Famous Clocks Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Clocks poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous clocks poems. These examples illustrate what a famous clocks poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Friedrich von Schiller
Hark where the bells toll, chiming, dull and steady,
The clock's slow hand hath reached the appointed time.
Well, be it so--prepare, my soul is ready,
Companions of the grave--the rest for crime!
Now take, O world! my last farewell--receiving
My parting kisses--in these tears they dwell!
Sweet are thy poisons while we taste believing,
Now we are quits--heart-poisoner, fare-thee-well!
Farewell, ye suns that once to joy...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
(Time, Noon.)
HUMPHREY:
See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!
WILLIAM:
Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy...Read more of this...
by
John Drinkwater
Persuasion
I At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again,...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered
over with silver, brocaded
In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes,
it lies there,
Warm from a woman's soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it,
caressing.
Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her
lingers and drugs me!
A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the "Octoroon."
But then at twenty-one I married
And had...Read more of this...
by
A S J Tessimond
The birds' shrill fluting
Beats on the pink blind,
Pierces the pink blind
At whose edge fumble the sun's
Fingers till one obtrudes
And stirs the thick motes.
The room is a close box of pink warmth.
The minutes click.
A man picks across the street
With a metal-pointed stick.
Three clocks drop each twelve pennies
On the drom of noon.
The birds end.
A child's cry pricks the hush.
The wind plucks...Read more of this...
by
Tristan Tzara
where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouth
our legs are stiff and knock together
our faces...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Rose did caper on her cheek --
Her Bodice rose and fell --
Her pretty speech -- like drunken men --
Did stagger pitiful --
Her fingers fumbled at her work --
Her needle would not go --
What ailed so smart a little Maid --
It puzzled me to know --
Till opposite -- I spied a cheek
That bore another Rose --
Just opposite -- Another...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
When I am in New York, I like to drop around at night,
To visit with my honest, genial friends, the Stoddards hight;
Their home in Fifteenth street is all so snug, and furnished so,
That, when I once get planted there, I don't know when to go;
A cosy cheerful refuge for the weary homesick guest,
Combining Yankee comforts with the freedom of...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
They sing their dearest songs --
He, she, all of them -- yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face....
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!
They clear the creeping moss --
Elders and juniors -- aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat....
Ah, no; the years, the...Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
If the water were clear enough,
if the water were still,
but the water is not clear,
the water is not still,
you would see yourself,
slipped out of your skin,
nosing upstream,
slapping, thrashing,
tumbling
over the rocks
till you paint them
with your belly's blood:
Finned Ego,
yard of muscle that coils,
uncoils.
If the knowledge were given you,
but it is not given,
for the membrane is clouded
with self-deceptions
and the iridescent image swims
through...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Great Streets of silence led away
To Neighborhoods of Pause --
Here was no Notice -- no Dissent
No Universe -- no laws --
By Clocks, 'twas Morning, and for Night
The Bells at Distance called --
But Epoch had no basis here
For Period exhaled....Read more of this...
by
John Lindley
A misprint in a newspaper reported: ‘Auden stepped from the train and was greeted by a small but enthusiastic crow.’
‘Hmm,’ Auden thought when first he saw
the bird, as train came to a stop,
‘I’ll make this image mine before
some Yorkshire upstart snaps it up.’
He drew a notebook from his mac’,
unclipped a biro from his tweed,
stared at the crow, the crow...Read more of this...
by
John Masefield
Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.
Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,
To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,
Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty...Read more of this...
by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here...Read more of this...
by
William Henry Davies
One night when I went down
Thames' side, in London Town,
A heap of rags saw I,
And sat me down close by.
That thing could shout and bawl,
But showed no face at all;
When any steamer passed
And blew a loud shrill blast,
That heap of rags would sit
And make a sound like it;
When struck...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
THE cock's clear voice into the clearer air
Where westward far I roam,
Mounts with a thrill of hope,
Falls with a sigh of home.
A rural sentry, he from farm and field
The coming morn descries,
And, mankind's bugler, wakes
The camp of enterprise.
He sings the morn upon the westward hills
Strange and remote and wild;
He sings it in the land
Where once I was a child.
He...Read more of this...
by
John Lindley
Wheeling them in,
the yard gate at half-mast
with its ticking hinge,
the tin bucket with a hairnet of webs,
the privy door ajar,
the path gloved with moss
ploughed by metal
through a scalped tyre -
in the shadows of the hood,
in the ripped silk
of the rocking, buckled pram,
none of the dead clocks moving.
And carrying them in
to a kitchen table,
a near-lifetime’s Woodies
coating each cough,
he...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
LET me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool,
on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic … a crony of old men
who wash sunlight in their fingers and
enjoy slow-pacing clocks....Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
To bind the fly (innocent or unaware)
In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.
There are far more spiders than the man in the street
supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It's like the Light --
A fashionless Delight --
It's like the Bee --
A dateless -- Melody --
It's like the Woods --
Private -- Like the Breeze --
Phraseless -- yet it stirs
The proudest Trees --
It's like the Morning --
Best -- when it's done --
And the Everlasting Clocks --
Chime -- Noon!...Read more of this...
by
A S J Tessimond
One day people will touch and talk perhaps
easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as
sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift
as a seagull flying,
And play will...Read more of this...
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