Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Cropped Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Tebb, Barry
...t

The thread as only you could and it dipped

And rose like a dancer.





4



The paddock by the tusky sheds was cropped

And polished by the horses’ hooves, their

Nostrils flared and they bared their teeth

As we passed and tossed their manes as we

Shied from the rusty fence where peg-legged

We jumped the cracks and pulled away each

Dandelion head, “Pee-the-bed! Pee-the bed!”

Rubbing the yellow dust into each other’s

Cheeks and chins as we kissed.





5



...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...f the dead,
Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!

My soul! I'd sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I'd done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those "not provens" proved me cleared as you are cleared.

Cleared -- y...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...d and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse, 

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked ***** infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil Wa...Read more of this...

by Morris, William
...drew nigh
The shade and fount: but lo, thereby
A man beside the fountain laid
The while his horse 'twixt sun and shade
Cropped the sweet grass: but little care
Had these of guile or giant's lair,
And scarce a foot before the Queen
Rode Gawain o'er the daisied green
To see what man his pleasure took;
Who rose up in meanwhile and shook
His tangled hair aback, as one
Who e'en but now his sleep hath done.
Rough-head and yellow-haired was he
Great-eyed, as folk have told to m...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...
your hair, the woman who let that black hair 
grow long as a banner of darkness, when you
a proper flapper wore yours cropped?

You pushed and you pulled on my rubbery
flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough. 
Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat. 
Secretly the bones formed in the bread.

I became willful, private as a cat. 
You never knew what alleys I had wandered. 
You called me bad and I posed like a gutter 
queen in a dress sewn of knives.Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...outrageous war shall fade;
At some old winding whitethorn root
He'll practise on the shepherd's flute,
Or on the close-cropped grass
Court his shepherd lass,
Or put his heart into some game
Till daytime, playtime seem the same;
Knowledge he shall unwind
Through victories of the mind,
Till, clambering at the cradle-side,
He dreams himself hsi mother's pride,
All knowledge lost in trance
Of sweeter ignorance.'

Shepherd. When I have shut these ewes and this old ram
Int...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ises from the sheets in steam.

This withered root of knots of hair
Slitted below and gashed with eyes,
This oval O cropped out with teeth:
The sickle motion from the thighs

Jackknifes upward at the knees
Then straightens out from heel to hip
Pushing the framework of the bed
And clawing at the pillow slip.

Sweeney addressed full length to shave
Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,
Knows the female temperament
And wipes the suds around his face.

(The lengthene...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...sign 
To help him plough a perfect line. 
At top of rise the plough team stopped, 
The fore-horse bent his head and cropped. 
Then the chains chack, the brasses jingle, 
The lean reins gather through the cringle, 
The figures move against the sky, 
The clay wave breaks as they go by. 
I kneeled there in the muddy fallow, 
I knew that Christ was there with Callow, 
That Christ was standing there with me, 
That Christ had taught me what to be, 
That I should plough,...Read more of this...

by Lovelace, Richard
...ms,
And all these merry days mak'st merry men,
Thyself, and melancholy streams.

But ah the sickle!—golden ears are cropped;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good-night;
Sharp frosty fingers all your flow'rs have topped,
And what schythes spared, winds shave off quite.

Poor verdant fool! and now green ice!—thy joys,
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
Bid us lay in 'gainst winter rain, and poise
Their floods with an o'erflowing glass.

Thou best of men and friends! ...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...mb without a mark,
Ah me!


Song for "The Jacquerie".


The hound was cuffed, the hound was kicked,
O' the ears was cropped, o' the tail was nicked,
(All.) Oo-hoo-o, howled the hound.
The hound into his kennel crept;
He rarely wept, he never slept.
His mouth he always open kept
Licking his bitter wound,
The hound,
(All.) U-lu-lo, HOWLED THE HOUND.

A star upon his kennel shone
That showed the hound a meat-bare bone.
(All.) O hungry was the houn...Read more of this...

by Dickey, James
...le

This village of children believed
That I could perform as I dived
For one who had sunk from my sight.
I saw his cropped haircut go under.
I leapt, and my steep body flashed
Once, in the sun.

Dark drew all the light from my eyes.
Like a man who explores his death
By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,
I hung head down in the cold,
Wide-eyed, contained, and alone
Among the weeds,

And my fingertips turned into stone
From clutching immovable blackness.Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...bang bang
 roots must take up
 their beds and walk

tangwena says
 tangwena tangwena

smith says
 white is right
 corn cropped
 from the old dead
 belongs in the pockets
 of the powerful
 otherwise
 what is progress
tangwena laughs
the mountains catch
his laughter
and turn it
into streams

the white tongue
goes bang bang
the streams glide
into african mists

tangwena laughs
till it hurts

smith is afraid
of the laughter
the white tongue
goes bang bang
speaking in blisters

w...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...tled gaze,
Didn't seem to be pleased at all;
Savagely muttered: "Insipid Doll!"
Clutched her hair and a pair of shears,
Cropped and bobbed it behind the ears;
Aimed at a wan and willowy-necked
Sort of a Holman Hunt effect;
Robed in subtile and sage-green tones,
Like the dames of Rossetti and E. Burne-Jones;
Girdled her garments billowing wide,
Moved with an undulating glide;
All her frivolous friends forsook,
Cultivated a soulful look;
Gushed in a voice with a creamy thro...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...tie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
Nor the cropped herbage shoot another head.
But when the fields are still,
And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,
And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanched green,
Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest!

Here, where the reaper was at work of late— 
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...broom
 To gently browse.

Or I would glimpse the silver wood,
 The birchen glade,
Where pearly sheep in quiet mood
 Cropped unafraid;
But how I loved in lapsing drowse
 The mountain wild!
The goats were more than sheep and cows
 To one wee child.

For cows and sheep are shelter-wise,
 And love the lea;
While goats have starlight in their eyes,
 In cragland free . . .
And now on edge of endless sleep
 Wryly I note
How less I'm kin to kine and sheep
 Than re...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...kies,
Heard in contending bells --
An air lambent with adult enterprise,

And on another day will be the past,
A valley cropped by fat neglected chances
That we insensately forbore to fleece.
On this we blame our last
Threadbare perspectives, seasonal decrease....Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...me heroic action done,
A champion killed, or trophy won;
Rather than thus be overtopped,
Would you not wish his laurels cropped?
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies racked with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!

What poet would not grieve to see
His breth'ren write as well as he?
But rather than they should excel,
He wished his rivals all in hell.

Her end when Emulation misses,
She turns to Envy, stings, and hiss...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Cropped poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs