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Famous Carpenters Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Larkin, Philip
...young men
Down valleys, or watching
The green shore past the salt-white cordage
Rising and falling.

Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen
Simply to get away
From married villages before morning,
Melodeons play

On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water
Or late at night
Sweet under the differently-swung stars,
When the chance sight

Of a girl doing her laundry in the steerage
Ramifies endlessly.
This is being young,
Assumption of the startled century

Like new store clo...Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...d I ask return
Of God or woman, the time were come to die.'
He bade, his hundred and first year at end,
Diggers and carpenters make grave and coffin;
Saw that the grave was deep, the coffin sound,
Summoned the generations of his house,
Lay in the coffin, stopped his breath and died....Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...In the naked bed, in Plato's cave, 
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
 Hearing the milkman's clop,
his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink,
I rose from bed, lit a cigarette,...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...her dressmaker, her merchant 
of shoes.
She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She 
owes
masons and carpenters, vintners, lingeres. The lady's 
affairs
are in sad confusion.
And why? Why?
Can a river flow when the spring is dry?

Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one 
after one.
The clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped 
like
an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's 
wearing....Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...t;
Like Æsop's times, as fable runs,
When every creature talk'd at once,
Or like the variegated gabble,
That crazed the carpenters of Babel.
Each party soon forsook the quarrel,
And let the other go on parol,
Eager to know what fearful matter
Had conjured up such general clatter;
And left the church in thin array,
As though it had been lecture-day.
Our 'Squire M'Fingal straitway beckon'd
The Constable to stand his second;
And sallied forth with aspect fierce
The crowd...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...rifles to deliver 
the fusillade into 
the small, soft body 
of Ferrer, who would 
not beg God's help. 
Later, two carpenters 
came, carrying his pine 
coffin on their heads, 
two men out of movies 
not yet made, and near dark 
the body was unchained 
and fell a last time 
onto the stones. 
Four soldiers carried 
the box, sweating 
and resting by turns, 
to where the fresh hole 
waited, and the world went 
back to sleep. 
The sea, still dark 
as a blind eye, 
gru...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...elly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room. 
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers... 
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes. 
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...ishment,
Are learned in waiting.

Shepherd. You cannot but have seen
That he alone had gathered up no gear,
Set carpenters to work on no wide table,
On no long bench nor lofty milking-shed
As others will, when first they take possession,
But left the house as in his father's time
As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,
No settled man. And now that he is gone
There's nothing of him left but half a score
Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.

...Read more of this...

by Housman, A E
..."Here the hangman stops his cart: 
Now the best of friends must part. 
Fare you well, for ill fare I: 
Live, lads, and I will die. 

"Oh, at home had I but stayed 
'Prenticed to my father's trade, 
Had I stuck to plane and adze, 
I had not been lost, my lads. 

"Then I might have built perhaps 
Gallows-trees for other chaps, 
Never dangled on m...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...in,
And when she struck the "Saxmundham," oh! what terrible din!
Because the merciless water did rush in,
Then the ship carpenters to patch the breach did begin. 

But, alas! all their efforts proved in vain,
For still the water did on them gain;
Still they resolved to save her whatever did betide,
But, alas! the ill-fated "Nor" sank beneath the tide. 

But thanks be to God, the major part of the men have been saved,
And all honour to both crews that so manfully behav...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...writers,
two burdeners,
made a pact.
To beat death down with a stick.
To take over.
To build our death like carpenters.
When she had a broken back,
each night we built her sleep.
Talking on the hot line
until her eyes pulled down like shades.
And we agreed in those long hushed phone calls
that when the moment comes
we'll talk turkey,
we'll shoot words straight from the hip,
we'll play it as it lays.
Yes,
when death comes with its hood
we won't be p...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...at the strain.
Black and blue breeches,
Pigtails bound and shining:
Like ants crawling about,
The hull swarms with carpenters, running in and out.
Joiners, calkers,
And they are all terrible talkers.
Jem Wilson has been to sea and he tells some wonderful tales
Of whales, and spice islands,
And pirates off the Barbary coast.
He boasts magnificently, with his mouth full of nails.
Stephen Pibold has a tenor voice,
He shifts his quid of tobacco and sings:
"Th...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ed the steeple.
"Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!"—when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And h...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...hip may sail from India, 
Since the king's scornful dream, unless it bring 
A carpenter among its homeward lading: 
And carpenters are getting hard to find. 

Thomas 
And have none made for the king his desire? 

Captain 
Many have tried, with roasting living men 
In ***** huge kilns, and other sleights, to found 
A glass of human souls; and others seek 
With marvellous stone to please our desperate king. 
Always at last their own tormented bodies 
Delight the cruelty...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...t hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who
lived a clean life in Galilee.

When are you going to quit making the carpenters build
emergency hospitals for women and girls driven
crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about
Jesus--I put it to you again: Where do you get that
stuff; what do you know about Jesus?


Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash
a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance.
Turn sixty somersaults and stand on you...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ass blades you mention
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Eve...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ss blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Ev...Read more of this...

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