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Famous Cabinet Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sidney, Sir Philip
...at the most, on some fine picture stayes,
But neuer heeds the fruit of Writers mind;
So when thou saw'st, in Natures cabinet,
Stella, thou straight lookst babies in her eyes:
In her chekes pit thou didst thy pitfold set,
And in her breast bo-peepe or crouching lies,
Playing and shining in each outward part;
But, fool, seekst not to get into her heart. 
XII 

Cupid, because thou shin'st in Stellaes eyes
That from her locks thy day-nets none scapes free
That th...Read more of this...



by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...with such hair too!—so the countess passed on until she came through the
little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed.


BURBANK crossed a little bridge
Descending at a small hotel;
Princess Volupine arrived,
They were together, and he fell.

Defunctive music under sea
Passed seaward with the passing bell
Slowly: the God Hercules
Had left him, that had loved him well.

The horses, under the axletree
Beat up the dawn from Istria
With even...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...are all the same
 like the six sides of a wood cube.
My head is full of sharp smells
 like the shelf of a medicine cabinet.


20 March

I admire those Flemish painters:
is it easy to give the air of a naked goddess
 to the plump ladies
of milk and sausage merchants?
But
 even if you wear silk panties,
cow + silk panties = cow.

Last night
 a window 
 was left open.
The naked Flemish goddesses caught cold.
All day
today,
 turning their bare
mountain-like p...Read more of this...

by Belloc, Hilaire
...nd barely six--and then
To be Curator of Big Ben!. . .
And finally there came a Threat
To oust him from the Cabinet!

The Duke -- his aged grand-sire -- bore
The shame till he could bear no more.
He rallied his declining powers,
Summoned the youth to Brackley Towers,
And bitterly addressed him thus--
"Sir! you have disappointed us!
We had intended you to be
The next Prime Minister but three:
The stocks were sold; the Press was squared:
The Middle Class was qui...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...e but means our good,
     As our delight or as our treasure:
The whole is either our cupboard of food,
          Or cabinet of pleasure.

          The stars have us to bed;
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws;
     Music and light attend our head.
     All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being; to our mind
          In their ascent and cause.

          Each thing is full of duty:
Waters united are our navigation;
 ...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics—began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...e San Francisco Chronicle

thrown all over the bed and the children's toothbrushes were

still in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

 Behind the place was an old outhouse and to get down to it,

you had to follow the path down past some apple trees and a

patch of strange plants that we thought were either a good

spice that would certainly enhance our cooking or the plants

were deadly nightshade that would cause our cooking to be

less.

 We carried the garbage down to...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...

 It looked down on the bookstore and had Chinese screens

in front of it. The room contained a couch, a glass cabinet

with Chinese things in it and a table and three chairs. There

was a tiny bathroom fastened like a watch fob to the room.

 I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoon

reading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The book

had clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read:



 Billy

 the Kid

 born

 Novem...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...e so close that their shadows fell across

my bait. I practically caught trout up their assholes.










THE CABINET OF

DOCTOR

CALIGARI



Once water bugs were my field. I remember that childhood

spring when I studied the winter-long mud puddles of the

Pacific Northwest. I had a fellowship.

 My books were a pair of Sears Roebuck boots, ones with

green rubber pages. Most of my classrooms were close to

the shore. That's where the important ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...e did

s something.

 "To this day I don't know why I saw that movie seven

times. It was just as deadly as The Cabinet of Doctor Cali-

gari. I wonder if the Missouri River is still there?" I said.

 "It is, " Trout Fishing in America said smiling. "But it

doesn't look like Deanna Durbin. "

 The baby by this time had put a dozen or so of the colored

rocks in Trout Fishing in America's shirt pocket. He looked

at me and smiled and waited for me ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e men jeer and wink to each other; 
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;)
The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded by the Great
 Secretaries; 
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms; 
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold; 
The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle; 
As the fare-collector goes through the train, he gives notice by the jingling of
...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...at the most on some find picture stays, 
But never heeds the fruit of writer's mind: 

So when thou saw'st in Nature's cabinet 
Stella, thou straight lookst babies in her eyes, 
In her cheek's pit thou didst thy pitfall set: 

And in her breast bopeep or couching lies, 
Playing and shining in each outward part: 
But, fool, seekst not to get into her heart....Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...rderess;
Examining upon our hearts
Thy fertile shop of cruel arts:
Engines more keen than ever yet
Adornèd tyrant's cabinet;
Of which the most tormenting are
Black eyes, red lips, and curlèd hair.

But, on the other side, thou'rt drawn
Like to Aurora in the dawn;
When in the east she slumb'ring lies,
And stretches out her milky thighs;
While all the morning choir does sing,
And manna falls, and roses spring;
And, at thy feet, the wooing doves
Sit perfecting...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...our spite.
In vain, the workman shewed his wit
With rings and hinges counterfeit
To make it seem in this disguise
A cabinet to vulgar eyes;
For Strephon ventured to look in,
Resolved to go through thick and thin;
He lifts the lid, there needs no more:
He smelt it all the time before.
As from within Pandora's box,
When Epimetheus oped the locks,
A sudden universal crew
Of humane evils upwards flew,
He still was comforted to find
That Hope at last remained behind;
So St...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
..., but obey.' 
Then she bethought her of a faded silk, 
A faded mantle and a faded veil, 
And moving toward a cedarn cabinet, 
Wherein she kept them folded reverently 
With sprigs of summer laid between the folds, 
She took them, and arrayed herself therein, 
Remembering when first he came on her 
Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it, 
And all her foolish fears about the dress, 
And all his journey to her, as himself 
Had told her, and their coming to the court....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...icate gestures of two others.

Heavy as a statuary, shapes not ours
Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,
That cabinet without windows or doors:
He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she
Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.
Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.
They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.

Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she
Would not be eased, released. Our each example
Of temderness dove through their purgatory
Li...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...n awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name 
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand 
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning....Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...you in distant India, these 
I send across the seas, 
Nor count it far across. 
For which of us forget 
The Indian cabinets, 
The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross, 
The pied and painted birds and beans, 
The junks and bangles, beads and screens, 
The gods and sacred bells, 
And the load-humming, twisted shells! 
The level of the parlour floor 
Was honest, homely, Scottish shore; 
But when we climbed upon a chair, 
Behold the gorgeous East was there! 
Be this a f...Read more of this...

by Crashaw, Richard
...s
When Thou art Master of the Mind.
Come, lovely Name; life of our hope!
Lo we hold our Hearts wide ope!
Unlock thy Cabinet of Day
Dearest Sweet, and come away.
Lo how the thirsty Lands
Gasp for thy Golden Showres! with longstretch’t Hands.
Lo how the laboring Earth
That hopes to be
All Heaven by Thee,
Leapes at thy Birth.
The’ attending World, to wait thy Rise,
First turn’d to eyes;
And then, not knowing what to doe;
Turn’d Them to Teares, and spent Them too....Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influenc...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things