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).

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The Grasshopper

by Richard Lovelace
 O thou that swing'st upon the waving ear
Of some well-filled oaten beard,
Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear
Dropped thee from heav'n, where now th' art reared,

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,
That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;
And, when the poppy works, thou dost retire
To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the...Read more of this...

The Wildy Ones

by Robert William Service
 The sheep are in the silver wood,
 The cows are in the broom;
The goats are in the wild mountain
 And won't be home by noon.

My mother sang that olden tune
 Most every night,
And to her newest she would croon
 By candle light;
While cuddling in the velvet gloom
 I'd dream of cows
That sought each dawn 'mid golden broom
 To gently...Read more of this...

Bridge Over The Aire Book 6

by Barry Tebb
 THE WALK TO THE PARADISE GARDENS



1



Bonfire Night beckoned us to the bridge

By Saint Hilda’s where we started down

Knostrop to chump but I trailed behind

With Margaret when it was late September

The song of summer ceased and fires in

Blackleaded grates began and we were

Hidden from the others by the bridge’s span.

2



When you bent I saw the buds of your breasts

As you...Read more of this...

The Philistine And The Bohemian

by Robert William Service
 She was a Philistine spick and span,
He was a bold Bohemian.
She had the mode, and the last at that;
He had a cape and a brigand hat.
She was so riant and chic and trim;
He was so shaggy, unkempt and grim.
On the rue de la Paix she was wont to shine;
The rue de la Gaîté was more his line.
She doted on...Read more of this...

Sweeney Erect

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 And the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!


PAINT me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Aeolus above
Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Ariadne’s hair
And swell with haste the perjured...Read more of this...

the people

by Rg Gregory
 tangwena says
 this is our land
 soiled by the blood
 of black centuries

smith says
 the white tongue
 goes bang bang
 black must learn
 words of a new march

tangwena says
 every tree here
 is made in the image
 of a black ghost

smith says
 the white tongue
 goes bang bang
 you must make your ghosts
 in the image of new trees

tangwena...Read more of this...

Triple Time

by Philip Larkin
 This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This air, a little indistinct with autumn
Like a reflection, constitute the present --
A time traditionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.

But equally they make up something else:
This is the furthest future childhood saw
Between long houses, under travelling skies,
Heard in contending bells --
An air lambent with adult enterprise,

And on another day will be the...Read more of this...

For the Union Dead

by Robert Lowell
 "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam." 

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I...Read more of this...

Shepherd And Goatherd

by William Butler Yeats
 Shepherd. That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the...Read more of this...

My Mothers Body

by Marge Piercy
 1. 

The dark socket of the year 
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down 
and threatens never to rise, 
when despair descends softly as the snow 
covering all paths and choking roads: 

then hawkfaced pain seized you 
threw you so you fell with a sharp 
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. 
My father heard the...Read more of this...

The Lifeguard

by James Dickey
 In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
With my foot on the water, I feel
The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go our through the boats.
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the...Read more of this...

Cleared

by Rudyard Kipling
 Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, O listen to my song,
The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.

Their noble names were mentioned -- O the burning black disgrace! --
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then...Read more of this...

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