Famous Carp Poems by Famous Poets

 Thy place is biggyd above the sterrys cleer, 
Noon erthely paleys wrouhte in so statly wyse, 
Com on my freend, my brothir moost enteer, 
For the I offryd my...Read More

 WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot*, *sweet
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus...Read More

 A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
Of an old wharf. A watery light
Touched bleak...Read More

 The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court, 
A tributary prince of Devon, one 
Of that great Order of the Table Round, 
Had married Enid, Yniol's only child, 
And...Read More

 You can see it already: chalks and ochers; 
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery; 
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the...Read More

 I fish for words
to say what I fish for,
half-catch sometimes.

I have caught little pan fish flashing sunlight
(yellow perch, crappies, blue-gills),
lighthearted reeled them in,
filed them on stringers on the shore.
A...Read More

THEN the sege and the assaut watz sesed at Troye,
The borygh brittened and brent to brondeygh and askez,
The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroyght
Watz tried for his tricherie,...Read More

 Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and...Read More

 Freezing dusk is closing
 Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
 That can no longer feel.
 But the carp is in its depth
...Read More

 'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in...Read More

 Filaments of light 
slant like windswept rain. 
The orange seller hawks 
into the sky, a man with a hat 
stops below my window 
and shakes his tassels. 
 Awake...Read More

 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream...Read More

 I 

In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile, 
Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade 
In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. - 
 On burgher, squire, and clown 
It...Read More

 Goaded and harassed in the factory
That tears our life up into bits of days
Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,
Shredding our portion of Eternity,
We break away at last,...Read More

 By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
as a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river...Read More

 Now the summer perch flips twice and glides
a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,
the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.
Along the weed and grain of log...Read More

 Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the 
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping 
and trickling
over his stone cloak....Read More

 How much the present moment means
To those who've nothing more --
The Fop -- the Carp -- the Atheist --
Stake an entire store
Upon a Moment's shallow Rim
While their commuted Feet
The...Read More

There was a Young Lady of Welling,Whose praise all the world was a-telling;She played on the harp, and caught several Carp,That accomplished Young Lady of Welling. ...Read More

 Whenever I am prone to doubt or wonder -
I check myself, and say, 'That mighty One
Who made the solar system cannot blunder -
And for the best all things are...Read More

 An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor. 




In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of...Read More

 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...Read More

 I'd rather be the Jester than the Minstrel of the King;
I'd rather jangle cap and bells than twang the stately harp;
I'd rather make his royal ribs with belly-laughter ring,
Than...Read More