Famous Cobbles Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Cobbles poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cobbles poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cobbles poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Tebb, Barry
...bardic inspiration
I’ve only to step off the coach in Leeds and it whistles
Its bravuras down every wind, rattles the cobbles in Kirkgate Market
Hovers in the drunken brogue of a Dubliner in the chippie
As we share our love of Joyce the Aire becomes the Liffey.
All my three muses have abandoned me. Daisy in Asia,
Brenda protesting outside the Royal Free, Barbara seeing clients at the C.A.B.
Past Saltaire’s Mill, the world’s eighth wonder,
The new...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...houses lazing in lantern light.
The ashes of the carts they pulled have smouldered into silence,
The clatter over cobbles of iron shoes and shouts of “Whoa, lass!”
Hushed in this last weariness....Read more of this...
by
Warren, Robert Penn
...of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.
Everything seems an echo of something else.
And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound.The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.
But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind...Read more of this...
by
Heaney, Seamus
...My "place of clear water,"
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass
and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,
after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows
those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills....Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,
Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For my sake sail, and never look back,
Said the looking land.
Sails drank the wind, and white as milk
He sped into the ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...Park where
The tram terminus still
Stands, a bay with poles
Of steel too tall and
Strong to shift, between
The cobbles, tram lines
Lay buried, the upper
Deck is filled with the
Smoke of Capstan Full
Strength and nicotined
Fingers grasp threepenny
Workman’s returns and
“The Evening Post” is read
And rolled and slapped
On Uncle Arthur’s greasy
Overalls from Hudswell
Clarks where ‘Portmadoc’
And ‘Pride of the Glens’
Stand in the sheds, their
Giant wheel sp...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...en taken by order
Half the houses boarded up
Half with chimneys smoking.
20
Grass is growing
Between the cobbles
Clotheslines are empty
The props have fallen
Our mams raised up
Like a draw-bridge
For the coal-carts
To pass under.
21
Beneath the City Station
Under the dark arches
The river rushes
Through the catacombs
Of vaulted stone.
By the new museum
The weir is cold and clear
Howarths’ timber yard’s
Sawdust smells
Hang in the...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...From Burmantofts.
20
We heard him a mile off
Nights in summer when
He trundled round the
Corner over the cobbles
Jamming the wood brake
Blocks whoaing the horses
With their gleaming brasses
And our mams were always
Waiting where he stopped.
21
Double summer-time made
The nights go on for ever
And no-one cared any more
How long we played what
Or where and we were left
Alone and that’s all I wanted
Then or now to be left alone
Never to be ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...orks with three broken
Windows, lathes and benches open to the
Wind of my eyes this Sunday morning as I
Fly over the cobbles of Leeds nine to the
Aire’s side, the steps broken under the weight
Of the Transpennine Trail; forty years ago
I stood here with Margaret who whispered
In my ear, “I love you, I love you”.
Margaret, Margaret, where are you?
3
Great timbered escarpments over green and grey
Terraces to the rolling sky following the shiny way
To the C...Read more of this...
by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.
On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on...Read more of this...
by
Levertov, Denise
...
just as we needed a new broom, was not one of the Hidden Ones?)
Crates of fruit are unloading
across the street on the cobbles,
and a brazier flaring
to warm the men and burn trash. He wished us
luck when we bought the broom. But not luck
brought us here. By design
clean air and cold wind polish
the river lights, by design
we are to live now in a new place....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...English
Are one language indivisible."
That scent of sawdust, the milkcart the pony pulled
Each morning over the cobbles, the earthenware jug
I carried to be filled, ladle by shining ladle,
From the great churns and there were birds singing
In the still blue over the fields beyond the village
But because I was city-bred I could not name them.
I write to please myself: ‘Only other poets read poems’...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...Poems do not always satisfy the soul,
The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more
Than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the unending vistas
Of the moor, an infinity of purity that excels even Mallarm?.
I sit on the cracked steps to the church, sipping tea
With my eye on the Black Bull where Bramwell worshipped
Until a mobile phone playing ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’
Disturbs my reverie and I...Read more of this...
by
Mekas, Jonas
...gs out barking from every yard along the way,
in a cloud of dust.
And on, by narrow alleyways,
rattling across the cobbles,
up to the well in the market square.
With a crowd already there,
the wagons pull up by a stone wall
and people wave across to each other,
a bright noisy swarm.
And from there, first tossing our horse a tuft of clover,
father would go to look the livestock over.
Strolling past fruitwagons loaded with apples and pears,
past village women ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...I
Through my bedroom window
The coal carts jolted over the cobbles
A slow heavy rhythm full,
Light and fast returning empty.
The coal office manager was a dwarf
With sixty year old skin
On a ten year old’s body and
Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face.
The enormous shire horses neighed
In warning if you went near,
Their polished brasses gleaming,
Their worn blinkers waxed;
When they brought in ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...the street she saw a bright
Streak of colours, wet and gay,
Red like blood. Crushed but fair,
Her fruit stained the cobbles of the way.
Monsieur Popain joined her there.
"Tiens, Mademoiselle,
c'est le General Bonaparte,
partant pour la Guerre!"...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...power.
7
Then once more, cloaked and ready, he set out,
Tripping the footsteps of the eager boy
Along the dappled cobbles, while the rout
Within the tavern jeered at his employ.
Through new-burst elm leaves filtered the white moon,
Who peered and splashed between the twinkling boughs,
Flooded the open spaces, and took flight
Before tall, serried houses in platoon,
Guarded by shadows. Past the Custom House
They took their hurried way in the Spring-scented night.<...Read more of this...
by
Noyes, Alfred
...e with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dard inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...st is sound
And how my arms are strong!
Oh, one gets used to anything!
It's awkward at the first,
And jolting o'er the cobbles gives
A man a grievous thirst;
But of all ills that one must bear
That's surely not the worst.
For there's the cafe open wide,
And there they set me up;
And there I smoke my caporal
Above my cider cup;
And play manille a while before
I hurry home to sup.
At home the wife is waiting me
With smiles and pigeon-pie;
And little Zi-Zi claps her h...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...the high Cs rise in stereo,
what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern
at least 300 million years ago.
Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D
lifted from a source that bears your name,
the one we hear decay, the one we see,
the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.
This world, with far too many people in,
starts on the TV logo as a taw,
then ping-pong, tennis, football; then one spin
to show us all, then shots of the Gulf War.
As the coal with reddish du...Read more of this...
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