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Famous Building(A) Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Cavafy, Constantine P
...Apollonius was talking about
proper education and conduct with a young
man who was building a luxurious
house in Rhodes. "As for me" said the Tyanian
at last, "when I enter a temple
however small it may be, I very much prefer
to see a statue of ivory and gold
than a clay and vulgar one in a large temple".--

The "clay" and "vulgar"; the detestable:...Read more of this...



by Edgar, Marriott
...I'll tell you the story of Balbus, 
You know, him as builded a wall;
I'll tell you the reason he built it, 
And the place where it happened an' all.

This 'ere Balbus, though only a Tackler, 
Were the most enterprising of men;
He'd heard Chicken Farms were lucrative, 
So he went out and purchased a hen.

'Twere a White Wyandot he called Mabel, 
At ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight. 

The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
A...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...I.

He was a Grecian lad, who coming home
With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily
Stood at his galley's prow, and let the foam
Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
And holding wave and wind in boy's despite
Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night.

Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear
Like a thin thread of gol...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

 1

THE WOMAN named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead....Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.

You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on t...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...I
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...THE HUNCHBACK TROUT





The creek was made narrow by little green trees that grew

too close together. The creek was like 12, 845 telephone

booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors

taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out.

 Sometimes when I went fishing in there, I felt just like a

telephone repairman, even t...Read more of this...

by Jobe, James Lee
...It??™s two muddy miles from Highway 20,
just past the north fork of Cache Creek,
across the broad meadow, through 
blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge,
and back down to the creek bank,
the crossing point, me striding with
mud caking my old hiking boots.



For a millennia the Miwok people walked 
these canyons and ridges. Pomo, too.
Gatherin...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry 
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; 
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome 
Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. 

And cracking frieze and rotten metope 
Express, as though they were an open tome 
Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; 
"Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!" 

And yet within these ruin...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul of dreams
and tho...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me ...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people...slee...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had!
And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad!
And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!

To hark to their talk in the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart,
Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his part,
Upbuilding a...Read more of this...

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