Famous Ducks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --

by Emily Dickinson
 My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
In Corners -- till a Day
The Owner passed -- identified --
And carried Me away --

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods --
And now We hunt the Doe --
And every time I speak for Him --
The Mountains straight reply --

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow --
It is as...Read more of this...

The Living Dead

by Robert William Service
 Since I have come to years sedate
I see with more and more acumen
The bitter irony of Fate,
The vanity of all things human.
Why, just to-day some fellow said,
As I surveyed Fame's outer portal:
"By gad! I thought that you were dead."
Poor me, who dreamed to be immortal!

But that's the way with many men
Whose name one fancied time-defying;
We thought that they were...Read more of this...

An Evening Of Poetry

by Barry Tebb
 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Photographing

by Lewis Carroll
 From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing; 

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched beneath its...Read more of this...

Child

by Sylvia Plath
 Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star....Read more of this...

Edinburgh

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful city of Edinburgh!
Where the tourist can drown his sorrow
By viewing your monuments and statues fine
During the lovely summer-time.
I'm sure it will his spirits cheer
As Sir Walter Scott's monument he draws near,
That stands in East Prince's Street
Amongst flowery gardens, fine and neat. 

And Edinburgh Castle is magnificent to be seen
With its beautiful walks and trees so green,
Which seems like...Read more of this...

Giant Fungus

by Charles Webb
 40-acre growth found in Michigan.
— The Los Angeles Times


The sky is full of ruddy ducks
and widgeon's, mockingbirds,
bees, bats, swallowtails,
dragonflies, and great horned owls.

The land below teems with elands
and kit foxes, badgers, aardvarks,
juniper, banana slugs, larch,
cactus, heather, humankind.

Under them, a dome of dirt.
Under that, the World's
Largest Living Thing spreads
like a hemorrhage poised

to paralyze the earth—like a tumor
ready to cause 9.0...Read more of this...

The Saginaw Song

by Theodore Roethke
 In Saginaw, in Saginaw,
 The wind blows up your feet,
When the ladies' guild puts on a feed,
 There's beans on every plate,
And if you eat more than you should,
 Destruction is complete.

Out Hemlock Way there is a stream
 That some have called Swan Creek;
The turtles have bloodsucker sores,
 And mossy filthy feet;
The bottoms of migrating ducks
 Come off it...Read more of this...

Psalm Concerning the Castle

by Denise Levertov
 Let me be at the place of the castle.
Let the castle be within me.
Let it rise foursquare from the moat's ring.
Let the moat's waters reflect green plumage of ducks, let the shells of swimming turtles break the surface or be seen through the rippling depths.
Let horsemen be stationed at the rim of it, and a dog,
always alert on the...Read more of this...

More Later Less The Same

by Edward Taylor
 The common is unusually calm--they captured the storm
last night, it's sleeping in the stockade, relieved
of its duty, pacified, tamed, a pussycat.
But not before it tied the flagpole in knots,
and not before it alarmed the firemen out of their pants.
Now it's really calm, almost too calm, as though
anything could happen, and it would be a first.
It could be the worst...Read more of this...

Ducks bobbing on the water

by Kobayashi Issa
 Ducks bobbing on the water--
are they also, tonight,
hoping to get lucky?...Read more of this...

The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Over the green and yellow rice-fields
sweep the shadows of the autumn
clouds followed by the swift-chasing
sun.
The bees forget to sip their honey;
drunken with light they foolishly hover
and hum.
The ducks in the islands of the river
clamour in joy for mere nothing.
Let none go back home, brothers,
this morning, let none go to work.
Let us take the blue sky by storm
and plunder space...Read more of this...

More Later Less The Same

by James Tate
 The common is unusually calm--they captured the storm
last night, it's sleeping in the stockade, relieved
of its duty, pacified, tamed, a pussycat.
But not before it tied the flagpole in knots,
and not before it alarmed the firemen out of their pants.
Now it's really calm, almost too calm, as though
anything could happen, and it would be a first.
It could be the worst...Read more of this...

Love Is A Parallax

by Sylvia Plath
 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of...Read more of this...

ducks and wisdom

by Rg Gregory
 [from a motif by Jean Dunand (1877-1942)]

seven lacqueur ducks on a silver pond
their rippling held in a moveless frieze
nothing now can help them swim beyond
the stoned edges (invent a new-age breeze)
eternity is water starved of trees
their fixture is our own - for all we fidget
history puts us down as one dead digit

silver-ponded we can't stop being stirred
to leap behind...Read more of this...

A Ballad of Ducks

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The railway rattled and roared and swung 
With jolting and bumping trucks. 
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung 
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue 
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told 
This terrible tale of the days of old, 
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks. 
"Well, it ain't all joy...Read more of this...

His Wife The Painter

by Charles Bukowski
 There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
"I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work."
He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly,...Read more of this...

Study In Orange And White

by Billy Collins
 I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene,
but I was still surprised when I found the painting
of his mother at the Musée d'Orsay
among all the colored dots and mobile brushstrokes
of the French Impressionists.

And I was surprised to notice
after a few minutes of benign staring,
how that woman, stark in profile
and fixed forever in her chair,
began to resemble...Read more of this...

Washing the hoe

by Yosa Buson
 Washing the hoe--
ripples on the water;
 far off, wild ducks....Read more of this...

111. Address to Beelzebub

by Robert Burns
 LONG life, my Lord, an’ health be yours,
Unskaithed by hunger’d Highland boors;
Lord grant me nae duddie, desperate beggar,
Wi’ dirk, claymore, and rusty trigger,
May twin auld Scotland o’ a life
She likes—as butchers like a knife.


Faith you and Applecross were right
To keep the Highland hounds in sight:
I doubt na! they wad bid nae better,
Than let them ance out owre the water,
Then...Read more of this...

The Capture

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Duck come switchin' 'cross de lot
Hi, oh, Miss Lady!
Hurry up an' hide de pot
Hi, oh, Miss Lady!
Duck's a mighty 'spicious fowl,
Slick as snake an' wise as owl;
Hol' dat dog, don't let him yowl!
Hi, oh, Miss Lady!
Th'ow dat co'n out kind o' slow
Hi, oh, Miss Lady!
Keep yo'se'f behin' de do'
Hi, oh, Miss Lady!
Lots o' food'll kill his feah,
Co'n is cheap but...Read more of this...

Ducks And Drakes

by Mother Goose
  A duck and a drake,
  And a halfpenny cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker.
  A hop and a scotch
  Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her....Read more of this...

Jueju, No. 1 of 2 (In Late Sun, the River and Hills are Beautiful)

by Du Fu
 Late sun river hill beautiful Spring wind flower grass fragrant Mud thaw fly swallow Sand warm sleep mandarin duck In late sun, the river and hills are beautiful, The spring breeze bears the fragrance of flowers and grass. The mud has thawed, and swallows fly around, On the warm sand, mandarin ducks are sleeping....Read more of this...

The Solitary Goose

by Du Fu
 Solitary goose not drink peck Fly call sound miss flock Who remember one now shadow Mutual lose myriad layer cloud Look utmost seem as if look Distressed much like become hear Wild duck without state of mind Call voices also numerous and confused The solitary goose does not drink or eat, It flies about and calls,...Read more of this...

A Memory

by William Allingham
 Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond, 
A blue sky of spring, 
White clouds on the wing; 
What a little thing 
To remember for years- 
To remember with tears!...Read more of this...

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