Famous Caps Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Farewell

by Amy Levy
 (After Heine.)


The sad rain falls from Heaven,
A sad bird pipes and sings ;
I am sitting here at my window
And watching the spires of "King's."

O fairest of all fair places,
Sweetest of all sweet towns!
With the birds, and the greyness and greenness,
And the men in caps and gowns.

All they that dwell within thee,
To leave are ever loth,
For one man gets friends,...Read more of this...

On the Road

by Claude McKay
 Roar of the rushing train fearfully rocking, 
Impatient people jammed in line for food, 
The rasping noise of cars together knocking, 
And worried waiters, some in ugly mood, 
Crowding into the choking pantry hole 
To call out dishes for each angry glutton 
Exasperated grown beyond control, 
From waiting for his soup or fish or mutton. 
At last the station's...Read more of this...

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth

by Pam Ayres
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies...Read more of this...

The May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 May is Mary's month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
 Her feasts follow reason,
 Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
 Why fasten that upon her,
 With a feasting in her honour? 

Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
 Is it opportunest
 And flowers finds soonest? 

Ask of her, the...Read more of this...

Faces

by Walt Whitman
 1
SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces! 
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; 
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face, 
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad
 at
 the
 back-top; 
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces
 of
 orthodox...Read more of this...

Climbing West Of Lotus Flower Peak

by Li Po
 Amongst the grandeur of Hua Shan
I climb to the Flower Peak,
and fancy I see fairies and immortals
carrying lotus in their
sacred white hands, robes flowing
they fly filling the sky with colour
as they rise to the palace of heaven,
inviting me to go to the cloud stage
and see Wei Shu-ching, guardian angel
of Hua Shan; so dreamily I go with them
riding to the...Read more of this...

From The Short Story Shadow-Children

by Louisa May Alcott
 Little shadows, little shadows 
Dancing on the chamber wall, 
While I sit beside the hearthstone 
Where the red flames rise and fall. 
Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, 
My three antic shadows wear; 
And no sound they make in playing, 
For the six small feet are bare. 

Dancing gayly, dancing gayly, 
To and fro all together, 
Like a family...Read more of this...

The Iron Bridge

by Billy Collins
 I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.

But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

Forard

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...

Happiness

by Raymond Carver
 So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would...Read more of this...

In the Matter of One Compass

by Rudyard Kipling
 When, foot to wheel and back to wind,
The helmsman dare not look behind,
But hears beyond his compass-light,
The blind bow thunder through the night,
And, like a harpstring ere it snaps,
The rigging sing beneath the caps;
 Above the shriek of storm in sail
 Or rattle of the blocks blown free,
 Set for the peace beyond the gale,
 This song the Needle...Read more of this...

There was an Old Lady of Prague

by Edward Lear
There was an Old Lady of Prague,Whose language was horribly vague;When they said, "Are these caps?" she answered, "Perhaps!"That oracular Lady of Prague. ...Read more of this...

Denis

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Denis, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit 
Caps occasion with an intellectual fit. 
Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber ’ll hit 
The bald and b?ld bl?nking gold when ?ll ’s d?ne 
Right rooting in the bare butt’s wincing navel in the sight of the sun.
. . . . . . . ....Read more of this...

Market days

by Jonas Mekas
 Mondays, way before dawn,
before even the first hint of blue in the windows,
we'd hear it start, off the road past our place,
over on the highway nearby,
in a clatter of market-bound traffic.

Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl,
or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the pace,
or sitting up high, on raised seats
(the women all wore...Read more of this...

from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

Exchanging Hats

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady's hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps
with exhibitionistic screech,

the visors hanging o'er the ear
so that...Read more of this...

The Wishing-Caps

by Rudyard Kipling
 Life's all getting and giving,
 I've only myself to give.
 What shall I do for a living?
 I've only one life to live.
 End it? I'll not find another.
 Spend it? But how shall I best?
 Sure the wise plan is to live like a man
 And Luck may look after the rest!
 Largesse! Largesse, Fortune!
 Give or hold...Read more of this...

May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 May is Mary's month, and I 
Muse at that and wonder why: 
Her feasts follow reason, 
Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day; 
But the Lady Month, May, 
Why fasten that upon her, 
With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter 
Than the most are must delight her? 
Is it opportunest 
And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her,...Read more of this...

From The Short Story What The Swallows Did

by Louisa May Alcott
 Swallow, swallow, neighbor swallow, 
Starting on your autumn flight, 
Pause a moment at my window, 
Twitter softly your good-night; 
For the summer days are over, 
All your duties are well done, 
And the happy homes you builded 
Have grown empty, one by one. 
Swallow, swallow, neighbor swallow, 
Are you ready for your flight? 
Are all the feather cloaks completed?...Read more of this...

61. Second Epistle to J. Lapraik

by Robert Burns
 WHILE new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake
An’ pownies reek in pleugh or braik,
This hour on e’enin’s edge I take,
 To own I’m debtor
To honest-hearted, auld Lapraik,
 For his kind letter.


Forjesket sair, with weary legs,
Rattlin the corn out-owre the rigs,
Or dealing thro’ amang the naigs
 Their ten-hours’ bite,
My awkart Muse sair pleads and begs
 I would na write.


The tapetless, ramfeezl’d...Read more of this...

Good-Children Street

by Eugene Field
 There's a dear little home in Good-Children street -
My heart turneth fondly to-day
Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet
Make sweetest of music at play;
Where the sunshine of love illumines each face
And warms every heart in that old-fashioned place.

For dear little children go romping about
With dollies and tin tops and drums,
And, my! how they frolic and scamper and shout
Till...Read more of this...

The Red Flower

by Henry Van Dyke
 In the pleasant time of Pentecost,
By the little river Kyll,
I followed the angler's winding path
Or waded the stream at will,
And the friendly fertile German land
Lay round me green and still. 

But all day long on the eastern bank
Of the river cool and clear,
Where the curving track of the double rails
Was hardly seen though near,
The endless trains of German troops
Went...Read more of this...

The Bough of Nonsense

by Robert Graves
 AN IDYLL


Back from the Somme two Fusiliers 
Limped painfully home; the elder said, 
S. “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years 
This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.” 
R. “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now,
Through these great oaks and see the famous bough 

”Where once a nonsense built her nest 
With skulls and flowers and all things...Read more of this...

The Giant In Glee

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ho, guerriers! je suis né dans le pays des Gaules.") 
 
 {V., March 11, 1825.} 


 Ho, warriors! I was reared in the land of the Gauls; 
 O'er the Rhine my ancestors came bounding like balls 
 Of the snow at the Pole, where, a babe, I was bathed 
 Ere in bear and in walrus-skin I...Read more of this...

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