Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Finn Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Raine, Kathleen
...in Whitehall
The sun took the wicket with my skull.

The sun plays tennis in the court of Geneva
With the guts of a Finn and the head of an Emperor.
The sun plays squash in a tomb of marble,
The horses of Apocalypse are in his stable.

The sun plays a game of darts in Spain
Three by three in flight formation.
The invincible wheels of his yellow car
Are the discs that kindle the Chinese war.

The sun shows the world to the world,
Turns its own ghost on the ...Read more of this...



by Graves, Robert
...wingle, 
You scarce can stand. 

The skies are jewelled all around, 
The ploughshare snaps in the iron ground, 
The Finn with face like paper 
And eyes like a lighted taper 
Hurls his rough rune 
At the wintry moon 
And stamps to mark the tune....Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...

Which came first, the egg or the rooster?
P.G.Wodehouse or Bertram Wooster?
I know hawk from handsaw, and Finn from Fiji,
But I can't disentangle Bertram from PG.

I inquire in the school room, I ask in the road house,
Did Wodehouse write Wooster, or Wooster Wodehouse?
Bertram Wodehouse and PG Wooster,
They are linked in my mind like Simon and Schuster.

No matter which fumbled in '41,
Or which the woebegone figure of fun.
I deduce how the faux pas c...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...nexhaustible and complete
with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

You can't pray a lie, said Huckleberry Finn;
you can't poe one either. It is the same mirror:
mobile, glancing, we call it poetry,

fixed centrally, we call it a religion,
and God is the poetry caught in any religion,
caught, not imprisoned. Caught as in a mirror

that he attracted, being in the world as poetry
is in the poem, a law against its closure.
There'll always be religion aro...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...oney-bee, and sadly prepared to depart. 

I see the regions of snow and ice; 
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn; 
I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance; 
I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs;
I see the porpoise-hunters—I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and the North
 Atlantic; 
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland—I mark the long winters, and
 the
 isolation. 

I see the cities of the ea...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...And harvested their pay.

And there was Salem Hardieker,
 A lean Bostonian he --
Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn,
 Yank, Dane, and Portuguee,
At Fultah Fisher's boarding-house
 The rested from the sea.

Now Anne of Austria shared their drinks,
 Collinga knew her fame,
From Tarnau in Galicia
 To Juan Bazaar she came,
To eat the bread of infamy
 And take the wage of shame.

She held a dozen men to heel --
 Rich spoil of war was hers,
In hose and gown and rin...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Now Fireman Flynn met Hank the Finn where lights of Lust-land glow;
"Let's leave," says he, "the lousy sea, and give the land a show.
I'm fed up to the molar mark with wallopin' the brine;
I feel the bloody barnacles a-carkin' on me spine.
Let's hit the hard-boiled North a crack, where creeks are paved with gold."
"You count me in," says Hank the Finn. "Ay do as Ay ban tol...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...t place.
Yea, there were those who grunt: "Ya! Ya!" and those who squeak: "We! We!"
Likewise Dutch, Dago, Swede and Finn, Polack and Portugee.
Yet like ripe grain before the gale that national hotch-potch
Went down before the fury of the Irish and the Scotch.
Aye, though they closed their gaping ranks and rallied to the fray,
To the Shamrock and the Thistle went the glory of the day.

You should have seen the carnage in the drooling light of dawn,
Yet 'mid the...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...n of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,
Black-bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.
Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,
Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin's map.
Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,
As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,
For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.
I stared, my eyes were hypnotiz...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...he grit to see it through! 
The communion perfected! -- 
And -- I am proud of you! 

The Arab to true desert sand, 
The Finn to fields of snow, 
The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland, 
While the seasons come and go; 
And this old fact comes home to me -- 
And will not let me rest -- 
However barren it may be, 
Your own land is the best! 

And, lest at ease I should forget 
True mateship after all, 
My water-bag and billy yet 
Are hanging on the wall; 
And if my fate should show t...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...k dream, of wrath more red than lust,
Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust...

This Huckleberry Finn is but the race,
America, still lovely in disgrace,
New childhood of the world, that blunders on
And wonders at the darkness and the dawn,
The poor damned human race, still unimpressed
With its damnation, all its gamin breast
Chorteling at dukes and kings with ****** Jim,
Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim.

Behold a Republic
Where a r...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...I'll be good to your widows, Rube, as many as I shall find."

A Stralsund man shot blind and large, and a war-lock Finn was he,
And he hit Tom Hall with a bursting ball a hand's-breadth over the knee.
Tom Hall caught hold by the topping-lift, and sat him down with an oath,
"You'll wait a little, Rube," he said, "the Devil has called for both.
The Devil is driving both this tide, and the killing-grounds are close,
And we'll go up to the Wrath of God as the hollusc...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...erve
what enchantment came over the shoes.
But each time the twelve dancing princesses
gave the snoopy man a Mickey Finn
and so he was beheaded.
Poof! Like a basketball.

It so happened that a poor soldier
heard about these strange goings on
and decided to give it a try.
On his way to the castle
he met an old old woman.
Age, for a change, was of some use.
She wasn't stuffed in a nursing home.
She told him not to drink a drop of wine
and gave him a ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...e tale, though words be lighter than air.
Must live to be old like the wandering moon.

Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...pon the stair: the surges bore
A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore,
Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn
Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin
Outcry of bats.

 And then young Niamh came
Holding that horse, and sadly called my name;
I mounted, and we passed over the lone
And drifting greyness, while this monotone,
Surly and distant, mixed inseparably
Into the clangour of the wind and sea.

'I hear my soul drop down into decay,
And Mananna's d...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...f osier and hide;
How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;
How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,
Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;
Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,
Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, Mac Nessa...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...I

My Paistin Finn is my sole desire,
And I am shrunken to skin and bone,
For all my heart has had for its hire
Is what I can whistle alone and alone.
 Oro, oro!
Tomorrow night I will break down the door.

What is the good of a man and he
Alone and alone, with a speckled shin?
I would that I drank with my love on my knee
Between two barrels at the inn.
 Oro, o...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Finn poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs