Famous Flax Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Flax poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous flax poems. These examples illustrate what a famous flax poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...oard the golden, the sweet
potato of
Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the
vines,
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South,
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...casks;
Till not with ass and bull:
Remember thy baptismal bond;
Keep from commixtures foul and fond,
Nor work thy flax with wool.
XLVI
Distribute: pay the Lord His tithe,
And make the widow's heart-strings blythe;
Resort with those that weep:
As you from all and each expect,
For all and each thy love direct,
And render as you reap.
XLVII
The slander and its bearer spurn,
And propagating praise sojourn
To make thy welcome last;
Turn from Old Ad...Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...ray that ever buds in spring.
But if the Christmas field has kept
Awns the last gleaner overstept,
Or shrivelled flax, whose flower is blue
A single season, never two;
Or if one haulm whose year is o'er
Shivers on the upland frore,
--Oh, bring from hill and stream and plain
Whatever will not flower again,
To give him comfort: he and those
Shall bide eternal bedfellows
Where low upon the couch he lies
Whence he never shall arise....Read more of this...
by
Heaney, Seamus
...All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogsp...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...he flood-gates
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended
There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the
wheel.
The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go,
The justified mother of men....Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...lkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.Read more of this...
by
Grahn, Judy
...Look! She is different.
Medium for all our energy
as we pour it through her.
Vessel of light,
Her flesh is like flax,
a living fiber.
She is the symbol of our dreams and fears
and bloody visions, all
our metaphors for living in America.
Harlowe, Holiday, Monroe
Helen
When she goes to Hollywood
she is the fire for all purposes.
Her flesh is like dark wax, a candle.
She is from any place or class.
"That's the one," we say in instant recognition,
b...Read more of this...
by
Cullen, Countee
...my blood,
Lest I perish in the flood.
Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I thought was wet
Burning like the dryest flax,
Melting like the merest wax,
Lest the grave restore its dead.
Not yet has my heart or head
In the least way realized
They and I are civilized....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...r.
Let Cecil, house of Cecil rejoice with Gnaphalium an herb bleached by nature white and soft for the purpose of flax. God bless Lord Salisbury.
Let Rogers, house of Rogers rejoice with Hypelates a kind of Laurel -- God be gracious to Rogers and Spilsbury with their families.
Let Cambden, house of Cambden rejoice with Glischromargos a kind of white marl.
Let Conduit, house of Conduit rejoice with Greecula a kind of Rose. God be gracious to the...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...one whose name
Was writ in water." And was this the meed
Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
"The smoking flax before it burst to flame
Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...ver
To Zidon by the sea.
But at their place of meeting
They keep a home and shrine.
Your angel twists a purple flax,
Then weaves a mantle fine.
My angel, her defender
Upstanding, spreads the light
On painted clouds of fancy
And mists that touch the height.
Their sturdy babes speak kindly
And fly and run with joy,
Shepherding the helpless lambs —
A Grecian girl and boy.
These children visit Heaven
Each year and make of worth
All we planned and wrought i...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...lender
shoots from the gutters;
Over the western persimmon—over the long-leav’d corn—over the
delicate blue-flower flax;
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest;
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged
limbs;
Walking the path worn in the grass, and beat through the leaves of the brush;
Where the quail is whistling betw...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...borders of rivers, table-lands, openings;
Welcome the measureless grazing-lands—welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey,
hemp;
Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands;
Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands;
Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores;
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc;
LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe!
3
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;
The sylvan hut, the vine over the d...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...r trump of half so great a soun'.
This Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax,
But smooth it hung, as doth a strike* of flax: *strip
By ounces hung his lockes that he had,
And therewith he his shoulders oversprad.
Full thin it lay, by culpons* one and one, *locks, shreds
But hood for jollity, he weared none,
For it was trussed up in his wallet.
Him thought he rode all of the *newe get*, *latest fashion*
Dishevel, save his cap, he rode all bare.
Such glaring ey...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...o be the mother of strong children;
And she'd had lucky eyes and high heart,
And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,
At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,
Sudden and laughing.
O unquiet heart,
Why do you praise another, praising her,
As if there were no tale but your own tale
Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?
Have I not bid you tell of that great queen
Who has been buried some two thousand years?
When night was at its deepest, a wild goose
Cried...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...ng life is mine,
Ever by field or flood --
For not far back in my father's line
Was a dash of the Gipsy blood.
Flax and tussock and fern,
Gum and mulga and sand,
Reef and palm -- but my fancies turn
Ever away from land;
Strange wild cities in ancient state,
Range and river and tree,
Snow and ice. But my star of fate
Is ever across the sea.
A god-like ride on a thundering sea,
When all but the stars are blind --
A desperate race from Eternity
With ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...roke of the hammer;
Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel.
Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the swift-whirling spindles,
Through the strings of the yarn whizzes the shuttle away.
Far in the roads the pilot calls, and the vessels are waiting,
That to the foreigner's land carry the produce of home;
Others gladly approach with the treasures of far-distant regions,
High on the mast's lofty head flutters the garland of mirth.
See how...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...those nymphs divine;
Fair Chloe would perhaps be found
With footmen tippling under ground;
The charming Sylvia beating flax,
Her shoulders marked with bloody tracks;
Bright Phyllis mending ragged smocks:
And radiant Iris in the pox.
These are the goddesses enrolled
In Curll's collection, new and old,
Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em,
If they should meet them in a poem.
True poets can depress and raise,
Are lords of infamy and praise;
They are not scurrilous...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...er spinning-wheel
A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
With quick adjustment, provident control,
The lines--too subtly twisted to unroll--
Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
To the dear Christian Church--that we may do
Our Father's business in these temples mirk,
Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong;
While thus, apart from toil, o...Read more of this...
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