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).
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...the skie was blacke, the thunder rolde;
Faste reyneynge oer the plaine a prieste was seen;
Ne dighte full proude, ne buttoned up in golde;
His cope and jape were graie, and eke were clene;
A Limitoure he was of order seene;
And from the pathwaie side then turned hee,
Where the pore almer laie binethe the holmen tree.
"An almes, sir priest!" the droppynge pilgrim sayde,
"For sweete Seyncte Marie and your order sake."
The Limitoure then loosen'd his pouche threade,
...Read more of this...
by
Chatterton, Thomas
...ggar 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
Gave it to him.
Anon I spied a shabby dame
Who fed six sparrows as they came
In famished flight;
She was so poor and frail and old,
Yet crumbs of her last crust she d...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...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 agaist you,
which does not need to be understood
or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead
to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense....Read more of this...
by
Atwood, Margaret
...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 a world --
The Grave yields back her Robberies --
The Years, our pilfered Things --
Bright Knots of Apparitions
Salute us, with their wings --
As we -- it were -- that perished --
Themself -- had just remained till we rejoin them --
And 'twas they, and not ourself
That mourn...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...man, We ne'er shall see him more;He used to wear a long brown coat All buttoned down before....Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...everything
remains to create my alibi:
my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud
and even the bend in the elbow
of my own buttoned shirt....Read more of this...
by
Vallejo, Cesar
...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 at midday the seed
of the fern, eluding
their "giants all covered with iron," might
there be fern seed for unlearn-
ing obduracy and for reinstating
the enchantment?
Hindered characters
seldom have mothers
in Irish stories, but they all hav...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...away--one is out west--
It will be hard for them to keep their word.
Anyway they won't have the place disturbed."
A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms
Under a crayon portrait on the wall
Done sadly from an old daguerreotype.
"That was the father as he went to war.
She always, when she talked about war,
Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt
Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt
If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir
Anything in her a...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...magic, bags of gold,
And rabbits' feet on long twine strings.
But he went down to the Devil.
Legree he sported a brass-buttoned coat,
A snake-skin necktie, a blood-red shirt.
Legree he had a beard like a goat,
And a thick hairy neck, and eyes like dirt.
His puffed-out cheeks were fish-belly white,
He had great long teeth, and an appetite.
He ate raw meat, 'most every meal,
And rolled his eyes till the cat would squeal.
His fist was an enormous size
To mash poor niggers that...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...pain and ache,
I was so weary and so sore
I don't think I'd a stood much more.
Bill in his corner bathed his thumb,
Buttoned his shirt and glowered glum.
"I'll never shake your hand" he said.
"I'd rather see my children dead.
I've been about had some fun with you,
But you're a liar and I've done with you.
You've knocked me out, you didn't beat me;
Look out the next time that you meet me,
There'll be no friend to watch the clock for you
And no convenient thumb to c...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...at the block and tackle, whipped to the trace,
come up these burly masts, these crossties broken
from their growing and buttoned into place.
Whatever it was is now a litter of shells.
Even at noon the attic vault is dim.
The hermit carves his own name in the sill
that someone after will take stock of him....Read more of this...
by
Kumin, Maxine
...ts best;
He wears the peaked collar our grandfathers wore,
The black-ribbon tie that was legal of yore,
And the coat buttoned over his breast.
When first he came in, for a moment I thought
That my vision or wits were astray;
For a picture and page out of Dickens he brought---
‘Twas an old file dropped in from the Chancery Court
To the wine-vault just over the way.
But I dreamed, as he tasted his “bitter” to-night
And the lights in the bar-room grew dim,
That the...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,
but I remembered when I was twelve,
1951, before the world
unbuttoned its blouse.
I had asked my mother (I was trembling)
If I could see her breasts
and she took me into her room
without embarrassment or coyness
and I stared at them,
afraid to ask for more.
Now, years later, someone tells me
Cancers who've never had mother love
are doomed and I, a Cancer
feel blessed again. What luck
to have had a mother
who showe...Read more of this...
by
Dunn, Stephen
...me time wept for those delightful girls,
Daughters of dukes, prime ministers and earls,
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques,
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose?
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill
Loving against her noble parent's will
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm
Feels her hand kissed behind a potted palm
At Lady Ivry's ball the dreadful night
Before...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And ...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...is world.
Or say, one year — say 1916:
while my grandfather, a prisoner of war
in Holland, sewed perfect, eighteen-buttoned
booties for his wife with the skin of a dead
dog found in a trench; shrapnel slit
Apollinaire's skull, Jesuits brandished
crucifixes in Ouagadougou, and the Parthenon
was already in ruins.
That year, thousands and thousands of Jews
from the Holocaust were already — were
still ¬— busy living their lives;
while gnawed by self-doubt, Rilke co...Read more of this...
by
Bosselaar, Laure-Anne
...opped 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...
by
Clampitt, Amy
...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 seen)....Read more of this...
by
Parker, Dorothy
...the stool o' fire
Under the tank as fills the ingines,
If there isn't my dearly-beloved liar!
My constable wi' 'is buttoned breast
As stout as the truth, my sirs!--An' 'is face
As bold as a robin! It's much he cares
For this nice old shame and disgrace.
Oh but he drops his flag when 'e sees me,
Yes, an' 'is face goes white ... oh yes
Tha can stare at me wi' thy fierce blue eyes,
But tha doesna stare me out, I guess!
VI
Whativer brings thee out so far
...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
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