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Famous Clacking Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...locks

Chime midnight forever and ever

Amen to the lost hegemony of mill girls

Flocking through dawn fog, their clogs clacking,

Their beauty, only Vermeer could capture

O my lost beloved

In a field one foal tries to mount another,

The mare nibbling April grass;

The train dawdles on this country track

As an old man settles to his paperback.

The chatter of market stalls soothes me

More than the armoury of medication

I keep with me. Woodyards, scrapyards,

The stone g...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...fled before the tuneless jar
Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato,
Played on either pony's saddle by the clacking tonga-bar --
Played with human speech, I fancied, by the jigging, jolting bar.

"She was sweet," thought I, "last season, but 'twere surely wild unreason
Such tiny hope to freeze on as was offered by my Star,
When she whispered, something sadly: 'I -- we feel your going badly!'"
"And you let the chance escape you?" rapped the rattling tonga-bar.
"Wh...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...The men are glossy all over, snapping mortgages and scores

They slap fellow-souls at a distance, gun down the abusive

Clacking conductress, apologise over-loudly for their too

Quiet cars. Plump fingers stroke smooth cheeks - bounce

Bounce, bouncing baby- faces, so manly to wet-shave!



Head heavy from dreams of bronze-fleshed centaurs

Tense with ‘The New Poets’ - no rhythm, failure of connection,

Who slept with who to get in. Aargh!

Forty rose-bearing ten-year old fac...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...er cradle; 

The lonely sailor on far-off seas; and the grey-
minded scholar in his book-room;
The mill-hand bound to a clacking machine; and
the hunter in the forest;
And the solitary soul hiding friendless in the
wilderness of the city; 

Many human faces, full of care and longing, were
drawn irresistibly toward him,
By the charm of something known to every heart,
yet very strange and lovely,
And at the sound of that singing wonderfully
all their faces were lightened. 

"Wh...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...knees well bent, 
Fingers a flicking, 
They dancing went. 
Up sides and over, 
And round and round, 
They crossed click-clacking 
The Parish bound; 
By Tupman's meadow 
They did their mile, 
Tee-to-tum 
On a three-barred stile. 
Then straight through Whipham, 
Downhill to Week, 
Footing it lightsome, 
But not too quick, 
Up fields to Watchet 
And on through Wye, 
Till seven fine churches 
They'd seen slip by -- 
Seven fine churches, 
And five old mills, 
Farms in the valley, ...Read more of this...
by de la Mare, Walter



...oss the sea 
And go to other work. 

"And wherefore? Wherefore," Withen said, 
"Is this red quarrel sought? 
Because of clacking painted hags 
And foreign fops at Court! 
Because 'tis said a drunken king, 
In lands we've never seen, 
Said something foolish in his cups 
Of our young silly queen! 

"Good faith! in her old great-aunt's time 
'Twere different, I vow: 
If old Dame Ruth were here, she'd get 
Some sharp advising now!" 
(At this a grim smile went about 
For men could...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...k. 
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard 
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune 
of disparate wooden clogs 
carelessly clacking over 
a grease-stained filling-station floor. 
(In another country the clogs would all be tested. 
Each pair there would have identical pitch.) 
--A pity not to have heard 
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird 
who sings above the broken gasoline pump 
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque: 
three towers, five silver crosses. 
--Yes,...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth
...ances, 
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine, 
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot 
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen. 
But if you should say this is something it is not, 
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny 
and ridiculous and crowded with all 
the believing money....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...hards are filled
With cherry blossoms at butterfly poise.
Hawthorn buds are cracking,
And in the distance a shepherd is clacking
His shears, snip-snipping the wool from his sheep.
The notes are asleep,
Lying adrift on the air
In level lines
Like sunlight hanging in pines and pines,
Strung and threaded,
All imbedded
In the blue-green of the hazy pines.
Lines -- long, straight lines!
And stems,
Long, straight stems
Pushing up
To the cup of blue, blue sky.
Stems growing misty
Wi...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...the sky,
The United States
Goes by.

Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. 
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here comes the dice -horn, here comes the vice -horn,
Here comes the snarl -horn, brawl -horn, lewd -horn,
Followed by the prude -horn, bleak and squeaking: —
(Some of them from Kansas, some of themn from Kansas.)
Here comes the hod -horn, plod -horn, sod -horn,
Nevermore-to-roam -horn, loam -horn, home -hor...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things