Famous Collecting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Lobster

by Carl Rakosi
 Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms, 
green sand, pebbles, 
broken shells.

Off Suno Saki, 60 fathoms, 
gray sand, pebbles, 
bubbles rising.

Plasma-bearer
and slow-
motion benthos!

The fishery vessel Ion 
drops anchor here
 collecting 
plankton smears and fauna.

Plasma-bearer, visible
sea purge,
 sponge and kelpleaf.
Halicystus the Sea Bottle

resembles emeralds 
and is the largest 
cell in the world.

Young sea horse
Hippocampus twenty
minutes old,

nobody has ever 
seen this marine 
freak blink.

It...Read more of this...

As Consequent Etc

by Walt Whitman
 AS consequent from store of summer rains, 
Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, 
Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations, 
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, 
Songs of continued years I sing.

Life’s ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend, 
With the old streams of death.) 

Some threading Ohio’s farm-fields or the woods, 
Some down Colorado’s cañons from sources of...Read more of this...

CIA Dope Calypso

by Allen Ginsberg
 In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought...Read more of this...

On a Theme by Frost

by Robert Francis
 Amherst never had a witch
O Coos or of Grafton

But once upon a time
There were three old women.

One wore a small beard
And carried a big umbrella.

One stood in the middle
Of the road hailing cars.

One drove an old cart
All over the town collecting junk.

They were not weird sisters,
No relation to one another.

A duly accredited witch I
Never heard Amherst ever had

But as...Read more of this...

These I Singing in Spring

by Walt Whitman
 THESE, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers, 
(For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy? 
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?) 
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates, 
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences,...Read more of this...

In Plaster

by Sylvia Plath
 I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And...Read more of this...

Driver Smith

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Twas Driver Smith of Battery A was anxious to see a fight; 
He thought of the Transvaal all the day, he thought of it all the night -- 
"Well, if the battery's left behind, I'll go to the war," says he, 
"I'll go a-driving and ambulance in the ranks of the A.M.C. 
"I'm fairly sick of these here parades...Read more of this...

Book Lover

by Robert William Service
 I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"some day," I say, "I...Read more of this...

The Battle of Inkermann

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1854, and on the 5th November,
Which Britain will no doubt long remember,
When the Russians plotted to drive the British army into the sea,
But at the bayonet charge the British soon made them flee. 

With fourteen hundred British, fifteen thousand Russians were driven back,
At half-past seven o'clock in the morning they made the attack,
But the...Read more of this...

Peter Anderson And Co

by Henry Lawson
 He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago, 
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.', 
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood -- 
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good. 
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had -- 
He was fond of beer and leisure --...Read more of this...

Crow Goes Hunting

by Ted Hughes
Crow
Decided to try words. 

He imagined some words for the job, a lovely pack-
Clear-eyed, resounding, well-trained, 
With strong teeth. 
You could not find a better bred lot. 

He pointed out the hare and away went the words
Resounding. 
Crow was Crow without fail, but what is a hare? 

It converted itself to a concrete bunker. 
The words circled protesting, resounding. 

Crow...Read more of this...

Stamp Collector

by Robert William Service
 My worldly wealth I hoard in albums three,
My life collection of rare postage stamps;
My room is cold and bare as you can see,
My coat is old and shabby as a tramp's;
Yet more to me than balances in banks,
My albums three are worth a million francs.

I keep them in that box beside my bed,
For who would dream such treasures it...Read more of this...

Judge Selah Lively

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Suppose you stood just five feet two,
And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candle light
Until you became an attorney at law?
And then suppose through your diligence,
And regular church attendance,
You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,
Collecting notes and mortgages,
And representing all the widows
In the Probate Court? And through it all
They jeered at your size, and laughed at...Read more of this...

Romulus and Remus

by Rudyard Kipling
 Oh, little did the Wolf-Child care--
 When first he planned his home, 
What City should arise and bear
 The weight and state of Rome.

A shiftless, westward-wandering tramp,
 Checked by the Tiber flood, 
He reared a wall around his camp
 Of uninspired mud.

But when his brother leaped the Wall
 And mocked its height and make,
He guessed the future of it...Read more of this...

A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton

by James Thomson
 Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth, 
To mingle with his stars; and every muse,
Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight
Of honours due to his illustrious name?
But what can man?--Even now the sons of light,
In strains high-warbled to seraphic lyre,
Hail his arrival on the coast of bliss.
Yet am not I deterr'd, though high the theme,
And sung to harps...Read more of this...

In The Baggage Room At Greyhound

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal 
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky 
 waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart 
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in 
 the night-time red downtown heaven 
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering 
 these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty 
 of...Read more of this...

Sackcloth

by Brooks Haxton
 I made sackcloth also my garment; and I 
 became a proverb to them. They that sit in 
 the gate speak against me; and I was the 
 song of drunkards. Psalm 102

I made sackcloth my garment once, by cutting
arm and neck holes into a burlap bag.
A croker sack they called it. Sackdragger
they called the man who dragged...Read more of this...

Welsh Incident

by Robert Graves
 'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
'What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
'Nothing at all of any things like that.'
'What were they, then?'
 'All sorts of ***** things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes...Read more of this...

The Character Of Holland

by Andrew Marvell
 Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
As but th'Off-scouring of the Brittish Sand;
And so much Earth as was contributed
By English Pilots when they heav'd the Lead;
Or what by th' Oceans slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrackt Cockle and the Muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the Sea
Fell to the Dutch by just Propriety.
Glad then, as Miners that have found the Oar,
They with...Read more of this...

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