Famous Extra Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Extra poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous extra poems. These examples illustrate what a famous extra poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Andrew Barton Paterson
You talk of riders on the flat, of nerve and pluck and pace --
Not one in fifty has the nerve to ride a steeplechase.
It's right enough, while horses pull and take their faces strong,
To rush a flier to the front and bring the field along;
Bur what about the last half-mile, with horses blown and beat...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
A Waltz Song.
O sway, and swing, and sway,
And swing, and sway, and swing!
Ah me, what bliss like unto this,
Can days and daylight bring?
A rose beneath your feet
Has fallen from my head;
Its odour rises sweet,
All crushed it lies, and dead.
O Love is like a rose,
Fair-hued, of fragrant breath;
A tender flow'r that lives an hour,
And is most sweet in death.
O swing,...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly,
or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home.
It is the rococo of being your own still...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
Another armored animal--scale
lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped
gizzard,
the night miniature artist engineer is,
yes, Leonardo da Vinci's replica--
impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.
Armor seems extra. But for him,
the closing ear-ridge--
or bare ear lacking even this small
...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
Hinemoa, Tui, Maina,
All of them were born together;
They are quite an extra special
Set of babies--wax and leather.
Every day they took an airing;
Mummy made them each a bonnet;
Two were cherry, one was yellow
With a bow of ribbon on it.
Really, sometimes we would slap them,
For if ever we were talking,
They would giggle and be silly,
Saying, "Mamma, take us walking."
But we never...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Out on the high "bird islands," Ciboux and Hertford,
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand
with their backs to the mainland
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff's brown grass-frayed edge,
while the few sheep pastured there go "Baaa, baaa."
(Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede
and fall over into the sea or onto the rocks.)...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
(From The Jungle Book)
Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half-way up to the jealous moon!
Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
Don't you wish you had extra hands?
Would n't you like if your tails were -- so --
Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
Now you're angry, but -- never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
Here we sit...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
The Beaver's Lesson
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan
For making a separate sally;
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man,
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...
by
James Lee Jobe
It's mid-winter and the sunrise knows it, and wakes me
with a shudder; I'm just a man.
For 5 cold mornings in a row, the beautiful pheasant
has come to our patio to steal some of the dry catfood,
sometimes right in front of my cat.
The house is still, and I enjoy the Sunday newspaper
with strong, dark coffee;...Read more of this...
by
James Schuyler
On a day like this the rain comes
down in fat and random drops among
the ailanthus leaves---"the tree
of Heaven"---the leaves that on moon-
lit nights shimmer black and blade-
shaped at this third-floor window.
And there are bunches of small green
knobs, buds, crowded together. The
rapid music fills in the spaces of
the leaves. And the piano comes in,
like an extra heartbeat, dangerous
and lovely. Slower...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
An apple arc'd toward Kleitos; whose great King
wroth & of wine did study where his sword,
sneaked away, might be . . .
with swollen lids staggered up and clung
dim to the cloth of gold. An un-Greek word
blister, to him guard,
and the trumpeter would not sound, fisted. Ha,
they hustle Clitus out; by another door,
loaded, crowds he back in
who now must, chopped,...Read more of this...
by
Hugo Williams
Whether it was putting in an extra beat,
or leaving one out, I couldn't tell.
My heart seemed to have forgotten
everything it ever knew
about timing and co-ordination
in its efforts to get through to someone
on the other side of a wall.
As I lay in bed, I could hear it
hammering away inside my pillow,
being...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Behold I bring you tidings of great joy-”
especially now that the snow & gale are still-”
for Henry is delivered.
Not only is he delivered from the gale
but he has a little one. He's out of jail
also. It is a boy.
Henry's pleasure in this unusual event
reminds me of the extra told at Hollywood & Vine
that TV cameras
were focussed on him personally...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
The women-folk are like to books,--
Most pleasing to the eye,
Whereon if anybody looks
He feels disposed to buy.
I hear that many are for sale,--
Those that record no dates,
And such editions as regale
The view with colored plates.
Of every quality and grade
And size they may be found,--
Quite often beautifully made,
As often poorly bound.
Now, as for me, had I my choice,
I'd choose no...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Keep me, I pray, in wisdom's way
That I may truths eternal seek;
I need protecting care to-day,--
My purse is light, my flesh is weak.
So banish from my erring heart
All baleful appetites and hints
Of Satan's fascinating art,
Of first editions, and of prints.
Direct me in some godly walk
Which leads away from bookish strife,
That I with pious...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Now look, you see, it’s this way like,
You cross the broken bridge
And run the crick down till you strike
The second right-hand ridge.
The track is hard to see in parts,
But still it’s pretty clear;
There’s been two Injin hawkers’ carts
Along that road this year.
Well, run that right-hand ridge along—
It ain’t, to say,...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
On Western plains, where shade is not,
'Neath summer skies of cloudless blue,
Where all is dry and all is hot,
There stands the town of Dandaloo --
A township where life's total sum
Is sleep, diversified with rum.
Its grass-grown streets with dust are deep;
'Twere vain endeavour to express
The dreamless silence of its sleep,
Its wide,...Read more of this...
by
Mac Hammond
The man who stands above the bird, his knife
Sharp as a Turkish scimitar, first removes
A thigh and leg, half the support
On which the turkey used to stand. This
Leg and thigh he sets on an extra
Plate. All his weight now on
One leg, he lunges for the wing, the wing
On the same side of the bird from which
He has just...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
What tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat;
I had a taste for singing and playing and all that.
And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped
I would not stop
All practice, like so many wives who let their
music drop.
So I resolved to set apart an hour or two each day
To keeping vocal chords...Read more of this...
by
Mahmoud Darwish
I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire,
The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.
It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small,
And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all.
And so my blood grows cold. I say, "The bottle held but ink,
And, if you thought it otherwise, the worser...Read more of this...
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