Famous Buttoned Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Of nearness to her sundered Things

by Emily Dickinson
 Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times --
When Dimness -- looks the Oddity --
Distinctness -- easy -- seems --

The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms --
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes --

In just the Jacket that he wore --
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we -- old mornings, Children -- played --
Divided -- by...Read more of this...

Victoria

by Dorothy Parker
 Dear dead Victoria
Rotted cosily;
In excelsis gloria,
And R. I. P.

And her shroud was buttoned neat,
And her bones were clean and round,
And her soul was at her feet
Like a bishop's marble hound.

Albert lay a-drying,
Lavishly arrayed,
With his soul out flying
Where his heart had stayed.

And there's some could tell you what land
His spirit walks serene
(But I've heard them say in Scotland
It's never been...Read more of this...

The Old Jimmy Woodser

by Henry Lawson
 The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar 
Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown, 
Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far; 
So he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are 
And they say that he tipples alone. 

His frockcoat is green and the nap is no more, 
And his hat is not quite at its best;...Read more of this...

Paris October 1936

by Cesar Vallejo
 From all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From this bench I go away, from my pants,
from my great situation, from my actions,
from my number split side to side,
from all of this I am the only one who leaves.

From the Champs Elysées or as the strange
alley of the Moon makes a turn,
my death goes away, my cradle...Read more of this...

Spensers Ireland

by Marianne Moore
 has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.

If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather...Read more of this...

The Routine Things Around The House

by Stephen Dunn
 When Mother died
I thought: now I'll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable.

Yet I've since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who've been loved by their mothers.

I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she'd live,
how many lifetimes there are

in the sweet revisions of memory.
It's hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,

but I remembered when I was twelve,...Read more of this...

The Worlds in this World

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
 Doors were left open in heaven again: 
drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages 
around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters 
flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,
its last angles caught in sopped
newspaper wings and billowing plastic — 
all this in one American street. 
 Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide 
recedes, incense is lit, an infant...Read more of this...

Old Grimes

by Mother Goose
Old Grimes is dead, that good old man,
     We ne'er shall see him more;
He used to wear a long brown coat
     All buttoned down before....Read more of this...

Compassion

by Robert William Service
 A beggar in the street I saw,
Who held a hand like withered claw,
 As cold as clay;
But as I had no silver groat
To give, I buttoned up my coat
 And turned away.

And then I watched a working wife
Who bore the bitter load of life
 With lagging limb;
A penny from her purse she took,
And with sweet pity in her look
...Read more of this...

Whether or Not

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Dunna thee tell me its his'n, mother,
      Dunna thee, dunna thee.
--Oh ay! he'll be comin' to tell thee his-sèn
      Wench, wunna he?

Tha doesna mean to say to me, mother,
      He's gone wi that--
--My gel, owt'll do for a man i' the dark,
   ...Read more of this...

The Black Cottage

by Robert Frost
 We chanced in passing by that afternoon 
To catch it in a sort of special picture 
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, 
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, 
The little cottage we were speaking of, 
A front with just a door between two windows, 
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black. 
We paused, the minister...Read more of this...

Is/Not

by Margaret Atwood
 Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but...Read more of this...

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin
 That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday 
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran 
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began, 
Where sky and Lincolnshire and...Read more of this...

The Hermit Goes Up Attic

by Maxine Kumin
 Up attic, Lucas Harrison, God rest
his frugal bones, once kept a tidy account
by knifecut of some long-gone harvest.
The wood was new. The pitch ran down to blunt 
the year: 1811, the score: 10, he carved
into the center rafter to represent
his loves, beatings, losses, hours, or maybe
the butternuts that taxed his back and starved
the red squirrels higher up each scabbed...Read more of this...

An Excelente Balade of Charitie: As Wroten bie the Gode Pri

by Thomas Chatterton
 In Virgynë the sweltrie sun gan sheene, 
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie; 
The apple rodded from its palie greene, 
And the mole peare did bende the leafy spraie; 
The peede chelandri sunge the livelong daie; 
'Twas nowe the pride, the manhode of the yeare, 
And eke the grounde was dighte in its moste defte aumere....Read more of this...

Vacant Lot With Pokeweed

by Amy Clampitt
 Tufts, follicles, grubstake
biennial rosettes, a low-
life beach-blond scruff of
couch grass: notwithstanding
the interglinting dregs

of wholesale upheaval and
dismemberment, weeds do not
hesitate, the wheeling
rise of the ailanthus halts
at nothing—and look! here's

a pokeweed, sprung up from seed
dropped by some vagrant, that's
seized a foothold: a magenta-
girdered bower, gazebo twirls
of blossom rounding into

raw-buttoned, garnet-rodded
fruit one more wayfarer
perhaps may salvage from
the season's frittering,
the annual wreckage....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Buttoned poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace