Famous Flinging Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

Immortality

by Katharine Tynan
 So I have sunk my roots in earth 
Since that my pretty boys had birth; 
And fear no more the grave and gloom, 
I, with the centuries to come. 

As the tree blossoms so bloom I, 
Flinging wild branches to the sky; 
Renew each year my leafy suit, 
Strike with the years a deeper root. 

Shelter a thousand birds...Read more of this...

My Last Dance

by Julia Ward Howe
 The shell of objects inwardly consumed
Will stand, till some convulsive wind awakes;
Such sense hath Fire to waste the heart of things,
Nature, such love to hold the form she makes.
Thus, wasted joys will show their early bloom,
Yet crumble at the breath of a caress;
The golden fruitage hides the scathèd bough,
Snatch it, thou scatterest wide its emptiness.
For pleasure bidden, I went...Read more of this...

My wheel is in the dark!

by Emily Dickinson
 My wheel is in the dark!
I cannot see a spoke
Yet know its dripping feet
Go round and round.

My foot is on the Tide!
An unfrequented road --
Yet have all roads
A clearing at the end --

Some have resigned the Loom --
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ --

Some with new -- stately feet --
Pass royal through the gate --
Flinging the problem back
At...Read more of this...

The Reverend Mullineux

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I'd reckon his weight as eight-stun-eight, 
And his height as five-foot-two, 
With a face as plain as an eight-day clock 
And a walk as brisk as a bantam-cock -- 
Game as a bantam, too, 
Hard and wiry and full of steam, 
That's the boss of the English Team, 
Reverend Mullineux! 

Makes no row when the game gets rough --...Read more of this...

The Deer Lay Down Their Bones

by Robinson Jeffers
 I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path, 
 flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling 
 water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clam-
 bered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and...Read more of this...

Hughes' Voice In My Head

by Barry Tebb
 As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire

Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable

Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain

Like a tattered lacework window;

Black glisten on roof slates,

Tarmac turned to shining ice,

Blusters of naked wind whipping

The wavelets of shifting water

To imaginary floating islets

On the turbulent river

Glumly he asked, "Where are the mills?"

Knowing their goneness in his lonely heart.

"Where are the mines...Read more of this...

The Cross-Roads

by Amy Lowell
 A bullet through his heart at dawn. On 
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the 
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...

Lines by Taj Mahomed

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   There were Roses in the hedges, and Sunshine in the sky,
   Red Lilies in the sedges, where the water rippled by,
   A thousand Bulbuls singing, oh, how jubilant they were,
   And a thousand flowers flinging their sweetness on the air.

   But you, who sat beside me, had a shadow...Read more of this...

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg
 Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I...Read more of this...

Margaret

by Carl Sandburg
 Many birds and the beating of wings
Make a flinging reckless hum
In the early morning at the rocks
Above the blue pool
Where the gray shadows swim lazy.

In your blue eyes, O reckless child,
I saw today many little wild wishes,
Eager as the great morning....Read more of this...

A Last Confession

by William Butler Yeats
 What lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.

Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.

I gave...Read more of this...

Tam OShanter

by Robert Burns
 A Tale

"Of Brownyis and of Bogilis full is this Buke."
 —Gawin Douglas.

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
An' folk begin to tak' the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An' getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,
That lie between us and our...Read more of this...

The Poet And His Book

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Down, you mongrel, Death!
Back into your kennel!
I have stolen breath
In a stalk of fennel!
You shall scratch and you shall whine
Many a night, and you shall worry
Many a bone, before you bury
One sweet bone of mine!

When shall I be dead?
When my flesh is withered,
And above my head
Yellow pollen gathered
All the empty afternoon?
When sweet lovers pause and wonder
Whom am I that...Read more of this...

An Aquarium

by Amy Lowell
 Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,
Silver shiftings,
Rings veering out of rings,
Silver -- gold --
Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,
With sharp white bubbles
Shooting and dancing,
Flinging quickly outward.
Nosing the bubbles,
Swallowing them,
Fish.
Blue shadows against silver-saffron water,
The light rippling over them
In steel-bright tremors.
Outspread translucent fins
Flute, fold, and relapse;
The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles
In scarcely tarnished twinklings.
Curving of spotted spines,
Slow up-shifts,
Lazy convolutions:
Then a...Read more of this...

Poor Little Children

by Victor Hugo
 ("La femelle! elle est morte.") 
 
 {Bk. I. xiii., Jersey, February, 1853.} 


 Mother birdie stiff and cold, 
 Puss has hushed the other's singing; 
 Winds go whistling o'er the wold,— 
 Empty nest in sport a-flinging. 
 Poor little birdies! 
 
 Faithless shepherd strayed afar, 
 Playful dog the gadflies catching; 
 Wolves bound boldly...Read more of this...

310. Tam o' Shanter: A Tale

by Robert Burns
 WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering...Read more of this...

Lines On Seeing Schillers Skull

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [This curious imitation of the ternary metre 
of Dante was written at the age of 77.]

WITHIN a gloomy charnel-house one day

I view'd the countless skulls, so strangely mated,
And of old times I thought, that now were grey.

Close pack'd they stand, that once so fiercely hated,
And hardy bones, that to the death contended,

Are lying cross'd,--to lie for ever, fated.
What held...Read more of this...

Munition Maker

by Robert William Service
 I am the Cannon King, behold!
I perish on a throne of gold.
With forest far and turret high,
Renowned and rajah-rich am I.
My father was, and his before,
With wealth we owe to war on war;
But let no potentate be proud . . .
There are no pockets in a shroud. 

By nature I am mild and kind,
To gentleness and ruth inclined;
And though...Read more of this...

Loon Point

by Amy Lowell
 Softly the water ripples
Against the canoe's curving side,
Softly the birch trees rustle
Flinging over us branches wide.
Softly the moon glints and glistens
As the water takes and leaves,
Like golden ears of corn
Which fall from loose-bound sheaves,
Or like the snow-white petals
Which drop from an overblown rose,
When Summer ripens to Autumn
And the freighted year must close.
From the shore come the scents of a...Read more of this...

Comfort

by Robert William Service
 Say! You've struck a heap of trouble --
 Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
 You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
 Health is failing, wish you'd die --
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
 And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
 If it's...Read more of this...

On Frozen Fields

by Galway Kinnell
1 
We walk across the snow, 
The stars can be faint, 
The moon can be eating itself out, 
There can be meteors flaring to death on earth, 
The Northern Lights can be blooming and seething 
And tearing themselves apart all night, 
We walk arm in arm, and we are happy. 

2 
You in whose ultimate madness we live, 
You flinging...Read more of this...

Nomad Exquisite

by Wallace Stevens
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,

And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightning colors
So, in me, comes flinging
Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames....Read more of this...

Prelude

by Robert William Service
 To smite Apollo's lyre I am unable;
Of loveliness, alas! I cannot sing.
My lot it i, across the tavern table,
To start a chorus to the strumming string.
I have no gift to touch your heart to pity;
I have no power to ring the note of pain:
All I can do is pipe a pot-house ditty,
Or roar a Rabelaisian refrain.

Behold yon minstrel of...Read more of this...

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