Famous Decoys Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Risk is the Hair that holds the Tun

by Emily Dickinson
 Risk is the Hair that holds the Tun
Seductive in the Air --
That Tun is hollow -- but the Tun --
With Hundred Weights -- to spare --

Too ponderous to suspect the snare
Espies that fickle chair
And seats itself to be let go
By that perfidious Hair --

The "foolish Tun" the Critics say --
While that delusive Hair
Persuasive as Perdition,
Decoys its Traveller....Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXXIII. Valle che d' lamenti miei se' piena. ON HIS RETURN TO VAUCLUSE AFTER LAURA'S DEATH.  Valley, which long hast echoed with my cries;Stream, which my flowing tears have often fed;Beasts, fluttering birds, and ye who in the bedOf Cabrieres' wave display your speckled dyes;Air, hush'd to rest and soften'd...Read more of this...

I have a Bird in spring

by Emily Dickinson
 I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing --
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears --
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown --
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast is a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine --
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting...Read more of this...

The Hunter

by Ogden Nash
 The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
is hoping to outwit a duck...Read more of this...

89. The Ordination

by Robert Burns
 KILMARNOCK wabsters, fidge an’ claw,
 An’ pour your creeshie nations;
An’ ye wha leather rax an’ draw,
 Of a’ denominations;
Swith to the Ligh Kirk, ane an’ a’
 An’ there tak up your stations;
Then aff to Begbie’s in a raw,
 An’ pour divine libations
 For joy this day.


Curst Common-sense, that imp o’ hell,
 Cam in wi’ Maggie Lauder; 1
But Oliphant 2...Read more of this...

To Jose Mar?a Palacio

by Antonio Machado
 Palacio, good friend,
is spring there
showing itself on branches of black poplars
by the roads and river? On the steeps
of the high Duero, spring is late,
but so soft and lovely when it comes!
Are there a few new leaves
on the old elms?
The acacias must still be bare,
and the mountain peaks snow-filled.
Oh the massed pinks and whites
of Moncayo, massed up there,
beauty, in the...Read more of this...

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