Famous Clattering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Week-Night Service

by D. H. Lawrence
 The five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling, 
Imploring, protesting 
They know, but clamorously falling 
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

The silver moon 
That somebody has spun so high 
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught 
In the net of the night’s balloon, 
And sits...Read more of this...

A Note Left In Jimmy Leonards Shack

by James Wright
 Near the dry river's water-mark we found
 Your brother Minnegan,
Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground.
Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green,
Told me to find you, even if the rain,
 And tell you he was drowned.

I hid behind the chassis on the bank,
 The wreck of someone's Ford:
I was afraid to come and wake you drunk:
You told...Read more of this...

Fulfillment

by Dorothy Parker
 For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,
And tucked me in my bed at eight,
And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,
And watched me as I sat and stood:
That I might grow to womanhood
To hear a whistle and drop my wits
And break...Read more of this...

Far Within Us #2

by Vasko Popa
 Look here's that uninvited
Alien presence look it's here

A shudder on the ocean of tea in the cup
Rust taking hold
On the edges of our laughter
A snake coiled in the depths of the mirror

Will I be able to hide you
From your face in mine

Look it's the third shadow
On our imagined walk
Unexpected abyss
Between our words
Hoofs clattering
Below the vaults of our palates

Will I...Read more of this...

The Foreigner

by Amy Lowell
 Have at you, you Devils!
My back's to this tree,
For you're nothing so nice
That the hind-side of me
Would escape your assault.
Come on now, all three!
Here's a dandified gentleman,
Rapier at point,
And a wrist which whirls round
Like a circular joint.
A spatter of blood, man!
That's just to anoint
And make supple your limbs.
'Tis a pity the silk
Of your waistcoat is stained.
Why! Your heart's full...Read more of this...

To Contemplation

by Robert Southey
 Faint gleams the evening radiance thro' the sky,
The sober twilight dimly darkens round;
In short quick circles the shrill bat flits by,
And the slow vapour curls along the ground.

Now the pleas'd eye from yon lone cottage sees
On the green mead the smoke long-shadowing play;
The Red-breast on the blossom'd spray
Warbles wild her latest lay,
And sleeps along the dale the silent breeze.
Calm...Read more of this...

Morning-Land

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Old English songs, you bring to me 
A simple sweetness somewhat kin 
To birds that through the mystery 
Of earliest morn make tuneful din, 
While hamlet steeples sleepily
At cock-crow chime out three and four, 
Till maids get up betime and go 
With faces like the red sun low 
Clattering about the dairy floor....Read more of this...

Shirt

by Robert Pinsky
 The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

The Fatal Sisters

by Thomas Gray
 Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of Hell prepares!)
Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air. 

Glittering lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe and Randver's bane. 

See the grisly texture grow,
('Tis of human entrails made!)
And the weights that play below,
Each a gasping warrior's head. 

Shafts for shuttles, dipped in...Read more of this...

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

by Amy Lowell
 After a Print by George Cruikshank

It was a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled...Read more of this...

On A March Day

by Sara Teasdale
 Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind 
 That shakes the naked shadows on the ground, 
Making a key-board of the earth to strike 
 From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound, 

Bear witness for me that I loved my life, 
 All things that hurt me and all things that healed, 
And that I swore it...Read more of this...

Market days

by Jonas Mekas
 Mondays, way before dawn,
before even the first hint of blue in the windows,
we'd hear it start, off the road past our place,
over on the highway nearby,
in a clatter of market-bound traffic.

Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl,
or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the pace,
or sitting up high, on raised seats
(the women all wore...Read more of this...

Fridolin (The Walk To The Iron Factory)

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,
He would have studied to fulfil,
To please his God, with earnest will.

From the first hour when daylight shone
Till rang the vesper-chime,
He lived but for her will alone,
And deemed e'en that scarce...Read more of this...

The Intruder

by Carolyn Kizer
 My mother-- preferring the strange to the tame:
Dove-note, bone marrow, deer dung,
Frog's belly distended with finny young,
Leaf-mould wilderness, hare-bell, toadstool,
Odd, small snakes loving through the leaves,
Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all
Wild and natural -flashed out her instinctive love,
and quick, she
Picked up the fluttering. bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,
And held the little horror to the mirror, where
He...Read more of this...

Proud Music of The Storm

by Walt Whitman
 1
PROUD music of the storm! 
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! 
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! 
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! 
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; 
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! 
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...

The Old Huntsman

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed 
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece. 
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough 
It cost me, what with my daft management, 
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me, 
And backing losers; and the local bucks 
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged...Read more of this...

To Father* Kronos

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [written in a post-chaise.]

 (* In the original, Schwager, which has the 
twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.)

HASTEN thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead

Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,--
Striving and hoping, up, up!

Wide,...Read more of this...

With Scindia to Delphi

by Rudyard Kipling
 More than a hundred years ago, in a great battle fought near Delhi,
an Indian Prince rode fifty miles after the day was lost
with a beggar-girl, who had loved him and followed him in all his camps,
on his saddle-bow. He lost the girl when almost within sight of safety.
A Maratta trooper tells the story: --


The wreath of banquet overnight lay...Read more of this...

Julie Claire

by Robert William Service
 Oh Julie Claire was very fair,
Yet generous as well,
And many a lad of metal had
A saucy tale to tell
Of sultry squeeze beneath the trees
Or hugging in the hay . . .
Of love her share had Julie Claire
When life was lush and gay.

And then the village wealth to pillage
Came the Teuton horde;
The haughty Huns with mighty guns
And clattering of sword.
And...Read more of this...

The Hero of Rorkes Drift

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Twas at the camp of Rorke's Drift, and at tea-time,
And busily engaged in culinary operations was a private of the line;
But suddenly he paused, for he heard a clattering din,
When instantly two men on horseback drew rein beside him. 

"News from the front!" said one, "Awful news!" said the other,
"Of which, we are afraid, will put us to great...Read more of this...

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