Famous Draining Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Noon Interval

...g with delights past uttering: 
Now--as an o'erjoyed child may cease to sing 
All falteringly at play, with drowsy eye 
Draining the pictures of a fairy-tale 
To brim his dreams with--there comes o'er the day 
A loathful silence wherein all sounds fail 
Like loitering sounds of some roundelay . . . 
No wakeful effort longer may avail -- 
The wand waves, and the dozer sinks away....Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb


Couplets on the Death of His Father

...was fain
To tend him there!

Yet as but mortal was his station,
Death for his goblet soon distilled
A draught for draining;
O Thou Divine Predestination!—
When most his blaze the world had filled
Thou sent'st the raining!

And then, Don Alvaro, Grand-Master
And Constable, whom we have known
When loved and dreaded,—
What need to tell of his disaster,
Since we behold him overthrown
And swift beheaded!

His treasures that defied accounting,
His manors and his ...Read more of this...
by Manrique, Jorge

Face Lift

...out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian

...gs long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Wilt thou take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
Breasts more soft than a dove...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Ireland With Emily

...d with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe's stone age race.

Has it held, the warm June weather?
Draining shallow sea-pools dry,
When we bicycled together
Down the bohreens fuchsia-high.
Till there rose, abrupt and lonely,
A ruined abbey, chancel only,
Lichen-crusted, time-befriended,
Soared the arches, splayed and splendid,
Romanesque against the sky.

There in pinnacled protection,
One extinguished family waits
A Church of Ireland resurrection
By the ...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John


Jubilate Agno: Fragment B Part 1

...e?e?s?? ????e . 

Let Jamim rejoice with the Bittern -- blessed be the name of Jesus for Denver Sluice, Ruston, and the draining of the fens. 

Let Ohad rejoice with Byturos who eateth the vine and is a minister of temperance. 

Let Zohar rejoice with Cychramus who cometh with the quails on a particular affair. 

Let Serah, the daughter of Asher, rejoice with Ceyx, who maketh his cabin in the Halcyon's hold. 

Let Magdiel rejoice with Ascarides, which is the life of the bowel...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Lyric of Love to Leah

...nce
Beaming passion’s argosies:
Ecstacy entwined with ease,
Terrene joy transcending trance!

Thou my scarlet concubine
Draining heart’s blood to the lees
To empurple those divine
Lips with living luxuries
Life importunate to appease
Drought insatiable of wine!

Tunis in the tremendous trance
Rests from day’s incestuous
Traffic with the radiance
Of her sire-& over us
Gleams the intoxicating glance
Of the Moon & Sirius.

Take the ardour of my impearled
Essence that my shoulder...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister

on why it is necessary to talk kindly to frogs

...he water

no frog came back to the stone
moon stayed away from my garden
so (guiltily) i built a pond -
something keeps draining the water...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Pickthorn Manor

...nd Might 
claim. But he replied
He thought she underrated. Then a ban
He put on talk and music. He'd a plan
To work at, draining swamps at Pickthorn End.

LV
Next morning Eunice found her Lord still changed, Hard 
and unkind, with bursts of anger. Pride
Kept him from speaking out. His probings ranged All 
round his torment. Lady Eunice tried
To sooth him. So a week went by, and then His anguish 
flooded over; with clenched hands
Striving to stem his words, he told her plain T...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Pleasures

...tinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board--

tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce
the heart, but fragile, substance
belying design. Or a fruit, mamey,

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the seed:
the seed a stone of wood, carved and

polished, walnut-colored, formed
like a brazilnut, but large,
large enough to fill
the hungry palm of a hand.

I like the juicy stem...Read more of this...
by Levertov, Denise

Song of Myself

...s away, 
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me; 
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger; 
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, 
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me; 
They have left me helpless to a red marauder; 
They all come to the headland, to witness and assist against me. 

I am given up by traitors; 
I talk wildly—I ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The City Bushman

...ms of the bags, 
And we couldn't raise a chorus, for the toothache and the cramp, 
While we spent the hours of darkness draining puddles round the camp. 

Would you like to change with Clancy -- go a-droving? tell us true, 
For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, 
And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock 
To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, 
And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry do...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

The Hangmans Great Hands

...e, 
While all the swarming stars move silent through The merest
flower
. .. but the fog of guns. 
The face with all the draining future left blank. . . Those smug
saints, whether of church or Stalin, Can get off the back of
my people, and stay off. Somebody is supposed to be fighting
for somebody. . . And Lenin is terribly silent, terribly silent
and dead....Read more of this...
by Patchen, Kenneth

The Poet

...nce 
And this he may be destroyed by the gold of the light
 which never was
On land or sea.
He may be drunken to death, draining the casks of excess
That extreme form of success.
He may suffer Narcissus' destiny
Unable to live except with the image which is infatuation
Love, blind, adoring, overflowing
Unable to respond to anything which does not bring love
 quickly or immediately.

...The poet must be innocent and ignorant
But he cannot be innocent since stupidity is not his...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

The Road That Runs Beside The River

..., shallow, fairly fast,
roundy-stone streambed, rocky-land river,
it turns there or here -- the ground
telling it so -- draining dull
mountains to the north,
migrating, feeding a few hard-fleshed fish
who live in it. One small sandbar splits
the river, then it loops left,
the road right, and the river's silver
slips under the trees,
into the forest,
and over the sharp perpendicular
edge of the earth....Read more of this...
by Lux, Thomas

The Skeleton in Armor

...ter out; 50 
Often our midnight shout 
Set the cocks crowing, 
As we the Berserk's tale 
Measured in cups of ale, 
Draining the oaken pail, 55 
Filled to o'erflowing. 

"Once as I told in glee 
Tales of the stormy sea, 
Soft eyes did gaze on me, 
Burning yet tender; 60 
And as the white stars shine 
On the dark Norway pine, 
On that dark heart of mine 
Fell their soft splendor. 

"I wooed the blue-eyed maid, 65 
Yielding, yet half afraid, 
And in the forest...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

To The Muse

...e if you don't
Jiggle the needle.
It might stab your heart, you see.
The blade hangs in your lung and the tube
Keeps it draining.
That way they only have to stab you
Once. Oh Jenny.

I wish to God I had made this world, this scurvy
And disastrous place. I
Didn't, I can't bear it
Either, I don't blame you, sleeping down there
Face down in the unbelievable silk of spring,
Muse of the black sand,
Alone.

I don't blame you, I know
The place where you lie.
I admit everything. But ...Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Robert Louis

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