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Famous Flanks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kipling, Rudyard
...land,
He says: "They understand."
But the beasts in stall together,
Freed from the yoke and tether,
Say as the torn flanks smoke:
"Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke."...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...tracts in the cold --

Voices of jackals calling
 And, loud in the hush between
A morsel of dry earth falling
 From the flanks of the scarred ravine.

And the solemn firmament marches,
 And the hosts of heaven rise
Framed through the iron arches --
 Banded and barred by the ties,

Till we feel the far track humming,
 And we see her headlight plain,
And we gather and wait her coming --
 The wonderful north-bound train.

(Few, forgotten and lonely,
 Where the white car-...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...y and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...om the waist the peplos falling down
Left visible the secret mystery
Which to no lover will Athena show,
The grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of
snow.

Those who have never known a lover's sin
Let them not read my ditty, it will be
To their dull ears so musicless and thin
That they will have no joy of it, but ye
To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile,
Ye who have learned who Eros is, - O listen yet awhile.

A little space he let his ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...to take 
 No heart was mine, for where the further way 
 Mine anxious eyes explored, a she-wolf lay, 
 That licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she 
 In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see, 
 And where she lay among her bones had brought 
 So many to grief before, that all my thought 
 Aghast turned backward to the sunless night 
 I left. But while I plunged in headlong flight 
 To that most feared before, a shade, or man 
 (Either he seemed), obstructing where ...Read more of this...



by Hoagland, Tony
...eleton
she had become.

Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorry ruin of her flanks
and the frayed gray cloud
between her legs.

Some nights, sitting by her bed
book open in my lap
while I listened to the air
move thickly in and out of her dark lungs,
my mind filled up with praise
as lush as music,

amazed at the symmetry and luck
that would offer me the chance to pay
my heavy debt of punishment and love
with love and punishment....Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ng mane,
Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
Came thickly thundering on,
As if our faint approach to meet;
The sight re-nerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment, with a faint low neigh,
He answered, and then fell!
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay,
And reeking limbs ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...rifice? 
To what green altar O mysterious priest  
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies  
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? 
What little town by river or sea-shore 35 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel  
Is emptied of its folk this pious morn? 
And little town thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate can e'er return. 40 

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede 
Of marble men and maiden...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...closed; the tub exists behind our back;
its glittering surfaces are blank and true.

Yet always the ridiculous nude flanks urge
the fabrication of some cloth to cover
such starkness; accuracy must not stalk at large:
each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of Eden, pretend future's shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.
In this particular t...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...gue of yellow
Fire licking the sides of the gray stones,
Has a more passionate and more pure heart
In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine;
But he is betrayed by his own courage,
The man who kills him is like a cloud hiding a star.

Then praise the jewel-eyed hawk and the tall blue heron;
The black cormorants that fatten their sea-rock
With shining slime; even that ruiner of anthills
The red-shafted woodpecker flying,
A white star between blood-color wing-clouds,...Read more of this...

by Nowlan, Alden
...down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.

And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks, 
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap 
of thistles on his head.

When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame 
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.

So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...urs
 As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.

March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning flanks and dodging shoulders,
 Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass;
Till I camped above the tree-line -- drifted snow and naked boulders --
 Felt free air astir to windward -- knew I'd stumbled on the Pass.

'Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the Norther found me --
 Froze and killed the plains-bred ponies; so I cal...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ste
     Sprung from his heathery couch in haste.
     But ere his fleet career he took,
     The dew-drops from his flanks he shook;
     Like crested leader proud and high
     Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky;
     A moment gazed adown the dale,
     A moment snuffed the tainted gale,
     A moment listened to the cry,
     That thickened as the chase drew nigh;
     Then, as the headmost foes appeared,
     With one brave bound the copse he cleared,
     ...Read more of this...

by Wilbur, Richard
...lled to death 
By the wind’s white shudders, thanks 
To the veils of his patient breath 
And the mist of sweat from his flanks.

It seemed that all night through,
Within my hand no rein
And nothing in my view
But the pillar of his mane,

I rode with magic ease
At a quick, unstumbling trot
Through shattering vacancies
On into what was not,

Till the weave of the storm grew thin,
With a threading of cedar-smoke,
And the ice-blind pane of an inn
Shimmered, and I awoke.

...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...le
sacred to the evening,
sacred even to Ramlochan,
singing Indian hits from his jute hammock
while evening strokes the flanks
and silver horns of his maroon taxi,
as the mosquitoes whine their evening mantras,
my friend Anopheles, on the sitar,
and the fireflies making every dusk Divali.

I knot my head with a cloud,
my white mustache bristle like horns,
my hands are brittle as the pages of Ramayana.
Once the sacred monkeys multiplied like branches
in the ancient tem...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...145 Of Pelion, in the streams,
146 Where red-berried ashes fringe
147 The clear-brown shallow pools,
148 With streaming flanks, and heads
149 Rear'd proudly, snuffing
150 The mountain wind. 

151 They see the Indian
152 Drifting, knife in hand,
153 His frail boat moor'd to
154 A floating isle thick-matted
155 With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants 
156 And the dark cucumber. 

157 He reaps, and stows them,
158 Drifting--drifting;--round him,
159 Round his green ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...e struck fire, while in the leaves
A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;
But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks
Against a beech-bole, he threw down the beast
And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant
It vanished like a shadow, and a cry
So mournful that it seemed the cry of one
Who had lost some unimaginable treasure
Wandered between the blue and the green leaf
And climbed into the air, crumbling away,
Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision
But ...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...hereof
Must I take sample how the gods can love?

"O child, thou hast seen indeed, poor child of mine,
The breasts and flanks of Pallas bare in sight,
But never shalt see more the dear sun's light;
O Helicon, how great a pay is thine
For some poor antelopes and wild-deer dead,
My child's eyes hast thou taken in their stead--"

Mother, thou knewest not what she had to give,
Thy goddess, though then angered, for mine eyes;
Fame and foreknowledge, and to be most wise,
And centu...Read more of this...

by Naidu, Sarojini
...anadheera

Little lord of battle, hail 
In your newly-tempered mail! 
Learn to conquer, learn to fight 
In the foremost flanks of right, 
Like Valmiki's heroes bold, 
Rubies girt in epic gold. 
Lord of battle, may you be, 
Lord of love and chivalry.

Lilamani

Limpid jewel of delight 
Severed from the tender night 
Of your sheltering mother-mine, 
Leap and sparkle, dance and shine, 
Blithely and securely set 
In love's magic coronet. 
Living jewel, may you be 
Lau...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...rget the wisdom that you brought,
The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay -
No, no, not said, but cried it ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs