Famous Figure Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Figure poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous figure poems. These examples illustrate what a famous figure poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
Pedlar's coming down the street,
Housewives beat a swift retreat.
Don't you answer to the bell;
Heedless what she has to sell.
Just discreetly go inside.
We must hang a board, I fear:
PEDLARS NOT PERMITTED HERE.
I'm trying to sell what nobody wants to buy;
They turn me away, but still I try and try.
My arms are aching and my feet are sore;
Heartsick and worn I...Read more of this...
by
Richard Brautigan
Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Tongue -- to tell Him I am true!
Its fee -- to be of Gold --
Had Nature -- in Her monstrous House
A single Ragged Child --
To earn a Mine -- would run
That Interdicted Way,
And tell Him -- Charge thee speak it plain --
That so far -- Truth is True?
And answer What I do --
Beginning with the Day
That Night --...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
You've `eard `ow young Albert Ramsbottom
At the zoo up at Blackpool one year
With a stick with an `orse's `ead `andle
Gave a lion a poke in the ear?
The name of the lion was Wallace,
The poke in the ear made `im wild
And before you could say "Bob's yer uncle"
E'd upped and `e'd swallowed the child....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city....Read more of this...
by
Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk,...Read more of this...
by
Randall Jarrell
It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
"Was I at Eureka?" His figure was drawn to a youthful height,
And a flood of proud recollections made the fire in his grey eyes bright;
With pleasure they lighted and glisten'd, tho' the digger was grizzled and old,
And we gathered about him and listen'd while the tale of Eureka he told.
"Ah, those were the days," said the digger, "twas a...Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
Reading in Li Po
how "the peach blossom follows the water"
I keep thinking of you
because you were so much like
Chairman Mao,
naturally with the sex
transposed
and the figure slighter.
Loving you was a kind
of Chinese guerilla war.
Thanks to your lightfoot genius
no Eighth Route Army
kept its lines more fluid,
traveled with less baggage
so nibbled the advantage.
Even with your small bad heart
you made a dance...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
'O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.'
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
The fear of perjuring herself turned into a tacit
Admission of her guilt. Yet she had the skill
And the luck to elude her implacable pursuers.
God was everywhere like a faceless guard in a gallery.
Death was last seen in the auction room, looking worried.
She hadn't seen him leave. She narrowly avoided him
Walking past the hard hats eating lunch. Which one was...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--with listlessness--
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
--That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Prior
AS doctors give physic by way of prevention,
Mat, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care;
For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention
May haply be never fulfill'd by his heir.
Then take Mat's word for it, the sculptor is paid;
That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye;
Yet credit...Read more of this...
by
Duncan Campbell Scott
Set within a desert lone,
Circled by an arid sea,
Stands a figure carved in stone,
Where a fountain used to be.
Two abraded, pleading hands
Held below a shapeless mouth,
Human-like the fragment stands,
Tortured by perpetual drouth.
Once the form was drenched with spray,
Deluged with the rainbow flushes;
Surplus water dashed away
To the lotus and the rushes.
Time was clothed in rippling fashion,.
Opulence of light and air,
Beauty...Read more of this...
by
Sharon Olds
Three months after he lies dead, that
long yellow narrow body,
not like Christ but like one of his saints,
the naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are
done in gilt, all knees and raw ribs,
the ones who died of nettles, bile, the
one who died roasted over a slow fire—
three months later I take the pot of
tulip bulbs out of the closet
and...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee
Dark-eyed,
O woman of my dreams,
Ivory sandalled,
There is none like thee among the dancers,
None with swift feet.
I have not found thee in the tents,
In the broken darkness.
I have not found thee at the well-head
Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;
Thy face...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
His little Hearse like Figure
Unto itself a Dirge
To a delusive Lilac
The vanity divulge
Of Industry and Morals
And every righteous thing
For the divine Perdition
Of Idleness and Spring --...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
See how the Orient Dew,
Shed from the Bosom of the Morn
Into the blowing Roses,
Yet careless of its Mansion new;
For the clear Region where 'twas born
Round in its self incloses:
And in its little Globes Extent,
Frames as it can its native Element.
How it the purple flow'r does slight,
Scarce touching where it lyes,
But gazing back upon the Skies,
Shines with a mournful Light;
Like...Read more of this...
by
George Eliot
The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
For view there are the houses opposite
Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
Monotony of surface & of form
Without a break to hang a guess upon.
No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
For all is...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea’s
Hidden under coral islands
Where...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXCII. Amor con la man destra il lato manco. UNDER THE FIGURE OF A LAUREL, HE RELATES THE GROWTH OF HIS LOVE. My poor heart op'ning with his puissant hand,Love planted there, as in its home, to dwellA Laurel, green and bright, whose hues might wellIn rivalry with proudest emeralds stand:Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
A Story of Christmas Eve.
Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,
Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --
Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks,
Wherever figure...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Oh, ponder, friend, the porcupine;
Refresh your recollection,
And sit a moment, to define
His means of self-protection.
How truly fortified is he!
Where is the beast his double
In forethought of emergency
And readiness for trouble?
Recall his figure, and his shade-
How deftly planned and clearly
For slithering through the dappled glade
Unseen, or pretty nearly.
Yet should an alien eye discern
His presence in the woodland,
How little has he...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
Still a mystery,
I can’t figure out;
Race home from work,
Where life is without.
*****
I race to see you,
And hold you to me;
My mind says you’re there,
And my heart won’t see.
*****
I open the door,
It’s still a surprise:
You’re not there,
And tears fill my eyes.
*****
I need someone,
Or call on the phone;
But nothing breaks the silence,
Of these walls made of stone.
*****
I punish myself,
By refusing to...Read more of this...
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