Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Chequered Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Lowell, Amy
...n leaf in your wig.
Pluck it off, I beg you,
Or I shall die of laughing."
A yellow wall
Aflare in the sunlight,
Chequered with shadows,
Shadows of vine leaves,
Shadows of masks.
Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant,
Then passing on,
More masks always replacing them.
Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind
Pursuing masks with plumes and high heels,
The sunlight shining under their insteps.
One,
One, two,
One, two, three,
There is a t...Read more of this...



by Lowell, Amy
...s perpendicular grey surface
With the sharp precision of tools.
The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,
A chequered table of blacks and greys.
Oblong blocks of flatness
Crawl by with low-geared engines,
And pass to short upright squares
Shrinking with distance.
A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,
And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,
A narrow, level bar of steel.
Hard cubes of lemon
Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings
...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
..., pronounced complete, 
Endure effacement by another part? 
Was the thing done?--then, what's to do again? 
See, in the chequered pavement opposite, 
Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb, 
And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid-- 
He did not overlay them, superimpose 
The new upon the old and blot it out, 
But laid them on a level in his work, 
Making at last a picture; there it lies. 
So, first the perfect separate forms were made, 
The portions of mankind; and after, s...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...e high and clear
Through her unrivalled circulation,
Or, sanctimonious insincere,
She damned me with a misquotation -
A chequered but a sweet relation,
Say, was it not, my granny dear?

Believe me, granny, altogether
Yours, though perhaps to your surprise.
Oft have you spruced my wounded feather,
Oft brought a light into my eyes -
For notice still the writer cries.
In any civil age or nation,
The book that is not talked of dies.
So that shall be my termination:
Wh...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...nces that they here
Have met, in this base world of servile lies.


The dawn is dressed in blossom and in dew,
And chequered too
With very tender light—it looks as though
Frail plumes of sun and silver, through the mist,
Glided across the garden to and fro,
And with a soft caress the mosses kissed.


Our wondrous ponds of blue
Tremble and wake with golden shimmerings;
Swift emerald flights beneath the trees dart through.
And now the light from hedge and path an...Read more of this...



by Popa, Vasko
...pure dreaming
Of silk smiling of striped foreboding
Of my cloth of lace

My rags of spotted hope
Of burnished desire of chequered glances
Of skin from my face

Give me back my rags
Give me when I ask you nicely...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ll invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the chequered shade,
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the livelong daylight fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in o...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
....
All human dwellings left behind,
We sped like meteors through the sky,
When with its crackling sound the night
Is chequered with the northern light:
Town - village - none were on our track,
But a wild plain of far extent, 
And bounded by a forest black;
And, save the scarce seen battlement
On distant heights of some strong hold,
Against the Tartars built of old,
No trace of man. The year before
A Turkish army had marched o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
T...Read more of this...

by Tynan, Katharine
...and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, 
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; 
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early: 
And the day's a long one since the dawn was red. 

On the chilly lakelet, in that pleasant gloaming, 
See the sad swans sailing: they shall have no rest:
Never a voice to greet them save the bittern's booming 
Where the ghostly sallows sway against...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ack ground.

Six months he lay still. Six months. And the 
water welled up in his body,
and soft blue spots chequered it. He lay still, for the 
ash stick
held him in place. Six months! Then her face 
came out of a mist of green.
Pink and white and frail like Dresden china, lilies-of-the-valley
at her breast, puce-coloured silk sheening about her. Under 
the young
green leaves, the horse at a foot-pace, the high yellow wheels of 
the chaise
scarcel...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...This little bowl is like a mossy pool
In a Spring wood, where dogtooth violets grow
Nodding in chequered sunshine of the trees;
A quiet place, still, with the sound of birds,
Where, though unseen, is heard the endless song
And murmur of the never resting sea.
'T was winter, Roger, when you made this cup,
But coming Spring guided your eager hand
And round the edge you fashioned young green leaves,
A proper chalice made to hold the shy
And little fl...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:
You're every bit as good as that lot are!)

All the pension queue came out to stare.
Dad was sprawled beside the postbox (still VR) ,
his cap turned inside up beside his head,...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Chequered poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things