Famous Flapped Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Definition Of Love

by Andrew Marvell
 My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility. 

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing. 

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt....Read more of this...

My Mothers Body

by Marge Piercy
 1. 

The dark socket of the year 
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down 
and threatens never to rise, 
when despair descends softly as the snow 
covering all paths and choking roads: 

then hawkfaced pain seized you 
threw you so you fell with a sharp 
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. 
My father heard the...Read more of this...

The Ghosts of the Buffaloes

by Vachel Lindsay
 Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry,
The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high,
The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar,
White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar.
I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone.
My home was a hut without orchard or lawn.
It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream,
Nothing else built by...Read more of this...

The Burglar Of Babylon

by Elizabeth Bishop
 On the fair green hills of Rio
 There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
 And can't go home again.

On the hills a million people,
 A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
 That's had to light and rest,

Building its nests, or houses,
 Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
 They perch...Read more of this...

The Legend Of Boastful Bill

by Badger Clark
  At a roundup on the Gily,
    One sweet mornin' long ago,
  Ten of us was throwed right freely
    By a hawse from Idaho.
  And we thought he'd go-a-beggin'
    For a man to break his pride
  Till, a-hitchin' up one leggin,
    Boastful Bill cut...Read more of this...

Pau-Puk-Keewis

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
It was he who in his frenzy
Whirled these...Read more of this...

Nagasaki Days

by Allen Ginsberg
 I -- A Pleasant Afternoon

 for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup


One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
 tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
 words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest -- the wild wind blew thru
 blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central...Read more of this...

Turns And Movies: Duvals Birds

by Conrad Aiken
 The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness, 
Circled three times above the upturned faces 
With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings, 
And then returned to stagger on her finger. 
She bowed and smiled, eliciting applause. . . 
The property man hated her dirty birds. 
But it had taken years—yes, years—to train them, 
To shoulder flags, strike bells...Read more of this...

The Dirge of Wallace

by Thomas Campbell
 When Scotland's great Regent, our warrior most dear, 
The debt of his nature did pay, 
T' was Edward, the cruel, had reason to fear, 
And cause to be struck with dismay. 

At the window of Edward the raven did croak, 
Though Scotland a widow became; 
Each tie of true honor to Wallace he broke- 
The raven croaked "Sorrow and...Read more of this...

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

by Amy Lowell
 After a Print by George Cruikshank

It was a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled...Read more of this...

The Cuckoo

by Robert William Service
 No lyric line I ever penned
The praise this parasitic bird;
And what is more, I don't intend
To write a laudatory word,
Since in my garden robins made
A nest with eggs of dainty spot,
And then a callous cuckoo laid
 A lone on on the lot.

Of course the sillies hatched it out
Along with their two tiny chicks,
And there it threw its weight about,
But...Read more of this...

Haunted

by Siegfried Sassoon
EVENING was in the wood, louring with storm. 
A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool 
And baked the channels; birds had done with song. 
Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon, 
Or willow-music blown across the water 5 
Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill. 

Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding, 
His face a little...Read more of this...

Barbara Frietchie

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;

Over the mountains winding...Read more of this...

Boy And The Sparrow

by Mother Goose
A little cock-sparrow sat on a green tree,
And he chirruped, he chirruped, so merry was he;
A naughty boy came with his wee bow and arrow,
Determined to shoot this little cock-sparrow.

"This little cock-sparrow shall make me a stew,
And his giblets shall make me a little pie, too."
"Oh, no," says the sparrow "I won't make a stew."
So he flapped his wings and...Read more of this...

The Norsemen (From Narrative and Legendary Poems )

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 GIFT from the cold and silent Past! 
A relic to the present cast, 
Left on the ever-changing strand 
Of shifting and unstable sand, 
Which wastes beneath the steady chime 
And beating of the waves of Time! 
Who from its bed of primal rock 
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? 
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, 
Thy rude and savage...Read more of this...

A Bush Lawyer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 When Ironbark the turtle came to Anthony's lagoon 
The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctal rain, 
The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune 
And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain. 
But Ironbark the turtle cared no whit for all of these; 
The ripple of the rivulets, the rustle of the...Read more of this...

Ave Imperatrix

by Oscar Wilde
 Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?

The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,

The spears of crimson-suited war,
The long white-crested waves of fight,
And all the deadly fires...Read more of this...

Faun

by Sylvia Plath
 Haunched like a faun, he hooed
From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost
Until all owls in the twigged forest
Flapped black to look and brood
On the call this man made.

No sound but a drunken coot
Lurching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank
Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.

An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden...Read more of this...

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