Famous Click Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Bight

by Elizabeth Bishop
 [On my birthday]


At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one...Read more of this...

Phenomenal Woman

by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to...Read more of this...

Harrow-on-the-Hill

by John Betjeman
 When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary's filling
With the sea.

Then Harrow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses...Read more of this...

Doctor of Billiards

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Of all among the fallen from on high, 
We count you last and leave you to regain 
Your born dominion of a life made vain 
By three spheres of insidious ivory. 
You dwindle to the lesser tragedy—
Content, you say. We call, but you remain. 
Nothing alive gone wrong could be so plain, 
Or quite so blasted with absurdity. 

You...Read more of this...

A Minor Poet

by Amy Levy
 "What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"


Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh,...Read more of this...

crematorium-return

by Rg Gregory
 (to where the ashes of both
 my parents are strewn)

i)
ok the pair of you lie still
what's disturbing me need pass
no fretful hand over your peace
this world's vicissitudes are stale
fodder for you who feed the grass

some particles of your two dusts
by moon's wish accident or wind
may have leapt that late-life wound
refound in you the rhapsodists
first-married days had twinned

i've come today...Read more of this...

The Souls distinct connection

by Emily Dickinson
 The Soul's distinct connection
With immortality
Is best disclosed by Danger
Or quick Calamity --

As Lightning on a Landscape
Exhibits Sheets of Place --
Not yet suspected -- but for Flash --
And Click -- and Suddenness....Read more of this...

Sisters cake

by Eugene Field
 I'd not complain of Sister Jane, for she was good and kind,
Combining with rare comeliness distinctive gifts of mind;
Nay, I'll admit it were most fit that, worn by social cares,
She'd crave a change from parlor life to that below the stairs,
And that, eschewing needlework and music, she should take
Herself to the substantial art of manufacturing cake.

At breakfast, then, it...Read more of this...

Whereas At Morning In A Jeweled Crown

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Whereas at morning in a Jeweled Crown
I bit my fingers and was hard to please,
Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down
I feel tonight more happy and at ease:
Feet running in the corridors, men quick— 
Buckling their sword-belts, bumping down the stair,
Challenge, and rattling bridge-chain, and the click
Of hooves on pavement—this will clear the air.
Private this chamber as it...Read more of this...

The Owl

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his...Read more of this...

The Night Journey

by Rupert Brooke
 Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;
The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.
Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,
Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes

Glares the imperious mystery of the way.
Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train
Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,
Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .

As...Read more of this...

The Lotos-eaters

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, 
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land 
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
Along the...Read more of this...

Transit

by Richard Wilbur
 A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?

Still, nothing...Read more of this...

Bridge-Guard in the Karroo

by Rudyard Kipling
 1901 ". . . and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge." District Orders-Lines of Communication, South African War.
Sudden the desert changes,
 The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
 Stand up like the thrones of Kings --

Ramparts of slaughter and peril --
 Blazing, amazing, aglow --
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
 And the wine-dark flats...Read more of this...

Stravinskys Three Pieces

by Amy Lowell
 First Movement
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
Drawing sound out and out
Until it is a screeching thread,
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
It hurts.
Whee-e-e!
Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!
There are drums here,
Banging,
And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
Of the market-place.
Whee-e-e!
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones;
Clumsy and hard they are,
And uneven,
Losing half a beat
Because the stones are slippery.
Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong!
The...Read more of this...

The Only Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew
 For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through.
 The fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam,
 And the Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream.
 The last ash fell from the...Read more of this...

Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker The

by William Allingham
 Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath's green mound?
Only the plaintive yellow bird
Sighing in sultry fields around,
Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee! -
Only the grasshopper and the bee? -
"Tip-tap, rip-rap,
Tick-a-tack-too!
Scarlet leather, sewn together,
This will make a shoe.
Left, right, pull it tight;
Summer days are warm;
Underground in winter,
Laughing at the storm!"
Lay your ear close to the hill.
Do you not catch...Read more of this...

Irish Love Song

by Margaret Widdemer
 Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me, 
The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free, 
Far too clever a lover not to be having still 
A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill -- 
Love on the field and love on the path...Read more of this...

Pc

by David Lehman
 for Aaron Fogel 

Politically-correct 
personal computers 
point and click. 

President Clinton
(codename Peacock) 
can't protect 
crack pushing 
Communist Party 
cops pursuing 
a care package 
of peasant consciousness
in a car park. 

Poverty's a crime,
and capital punishment
par for the course,
in this penal code. 

A plausible cliffhanger 
can't cure the paralyzed, 
prevent cancer, 
or prepare California 
for Perry Como, 
that peerless crooner. 

Pitcher...Read more of this...

Traveling Dream

by Marge Piercy
 I am packing to go to the airport 
but somehow I am never packed. 
I keep remembering more things 
I keep forgetting. 

Secretly the clock is bolting 
forward ten minutes at a click 
instead of one. Each time 
I look away, it jumps. 

Now I remember I have to find 
the cats. I have four cats 
even when I...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...

The Philosophers

by Barry Tebb
 Lavender musk rose from the volume I was reading through,

The college crest impressed in gold, tooled gold lettering on the spine.

It was not mine but my son’s, jammed in the corner of a cardboard box

With dozens more; just one box of a score, stored in a heap

Across my ex-wife’s floor, our son gone far, as far as Samarkand and...Read more of this...

What The Dog Perhaps Hears

by Lisel Mueller
 If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us, 
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth; 
it may be asparagus heaving, 
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens. 
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house...Read more of this...

Off the Ground

by Walter de la Mare
 Three jolly Farmers 
Once bet a pound 
Each dance the others would 
Off the ground. 
Out of their coats 
They slipped right soon, 
And neat and nicesome 
Put each his shoon. 
One--Two--Three! 
And away they go, 
Not too fast, 
And not too slow; 
Out from the elm-tree's 
Noonday shadow, 
Into the sun 
And across the meadow. 
Past the schoolroom,...Read more of this...

Trooper Campbell

by Henry Lawson
 One day old Trooper Campbell 
Rode out to Blackman's Run, 
His cap-peak and his sabre 
Were glancing in the sun. 
'Twas New Year's Eve, and slowly 
Across the ridges low 
The sad Old Year was drifting 
To where the old years go. 

The trooper's mind was reading 
The love-page of his life -- 
His love for Mary Wylie 
Ere...Read more of this...

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