
window's trembling...Read more of this...
by
Linda Pastan
Pierre Bonnard would enter
the museum with a tube of paint
in his pocket and a sable brush.
Then violating the sanctity
of one of his own frames
he'd add a stroke of vermilion
to the skin of a flower.
Just so I stopped you
at the door this morning
and licking my index finger, removed
an invisible crumb
from your vermilion mouth. As if
at the ritual moment of departure
I...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Kunwu Yusu come winding Purple pavilion peak dark enter Meipi Fragrant rice peck surplus parrot grain Emerald wutong perch old male phoenix female phoenix branch Beautiful woman gather green spring mutual ask Transcendent companion same boat evening more move Colour brush before travel invade air image White head recite gaze bitter low hang From Kunwu, Yusu...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for
a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in
it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there
are...Read more of this...
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