Famous Cutter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Tale of Christmas Eve

...rowd;
Oh! What a pitiful sight on a Christmas eve,
But the dense crowd didn't the poor boy relieve, 

Until a poor wood-cutter chanced to come along,
And he asked of the crowd what was wrong;
And twenty ready tongues tells him the sad tale,
And when he heard it the poor boy's fate he did bewail. 

And he cried, "Here! Something must be done and quickly too,
Do you hear! Every blessed soul of you;
Come, each one give a few pence to the poor boy,
And it will help to fill his he...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz


Anashuya And Vijaya

...ther.
Among the mouldering of ancient woods
You live, and on the village border she,
With her old father the blind wood-cutter;
I saw her standing in her door but now.

Anashuya. Vijaya, swear to love her never more.

Vijaya. Ay, ay.

Anashuya. Swear by the parents of the gods,
Dread oath, who dwell on sacred Himalay,
On the far Golden peak; enormous shapes,
Who still were old when the great sea was young;
On their vast faces mystery and dreams;
Their hair along the mountains...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

At Pleasure Bay

.... If a boat was running whiskey,
The bridge clanged shut behind it as it passed
And opened up again for the Coast Guard cutter
Slowly as a sundial, and always jammed halfway.
The roadbed whole, but opened like a switch,
The river pulling and coursing between the piers.
Never the same phrase twice, the catbird filling
The humid August evening near the inlet
With borrowed music that he melds and changes.
Dragonflies and sandflies, frogs in the rushes, two bodies
Not moving in t...Read more of this...
by Pinsky, Robert

How Could You Not

...nce sat
in the steel seat of the old mowing machine,
cheerful descendent of the scythe of the grim reaper,
and drew the cutter bars little
reciprocating triangles through the grass
to make the stalks lie down in sunshine.
Could you have walked in the dark early this morning
and found yourself grown completely tired
of the successes and failures of medicine,
of your year of pain and despair remitted briefly
now and then by hope that had that leaden taste?
Did you glimpse in fi...Read more of this...
by Kinnell, Galway

John Rouat the Fisherman

...considered a most grievous offence. 

So his father tried to check him, but all wouldn't do,
And John joined a revenue cutter as one of its crew;
And when his father heard it he bitterly did moan,
And angrily forbade him never to return home. 

Then shortly after James ran away to sea without his parent's leave,
So John Rouat became morose, and sadly did grieve.
But one day he received a letter, stating his son John was dead,
And when he read the sad news all comfort from hi...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz


Mount Zhongnan

...entral peak divides the wilds 
And weather into many valleys. 
...Needing a place to spend the night, 
I call to a wood-cutter over the river...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang

My Retreat at Mount Zhongnan

...... 
I will walk till the water checks my path, 
Then sit and watch the rising clouds -- 
And some day meet an old wood-cutter 
And talk and laugh and never return....Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang

On Earth (excerpt)

...languid at the edge of the sea
lays itself open to immensity
leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers
     along the road
left everything left all usual worlds behind
library, lilac, linens, litany....Read more of this...
by Forche, Carolyn

Pirates' Song

...nd, eighty strong, we send along 
 The dreaded Pirate Galley. 
 
 A nunnery was spied ashore, 
 We lowered away the cutter, 
 And, landing, seized the youngest nun 
 Ere she a cry could utter; 
 Beside the creek, deaf to our oars, 
 She slumbered in green alley, 
 As, eighty strong, we sent along 
 The dreaded Pirate Galley. 
 
 "Be silent, darling, you must come— 
 The wind is off shore blowing; 
 You only change your prison dull 
 For one that's splendid, glo...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Shearing at Castlereagh

...ger here, 
That stripling from the Cooma-side can teach him how to shear. 
They trim away the ragged locks, and rip the cutter goes, 
And leaves a track of snowy fleece from brisket to the nose; 
It's lovely how they peel it off with never stop nor stay, 
They're racing for the ringer's place this year at Castlereagh. 

The man that keeps the cutters sharp is growling in his cage, 
He's always in a hurry; and he's always in a rage -- 
"You clumsy-fisted mutton-heads, you'd tu...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

Shirt

...r politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the wind...Read more of this...
by Pinsky, Robert

The Exposed Nest

...lted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has bee...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Saddhu Of Couva

...is just the government.
Suppose all the gods too old,
Suppose they dead and they burning them,
supposing when some cane cutter
start chopping up snakes with a cutlass
he is severing the snake-armed god,
and suppose some hunter has caught
Hanuman in his mischief in a monkey cage.
Suppose all the gods were killed by electric light?
Sunset, a bonfire, roars in my ears;
embers of brown swallows dart and cry,
like women distracted,
around its cremation.
I ascend to my bed of sweet...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

The Wood-Cutter

...The sky is like an envelope,
 One of those blue official things;
 And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
 The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
 What shall we find when death gives leave
 To read--our sentence or reprieve?

I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the ***-end of earth;
 O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet;
Face to fa...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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