Famous Chips Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Hill Wife

by Robert Frost
 I. LONELINESS

 Her Word

One ought not to have to care
 So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
 To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
 With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
 Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the...Read more of this...

Half-And-Half

by Naomi Shihab Nye
 You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.

At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed mamool.

This morning we lit the...Read more of this...

The Song of the Oak

by G K Chesterton
 The Druids waved their golden knives 
And danced around the Oak 
When they had sacrificed a man; 
But though the learned search and scan 
No single modern person can 
Entirely see the joke. 
But though they cut the throats of men 
They cut not down the tree, 
And from the blood the saplings spring 
Of oak-woods yet to be....Read more of this...

Sonnet 128: How oft when thou my music music playst

by William Shakespeare
 How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled,...Read more of this...

For Jane: With All The Love I Had Which Was Not Enough

by Charles Bukowski
 I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads 
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick 
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats...Read more of this...

The Fruit Shop

by Amy Lowell
 Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into
As she picked her dainty passage through
The dusty street. "Ah, Mademoiselle,
A dirty pathway, we need rain,
My poor fruits suffer, and the shell
Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain
Here in the sun it has shrunk again.
The baker down...Read more of this...

Our Pote

by Robert William Service
 A pote is sure a goofy guy;
He ain't got guts like you or I
 To tell the score;
He ain't goy gumption 'nuff to know
The game of life's to get the dough,
 Then get some more.
Take Brother Bill, he used to be
The big shot of the family,
 The first at school;
But since about a year ago,
Through readin' Longfeller and Poe,
...Read more of this...

Georgia Dusk

by Jean Toomer
 The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
 The setting sun, too indolent to hold
 A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue, 

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
 An orgy for some genius of the South
 With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
...Read more of this...

My Portion is Defeat -- today --

by Emily Dickinson
 My Portion is Defeat -- today --
A paler luck than Victory --
Less Paeans -- fewer Bells --
The Drums don't follow Me -- with tunes --
Defeat -- a somewhat slower -- means --
More Arduous than Balls --

'Tis populous with Bone and stain --
And Men too straight to stoop again --,
And Piles of solid Moan --
And Chips of Blank -- in...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXVIII

by William Shakespeare
  How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so...Read more of this...

Acid

by Roddy Lumsden
 "She was right. I had to find something new. 
There was only one thing for it."

My mother told it straight, London will finish you off,
and I'd heard what Doctor Johnson said, When a man is tired 
of London, he is tired of life, but I'd been tired of life

for fourteen years; Scotland, never thoroughly enlightened, 
was gathering back its...Read more of this...

Laughter and Tears IX

by Kahlil Gibran
 As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena 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...Read more of this...

The Has-Been

by Carl Sandburg
 A STONE face higher than six horses stood five thousand
years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret.
A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the
end of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a
mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the
old looker-on.
The boy laughs and goes whistling "ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee."
The stone...Read more of this...

The Coward

by Robert William Service
 'Ave you seen Bill's mug in the Noos to-day?
'E's gyned the Victoriar Cross, they say;
Little Bill wot would grizzle and run away,
 If you 'it 'im a swipe on the jawr.
'E's slaughtered the Kaiser's men in tons;
'E's captured one of their quick-fire guns,
And 'e 'adn't no practice in killin' 'Uns
 Afore 'e went off to the war.

Little Bill wot...Read more of this...

Blinks through Blood-shot Walks

by T Wignesan
When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half awakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while
Exchanges a casual passing...Read more of this...

The Touchstone

by William Allingham
 A man there came, whence none could tell, 
Bearing a Touchstone in his hand; 
And tested all things in the land 
By its unerring spell. 

Quick birth of transmutation smote 
The fair to foul, the foul to fair; 
Purple nor ermine did he spare, 
Nor scorn the dusty coat. 

Of heirloom jewels, prized so much, 
Were many changed to...Read more of this...

To a Steam Roller

by Marianne Moore
 The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them. 

Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
Were not 'impersonal judment in aesthetic
matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you 

might fairly achieve
it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
of...Read more of this...

Asparagus

by Marriott Edgar
 Mr. Ramsbottom went to the races, 
A thing as he'd ne'er done before,
And as luck always follers beginners, 
Won five pounds, no-less and no-more.

He felt himself suddenly tempted
To indulge in some reckless orgee, 
So he went to a caffy-a-teerer 
And had a dressed crab with his tea.

He were crunching the claws at the finish
And wondering what next he would...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

Sign-Post

by Robinson Jeffers
 Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the...Read more of this...

Morning Song Of Senlin

by Conrad Aiken
 from Senlin: A Biography 


It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning 
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, 
I arise, I face the sunrise, 
And do the things my fathers learned to do. 
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops 
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, 
And I myself on...Read more of this...

The Fairy Temple; Or Oberons Chapel

by Robert Herrick
 THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON'S CHAPEL

DEDICATED TO MR JOHN MERRIFIELD,
COUNSELLOR AT LAW

RARE TEMPLES THOU HAST SEEN, I KNOW,
AND RICH FOR IN AND OUTWARD SHOW;
SURVEY THIS CHAPEL BUILT, ALONE,
WITHOUT OR LIME, OR WOOD, OR STONE.
THEN SAY, IF ONE THOU'ST SEEN MORE FINE
THAN THIS, THE FAIRIES' ONCE, NOW THINE.

THE TEMPLE

A way enchaced with glass and beads
There is, that to the Chapel...Read more of this...

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

by Larry Levis
 --The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
 --for my brother

Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

Summer With Margaret

by Barry Tebb
 When my mam had to go

Up north to look after gran,

Margaret’s mam said I could

Stop with them; while they were

Sorting it out Margaret looked

Away, pretending to go all shy

But there was a gleam in her eye,

Anyway it was the six weeks’

Holiday and six weeks with

Margaret night and day was a

Sun and blue sky heaven to my

Ten-year old heart.. the...Read more of this...

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