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Famous Counters Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...sundry harms 
He met the wife of Satan crying "I'm 
The she-wolf bids you shall bear no more arms. 

Their strokes and counters whistled in the wind 
I wish he had delivered half his blows 
But where she should have made off like a hind 
The ***** bit off his arms at the elbows. 

And Captain Carpenter parted with his ears 
To a black devil that used him in this wise 
O Jesus ere his threescore and ten years 
Another had plucked out his sweet blue eyes. 

Captain Carpenter g...Read more of this...
by Ransom, John Crowe



...As milled silver I was welcome

In every gutter, tinkling over cobbles

I rang the truth loudly on solid-oak counters

And tills tolled for me clear as bells.



Boldly I gave myself to many,

Slipped from moist palm to pocket,

Pirouetting without points, jingling

With dull coppers and important keys.



First I was lost in a hundred

Children’s essays, found myself

With pearls in secret pockets,

Counterfeit and shiny.

Then I discovered in a deed-box,

Frowned...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...mes;
He thinks of pickles, olives, tea,
And dollars, nickles, cents and dimes.
His world has narrow walls, it seems;
By counters is his soul confined;
His wares are all his hopes and dreams,
They are the fabric of his mind.
Yet -- in a room above the store
There is a woman -- and a child
Pattered just now across the floor;
The shopman looked at him and smiled.
For, once he thrilled with high romance
And tuned to love his eager voice.
Like any cavalier of France
He wooed the m...Read more of this...
by Kilmer, Joyce
...f quoits and ball-play; 
Skilled was he in games of hazard, 
In all games of skill and hazard, 
Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, 
Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones. 
Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart, 
Called him coward, Shaugodaya, 
Idler, gambler, Yenadizze,
Little heeded he their jesting, 
Little cared he for their insults, 
For the women and the maidens 
Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis.
He was dressed in shirt of doeskin, 
White and soft, and fringed with erm...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...heet-iron Dreamtime Experience
that is turned off at night.
A high bank of medal-ribbony
lolly jars preside over
island counters like opened crates,
one labelled White Mugs, and covered with them.
A two-dimensional policeman
discourages shoplifting of gifts
and near the entrance, where you pay
for fuel, there stands a tribal man
in rib-paint and pubic tassel.
It is all gentle and kind.
In beyond the children's playworld
there are fossils, like crumpled
old drawings of creatur...Read more of this...
by Murray, Les



...:
Niagara, Niagara.

The women buy their lace and cry: —
"O such a delicate design,"
And over ostrich feathers sigh,
By counters there, in Buffalo.
The children haunt the trinket shops,
They buy false-faces, bells, and tops,
Forgetting great Niagara.

Within the town of Buffalo
Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls,
Rubies, emeralds aglow, —
Opal chains in Buffalo,
Cherished symbols of success.
They value not your rainbow dress: —
Niagara, Niagara.

The shaggy meaning of...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...this endless talking."
Then from out his pouch of wolf-skin
Forth he drew, with solemn manner,
All the game of Bowl and Counters,
Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces.
White on one side were they painted,
And vermilion on the other;
Two Kenabeeks or great serpents,
Two Ininewug or wedge-men,
One great war-club, Pugamaugun,
And one slender fish, the Keego,
Four round pieces, Ozawabeeks,
And three Sheshebwug or ducklings.
All were made of bone and painted,
All except the Ozawabeeks;...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...re now I'm "being brave"
if I take off my shirt in a hot crowd
sunbathing, or demonstrating for Dyke Pride.
Her bravery counters the kitchen knives'
insinuation that the scars be made.
With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.

"With, or despite our scars, we stayed alive
until the Contras or the Government
or rebel troops came, until we were sent
to 'relocation camps' until the archives
burned, until we dug the ditch, the grave
beside the aspen grove where adolescent
boys u...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn
...nd. 
Now Suzanne takes your hand 
And she leads you to the river 
She is wearing rags and feathers 
From Salvation Army counters 
And the sun pours down like honey 
On our lady of the harbour 
And she shows you where to look 
Among the garbage and the flowers 
There are heroes in the seaweed 
There are children in the morning 
They are leaning out for love 
And they will lean that way forever 
While Suzanne holds the mirror 
And you want to travel with her 
And you want to tr...Read more of this...
by Cohen, Leonard
...k
Of orris-root and musk."
Within the shop, the light is dimmed to a pearl-and-green dusk
Out of which dreamily sparkle counters and shelves of glass,
Containing phials, and bowls, and jars, and dishes; a mass
Of aqueous transparence made solid by threads of gold.
Gold and glass,
And scents which whiff across the green twilight and pass.
The perfumer sits down and shakes his head:
"Always the same, Monsieur Antoine,
You artists are wonderful folk indeed."
But Antoine Vernet d...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...little too hot, 
Will work its way to a vital spot. 
And then I watch with a sickly grin 
While the patient 'passes his counters in'. 
But when he has gone with his fleeting breath 
I certify that the cause of death 
Was something Latin, and something long, 
And who is to say that the doctor's wrong! 
So I go my way with a stately tread 
While my patients sleep with the dreamless dead." 


Next, Please 
"I am a barrister, wigged and gowned; 
Of stately presence and look profo...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...algorithm, the Arabian term for
numeration; "augrim stones," therefore were probably marked
with numerals, and used as counters.

4. Angelus ad virginem: The Angel's salutation to Mary; Luke i.
28. It was the "Ave Maria" of the Catholic Church service.

5. Cato: Though Chaucer may have referred to the famous
Censor, more probably the reference is merely to the "Moral
Distichs," which go under his name, though written after his
time; and in a supplement to which the quoted pa...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...away his tears, left others of my own; 
For, on a table drawn beside his head, 
He had put, within his reach, 
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone, 
A piece of glass abraded by the beach, 
And six or seven shells, 
A bottle with bluebells, 
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, 
To comfort his sad heart. 
So when that night I pray'd 
To God, I wept, and said: 
Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath, 
Not vexing Thee in death, 
And Thou remember...Read more of this...
by Patmore, Coventry
...one;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.

It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.

The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens,
Threes and...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things