Famous Flicker Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Flicker poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous flicker poems. These examples illustrate what a famous flicker poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ll, and it's Ushant slams the door on us,
Whirling like a windmill through the dirty scud to lee:
Till the last, last flicker goes
From the tumbling water-rows,
And we're off to Mother Carey
(Walk her down to Mother Carey!),
Oh, we're bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea!...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...us ''tis sweet--
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
I will not quiver in the frailest bone,
You will not note a flicker of defeat;
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,
My mouth give utterance to any moan.
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.
Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flame.
I will come out, back to your world of tears,
A stronger soul within a finer frame....Read more of this...
by
McKay, Claude
...ish "through the air"
despite the protestations of the O.E.D.):
why, though, should one taillight flash and flare
then flicker-fade
to an afterimage of tourmaline
set in a dark part-jet, part-jasper or -jade?
That smoker's cough again: it triggers off from drumlin
to drumlin an emphysemantiphon
of cows. They hoist themselves onto their trampoline
and steady themselves and straight away divine
water in some far-flung spot
to which they then gravely incline. This is no Devon...Read more of this...
by
Muldoon, Paul
...the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly
into
the
night,
Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops
of
houses,
and down into the clefts of streets.
4
These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;
I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.
I loved well those cities;
I loved well the stately and rapid river;
The men and women I saw were all near to me...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ill.
Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding,
His face a little whiter than the dusk.
A drone of sultry wings flicker¡¯d in his head.
The end of sunset burning thro¡¯ the boughs 10
Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours
Cumber¡¯d, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in.
He thought: ¡®Somewhere there¡¯s thunder,¡¯ as he strove
To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him,
But stood, the sweat of horror on his face. 15
He blunder¡¯d down a path, trampli...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...! somewhere, -- mystery, where?
In the leaves? in the air?
In my heart? is a motion made:
'Tis a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade.
In the leaves 'tis palpable: low multitudinous stirring
Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring,
Have settled my lord's to be looked for; so; they are still;
But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill, --
And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river, --
And look where a passionate sh...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recen...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ke
Of in-betweening light. "I feel like this. I hope that you do, too, Black crater. Screw you. Kiss" And sees a voodoo flicker, where two worlds nearly touch
And miss. That flash, where white
Lets black get close, that dagger of not-quite contact,
Catspaw panic, quiver on the wheat
Field before thunder -
There. That's it. That's her own self, in paint, Splitting what she was from what she is. As if everything that separates, unites.
Copyright
from Voodoo Shop (Chatto, 2002)...Read more of this...
by
Padel, Ruth
...ngrave the sky
in lines so steady and so straight
they implied the enormous concentration
of good men,
but now my eyes flicker
from the in-flight movie
to the stewardess's pantyline,
then back into my book,
where men throw harpoons at something
much bigger and probably
better than themselves,
wanting to kill it,
wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt
to prove that they exist.
Imagine being born and growing up,
rushing through the world for sixty years
at unimaginable...Read more of this...
by
Hoagland, Tony
...ince you know all
and I know nothing,
tell me what I dreamed last night.”
Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.
A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.
A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gatheri...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...a friendly grace --'
(`Grace!' quoth Love)
"`Read me two Dreams that linger long,
Dim as returns of old-time song
That flicker about the mind.
I dreamed (how deep in mortal sleep!)
I struck thee dead, then stood above,
With tears that none but dreamers weep;'
`Dreams,' quoth Love;
"`In dreams, again, I plucked a flower
That clung with pain and stung with power,
Yea, nettled me, body and mind.'
`'Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine;
No need nor seed of it here Above;
In d...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...ching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.
-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll retur...Read more of this...
by
Roethke, Theodore
...ges, where the well is
deepest...
I have dared to live
beneath the great untamed.
To every good, to every
flicker of stars along the pine
shadows;
To every tussle with lucid dusk,
To every moonlit pledge, to
every turn made to outleap
silvery pollen,
I have desired to listen - to listen -
to the ripening of seasons....
Winter 2001
This is ONE of a continuing sequence. ...Read more of this...
by
Nwakanma, Obi
...g black hangings waver
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Tap! Tap!
In the ears which do not heed.
Tap! Tap!
Above the eyelids which do not flicker.
Tap! Tap!
Over the hands which do not stir.
Chiselled like a cameo of white agate against the hangings,
Struck to brilliance by the falling moonlight,
A face!
Sharp as a frozen flame,
Beautiful as an altar lamp of silver,
And still. Perfectly still.
In the next room, the men chatter
As they eat their midnight lunches.
A knife hits against a platter....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...tly bald) brought in
upon a platter,
I am no prophet-and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To r...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...argin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky’s mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I sing those words. What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly? From
The Witch Of Atlas