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Famous Factories Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Ginsberg, Allen
...
I'd better get right down to the job. 
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes 
 in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and 
 psychopathic anyway. 
America I'm putting my ***** shoulder to the wheel. 

 Berkeley, January 17, 1956...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...emales, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of
 The
 States,
 each for itself—the money-makers; 
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley—All
 certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, 
In space, the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the
 lands, my
 lands; 
O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I become a part of that,
 whatever it
 is; 
Southward the...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ommerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,
Wharf-hemm’d cities, railroad and steamboat lines, intersecting all points, 
Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the north-east, north-west,
 south-west, 
Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life, 
Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the ruins of all the
 rest; 
On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! then your life or ours be the
 stake—and
 respite no more.

7
(L...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions.

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,) 
The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen, 
And here the indorsement of all, and do not object to it. 

But I too announce solid things; 
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing—I watch them,
Like a grand procession, to music of distant bugles, pouring, triumphantly moving—and
 grander heaving in sight; 
They stand for realities—all ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...haped T-rail for railroads;

Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and
 factories;
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door-lintels—the
 mallet,
 the
 tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, 
Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and
 the
 fire
 under the kettle, 
The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the mould of
 the
 moulder, ...Read more of this...



by Walker, Alice
...not believe what they say.
We do not love their efficiency.
Or their power plants.
We do not love their factories.
Or their smog.
We do not love their television programs.
Or their radioactive leaks.
We find their papers boring.
We do not worship their cars.
We do not worship their blondes.
We do not worship their penises.
We do not think much
Of their Renaissance
We are indifferent to England.
We have grave doubt...Read more of this...

by Breton, Andre
...switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there....Read more of this...

by Hughes, Langston
...he sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You the...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...call it
 happiness-
 it was more of an inner
 balance 
 that settled for
 whatever was occuring
 and it helped in the
 factories
 and when relationships 
 went wrong
 with the 
 girls. 
 it helped 
 through the
 wars and the
 hangovers
 the backalley fights
 the 
 hospitals. 
 to awaken in a cheap room
 in a strange city and
 pull up the shade-
 this was the craziest kind of
 contentment

 and to walk across the floor
 to an old dresser with a 
 cracked mirror- 
 see...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...h the Sun.

Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas
Of traffic shall hide thee,
Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories
Hide thee,
Never the reek of the time's fen-politics
Hide thee,
And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee,
And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee,
Labor, at leisure, in art, -- till yonder beside thee
My soul shall float, friend Sun,
The day being done.

____
Baltimore, December, 1880.



II.<...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...one of the world's longest rivers, like the Amazon.
It has the Missouri for a tributary.
The Harlem flows amid factories
And buildings. The Nelson is in Canada,
Flowing. Through hard banks the Dubawnt
Forces its way. People walk near the Trent.
The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away;
The Rubicon is merely a brook.
In winter the Main
Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.
The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks
And the Rio Grande...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ir lady dwelt,
Enriched from ancestral merchandize,
And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torched mines and noisy factories,
And many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt
In blood from stinging whip;--with hollow eyes
Many all day in dazzling river stood,
To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

XV.
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice wit...Read more of this...

by Hayden, Robert
...nken with the wenches: 

"Further Deponent sayeth not." 

Pilot Oh Pilot Me 


II 

Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories, 
Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar; 
have watched the artful mongos baiting traps 
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished 

Were caught as prizes for our barracoons. 
Have seen the ****** kings whose vanity 
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah, 
Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us. 

And there was one--King Anthracite we named him--...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...te you?

I see a great round wonder rolling through the air; 
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories, palaces, hovels, huts
 of
 barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the surface; 
I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers are sleeping—and the sun-lit part on
 the
 other side, 
I see the curious silent change of the light and shade, 
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them, as my land is to me.

I see plenteous...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...off
 coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. 

The shapes arise! 
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets; 
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads; 
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of barges, towns, lake and canal craft, river craft. 

The shapes arise! 
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a bay and
 by-place, 
The li...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...thy gold and silver, 
The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.

12
All thine, O sacred Union! 
Ship, farm, shop, barns, factories, mines, 
City and State—North, South, item and aggregate, 
We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee! 

Protectress absolute, thou! Bulwark of all!
For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as God,) 
Without thee, neither all nor each, nor land, home, 
Ship, nor mine—nor any here, this day, secure, 
Nor aught, nor any day secure....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., panting, blowing the
 steam-whistle; 
See, ploughmen, ploughing farms—See, miners, digging mines—See, the
 numberless factories;
See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See from among them,
 superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in working dresses; 
See, lounging through the shops and fields of The States, me, well-belov’d,
 close-held by day and night; 
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last. 

20O Camerado close!...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e through the clouds of clamor: who be these
That, paired in rich processional, advance
From darkness o'er the murk mad factories
Into yon flaming road, and sink, strange Ministrants!
Sheer down to earth, with many minstrelsies
And motions fine, and mix about the scene
And fill the Time with forms of ancient mien?

"Bright ladies and brave knights of Fatherland;
Sad mariners, no harbor e'er may hold,
A swan soft floating tow'rds a magic strand;
Dim ghosts, of earth, air, wate...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...the mart
With iron roads profane our lovely isle,
And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art,
Ay! though the crowded factories beget
The blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet!

For One at least there is, - He bears his name
From Dante and the seraph Gabriel, -
Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame
To light thine altar; He too loves thee well,
Who saw old Merlin lured in Vivien's snare,
And the white feet of angels coming down the golden stair,

Love...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...social-lights" 
That "scorch" to nowhere with our gold. 

Store guns and ammunition first, 
Build forts and warlike factories, 
Sink bores and tanks where drought is worst, 
Give over time to industries. 
The outpost of the white man's race, 
Where next his flag shall be unfurled, 
Make clean the place! Make strong the place! 
Call white men in from all the world!...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things