Famous Carpet Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Carpet poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous carpet poems. These examples illustrate what a famous carpet poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...he city streets, a laborer’s home appear’d,
After his day’s work done, cleanly, sweet-air’d, the gaslight burning,
The carpet swept, and a fire in the cheerful stove.
In one, the sacred parturition scene,
A happy, painless mother birth’d a perfect child.
In one, at a bounteous morning meal,
Sat peaceful parents, with contented sons.
In one, by twos and threes, young people,
Hundreds concentering, walk’d the paths and streets and roads,
Toward a tall-dome...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...knife
Grows tall. You clutch your bars.
My singing makes you roar.
I rock you like a boat
Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,
While the brass man
Kneels, back bent, as best he can
Hefting his white pillar with the light
That keeps the sky at bay,
The sack of black! It is everywhere, tight, tight!
He is yours, the little brassy Atlas --
Poor heirloom, all you have,
At his heels a pile of five brass cannonballs,
No child, no wife.
Five balls! Five bright ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...e a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...mounds
Of flowers, with juniper and aniseed;
While sage, all newly cut for this great need,
Covers the Persian carpet that is spread
Beneath the table, and so helps to shed
Around a perfume of the balmy spring.
Beyond is desolation withering.
One hears within the hollow dreary space
Across the grove, made fresh by summer's grace,
The wind that ever is with mystic might
A spirit ripple of the Infinite.
The glass restored to frames to creak is m...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...na of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.
When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say unde...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ire a gun:
Taught, I say, to splinter
Salmon in the winter -
Merely for the fun.
Little Birds are hiding
Crimes in carpet-bags,
Blessed by happy stags:
Blessed, I say, though beaten -
Since our friends are eaten
When the memory flags.
Little Birds are tasting
Gratitude and gold,
Pale with sudden cold:
Pale, I say, and wrinkled -
When the bells have tinkled,
And the Tale is told....Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...ife for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...
I'm left with parting kisses,
The guardian of the house;
The romp, it's true, one misses,
I'm quiet as a mouse.
In carpet slippers stealing
From room to room alone
I get the strangest feeling
The place is all my own.
It seems to nestle near me,
It whispers in my ear;
My books and pictures cheer me,
Hearth never was so dear.
In peace profound I lap me,
I take no stock of time,
And from the dreams that hap me,
I make (like this) a rhyme.
Oh, I'm ashamed of sa...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...y;
O, come, and let us fondly stray,
Where rosy Health shall lead the way,
And soft FAVONIUS lightly spread
A perfum'd carpet as we tread;
Ah! let us from the world remove,
The calm forgetfulness to prove,
Which at the still of evening's close,
Lulls the tir'd peasant to repose;
Repose, whose balmy joys o'er-pay
The sultry labours of the day.
And when the blue-ey'd dawn appears,
Just peeping thro' her veil of tears;
Or blushing opes her silver gate,
And on its thres...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...a-dub and pulling
an old granny by her legs. Her legs were straight out and
stiff and her butt was banging on the carpet. Those kids were
pretty drunk and the old granny wasn't too sober either, shout-
ing something like, "Let the Civil War come again, I'm ready
to ****!"
We went down to Little Redfish Lake. The campgrounds
there were just about abandoned. There were so many people
up at Big Redfish Lake and practically nobody camping at
Little Redfi...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...r child she sees.
Fain the youth would, in his first alarm,
With the veil that o'er her had been spread,
With the carpet, shield his love from harm;
But she casts them from her, void of dread,
And with spirit's strength,
In its spectre length,
Lifts her figure slowly from the bed.
"Mother! mother!"--Thus her wan lips say:
"May not I one night of rapture share?
From the warm couch am I chased away?
Do I waken only to despair?
It contents not thee
To have dri...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...bless,
And breath'd himself: then from the closet crept,
Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,
And over the hush'd carpet, silent, stept,
And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where, lo!--how fast she slept.
Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set
A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:--
O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!
The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,
The kettle-d...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...d where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell'd twigs, fair beds of primrose lie.
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming;
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid,
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring.
7
In thee my spring of life hath bid the while
A rose unfold beyond the summer's best,
The mystery of joy made manif...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...S
Well,—it was two days after my husband died—
Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number four—the room with the red wall-paper—
Some chorus girls and men were singing that song
'They'll soon be lighting candles
Round a box with silver handles'—and hearing them sing it
I started to cry. Just then he came along
And stopped on the stairs and turned and looked at me,
And took the cigar from his mouth and sort ...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...enge.
Not yet prepared?—By heaven, I change
My thought, and hold thy valor light
As that of some vain carpet knight,
Who ill deserved my courteous care,
And whose best boast is but to wear
A braid of his fair lady's hair.' 'I thank thee,
Roderick, for the word!
It nerves my heart, it steels my sword;
For I have sworn this braid to stain
In the best blood that warms thy vein.
Now, truce, farewell! and, rush, beg...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...le colors are gleaming,
But the strife, full of charms, in its own grace melts away
Freely the plain receives me,--with carpet far away reaching,
Over its friendly green wanders the pathway along.
Round me is humming the busy bee, and with pinion uncertain
Hovers the butterfly gay over the trefoil's red flower.
Fiercely the darts of the sun fall on me,--the zephyr is silent,
Only the song of the lark echoes athwart the clear air.
Now from the neighboring copse com...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...to see
Their habitat, though like the Miller of Dee,
I cared for none and no one cared for me.
III
A light blue carpet on the stair
And tall young footmen everywhere,
Tall young men with English faces
Standing rigidly in their places,
Rows and rows of them stiff and staid
In powder and breeches and bright gold braid;
And high above them on the wall
Hung other English faces-all
Part of the pattern of English life—
General Sir Charles, and his pretty wife,
Admi...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...night I remember our meeting;
My hair ‘like iron wire’, the grey dust
In the air of my house, the exact place
On the carpet where I kissed you
And how we talked on and on,
Too much in love for love,
Until the night was gone.
III
We acted out our love
By nearly going mad,
Gave up the jobs we had
To take a cottage on the moors
At less than garage rent.
For food we learned to pledge our dreams
And found, too late, the world redeems
What it had lent.
B...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...Lohengrin.
I hear them as I go through growing gloom
still years away from being skald or skin.
The ground's carpeted with petals as I throw
the aerosol, the HARP can, the cleared weeds
on top of dad's dead daffodils, then go,
with not one glance behind, away from Leeds.
The bus to the station's still the No. 1
but goes by routes that I don't recognise.
I look out for known landmarks as the sun
reddens the swabs of cloud in darkening skies.
Home, ...Read more of this...
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