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Famous Collar Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Suckling, Sir John
...ot stay on, which they did bring; 
It was too wide a peck: 
And to say truth (for out it must), 
It looked like a great collar (just) 
About our young colt's neck.

Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
Like little mice, stole in and out, 
As if they feared the light: 
But oh! she dances such a way, 
No sun upon an Easter Day 
Is half so fine a sight!

He would have kissed her once or twice, 
But she would not, she was so nice, 
She would not do 't in sight: 
And then she look...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...
 The State exists for the State alone."
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
 And an answering lump by the collar-bone.],


Some die shouting in gas or fire;
 Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, caught on the wire -
 Some die suddenly. This will not.


"Regis suprema voluntas Lex"
[It will follow the regular course of--throats.]
Some die pinned by the broken decks,
 Some die sobbing between the boats.


Some die eloquen...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...s staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose, 
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning 
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager 
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...most, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer,
Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved from her collar,
Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of human affection.
Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside,
Where was their favorite pasture. Behind them followed the watch-dog,
Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his instinct,
Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly
Waving his bushy...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...tyrant barons grim. 
 He freed the towns—confronting in his lair 
 Hugo the Eagle; boldly did he dare 
 To break the collar of Saverne, the ring 
 Of Colmar, and the iron torture thing 
 Of Schlestadt, and the chain that Haguenau bore. 
 Such Eviradnus was a wrong before, 
 Good but most terrible. In the dread scale 
 Which princes weighted with their horrid tale 
 Of craft and violence, and blood and ill, 
 And fire and shocking deeds, his sword was still 
 God's ...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...his bare a maiden shield, a casque; that held 
The horse, the spear; whereat Sir Gareth loosed 
A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to heel, 
A cloth of roughest web, and cast it down, 
And from it like a fuel-smothered fire, 
That lookt half-dead, brake bright, and flashed as those 
Dull-coated things, that making slide apart 
Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there burns 
A jewelled harness, ere they pass and fly. 
So Gareth ere he parted flashed in arms. 
Then as ...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...ous from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and panties,
...Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...these reveries.

Brennbaum. 

The sky-like limpid eyes,
The circular infant's face,
The stiffness from spats to collar
Never relaxing into grace;

The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,
Showed only when the daylight fell
Level across the face
Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable".

Mr. Nixon 

In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht
Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer
Dangers of delay. "Consider
Carefully the reviewer.
...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...r> 
Harry sits down, and in his open side 
The grisly wound reveals of which he died, 
And ghastly Charles, turning his collar low, 
The purple thread about his neck does show, 
Then whispering to his son in words unheard, 
Through the locked door both of them disappeared. 
The wondrous night the pensive King revolves, 
And rising straight on Hyde's disgrace resolves. 

At his first step, he Castlemaine does find, 
Bennet, and Coventry, as 't were designed; 
And they,...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...ioning 
their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, 
gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes 
labeled inside the collar "Potentate" 
and "Vizier." Here their chairs, blazoned 
with the Masons' sign, huddled 
like convalescents, lean against one another 

on the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles 
the hierophants carried in parades; 
here's a splendid golden staff some ranking officer waved, 
topped with a golden pyramid and a tiny, 
inquisitive sphinx.Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...f grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can t...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
... . ."
Said the Chinese nightingale.

The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,
Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry,
Sang impolitely, as though by himself,
Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry:
"Back through a hundred, hundred years
Hear the waves as they climb the piers,
Hear the howl of the silver seas,
Hear the thunder.
Hear the gongs of holy China
How the waves and tunes combine
In a rhythmic clashing wonder,
Incantation old and fine:
`Dra...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...ep folds around a dry foot, shod 
With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. 

The swarms that hum about her collar-bones 
As the lascivious streams caress the stones, 
Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, 
Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes 

Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays 
Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, 
Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae. 
O charm of nothing decked in folly! they 

Who laugh and name you ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...e must die, or live,
     The praise that faith and valor give.'
     With that he blew a bugle note,
     Undid the collar from his throat,
     Unbonneted, and by the wave
     Sat down his brow and hands to rave.
     Then faint afar are heard the feet
     Of rushing steeds in gallop fleet;
     The sounds increase, and now are seen
     Four mounted squires in Lincoln green;
     Two who bear lance, and two who lead
     By loosened rein a saddled steed;
    ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ve the mere.' 

Then in the light's last glimmer Tristram showed 
And swung the ruby carcanet. She cried, 
`The collar of some Order, which our King 
Hath newly founded, all for thee, my soul, 
For thee, to yield thee grace beyond thy peers.' 

`Not so, my Queen,' he said, `but the red fruit 
Grown on a magic oak-tree in mid-heaven, 
And won by Tristram as a tourney-prize, 
And hither brought by Tristram for his last 
Love-offering and peace-offering unto thee.Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...many a gore**. *loins **plait
White was her smock*, and broider'd all before, *robe or gown
And eke behind, on her collar about
Of coal-black silk, within and eke without.
The tapes of her white volupere* *head-kerchief 
Were of the same suit of her collere;
Her fillet broad of silk, and set full high:
And sickerly* she had a likerous** eye. *certainly **lascivious
Full small y-pulled were her browes two,
And they were bent*, and black as any sloe. *arched...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest,
A jewelled collar shone upon his breast,
A giant ruby glittered in his crown -----
Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town.
In him the glories of an ancient line
Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine,
Were centred; and to him with loyal awe
The people looked for leadership and law.
Ten thousand knights, the safeguard of the land,
Lay like a single sword...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ion
Amphiorax at Thebes lost his life:
My husband had a legend of his wife
Eryphile, that for an ouche* of gold *clasp, collar
Had privily unto the Greekes told,
Where that her husband hid him in a place,
For which he had at Thebes sorry grace.
Of Luna told he me, and of Lucie;
They bothe made their husbands for to die,
That one for love, that other was for hate.
Luna her husband on an ev'ning late
Empoison'd had, for that she was his foe:
Lucia liquorish lov'd her hu...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...ght in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand 
 his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
 with a sable collar over his robe
 and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
 and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason 
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika 
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky 
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three re...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...l go to town 
On his next little fling. If he's entranced today 
By the way you finger your silk throat inside your collar,
Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Sally, Jane. But then I'd whisper
Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write.
His funeral, if he's not up to it. What we feel
Is mortal, and won't come again.
*
So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl
Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!")
Under fat red gooseberries, g...Read more of this...

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