Famous For Sale Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Old Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 So long as 'neath the Kalka hills
 The tonga-horn shall ring,
So long as down the Solon dip
 The hard-held ponies swing,
So long as Tara Devi sees
 The lights of Simla town,
So long as Pleasure calls us up,
 Or Duty drivese us down,
 If you love me as I love you
 What pair so happy as we two?

So long as...Read more of this...

Room 7: The Coco-Fiend

by Robert William Service
 I look at no one, me;
I pass them on the stair;
Shadows! I don't see;
Shadows! everywhere.
Haunting, taunting, staring, glaring,
Shadows! I don't care.
Once my room I gain
Then my life begins.
Shut the door on pain;
How the Devil grins!
Grin with might and main;
Grin and grin in vain;
Here's where Heav'n begins:
Cocaine! Cocaine!

A whiff! Ah, that's the thing.
How it makes me gay!
Now I want to...Read more of this...

Our New Horse

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The boys had come back from the races 
All silent and down on their luck; 
They'd backed 'em, straight out and for places, 
But never a winner they's struck. 
They lost their good money on Slogan, 
And fell most uncommonly flat 
When Partner, the pride of the Bogan, 
Was beaten by Aristocrat. 
And one said, "I move that instanter...Read more of this...

Garage Sale

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
  I sold her bed for a song. 
A song of yearning like an orphan’s. 
Or the one knives carve into bread. 

 But the un-broken bread 
song too. For the song that rivers 
sing to the ferryman’s oars. With 

 that dread in it. 
For a threadbare tune: garroted, 
chest-choked, cheap. A sparrow’s, 

 beggar’s, a foghorn’s call....Read more of this...

The Tradesman and the Scholar

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Citizen of mighty Pelf, 
But much a Blockhead, in himself 
Disdain'd a Man of shining Parts, 
Master of Sciences and Arts, 
Who left his Book scarce once a day 
For sober Coffee, Smoak, or Tea; 
Nor spent more Money in the Town 
Than bought, when need requir'd, a Gown; 
Which way of Living much offends 
The Alderman, who...Read more of this...

Fit the First: ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Landing 

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair. 
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell...Read more of this...

Flat Lands

by Carl Sandburg
 FLAT lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions,
The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat lands—blood and fire of sunsets thousands of years have been pouring over you.
And the stars follow the sunsets. One gold star. A shower of blue stars. Blurs of white and gray...Read more of this...

Over the Misty Mountains Cold

by J R R Tolkien
 Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old,
We must away, ere break of day,
To seek our pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells,
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light...Read more of this...

A Hill

by Anthony Hecht
 In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur,
I had a vision once - though you understand
It was nothing at all like Dante's, or the visions of saints,
And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends,
Picking my way through a warm sunlit piazza
In the early morning. A clear fretwork of shadows
From huge umbrellas littered the pavement...Read more of this...

The Sightless Man

by Robert William Service
 Out of the night a crash,
A roar, a rampart of light;
A flame that leaped like a lash,
Searing forever my sight;
Out of the night a flash,
Then, oh, forever the Night!

Here in the dark I sit,
I who so loved the sun;
Supple and strong and fit,
In the dark till my days be done;
Aye, that's the hell of it,
Stalwart and twenty-one.

Marie is stanch...Read more of this...

With Antecedents

by Walt Whitman
 1
WITH antecedents; 
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages; 
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am: 
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome; 
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,—with laws, artizanship, wars and journeys; 
With the poet, the skald,...Read more of this...

Elegy: Walking the Line

by Edgar Bowers
 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...

The Bibliomaniacs Bride

by Eugene Field
 The women-folk are like to books,--
Most pleasing to the eye,
Whereon if anybody looks
He feels disposed to buy.

I hear that many are for sale,--
Those that record no dates,
And such editions as regale
The view with colored plates.

Of every quality and grade
And size they may be found,--
Quite often beautifully made,
As often poorly bound.

Now, as for me, had I my choice,
I'd choose no...Read more of this...

Death Of The Kapowsin Tavern

by Richard Hugo
 I can't ridge it back again from char.
Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
and shattered glass smoked black and strung
about from the explosion I believe
in the reports. The white school up for sale
for years, most homes abandoned to the rocks
of passing boys--the fire, helped by wind
that blew the neon out six years before,
simply ended lots of ending.

A...Read more of this...

The Ghosts

by Robert William Service
 Smith, great writer of stories, drank; found it immortalized his pen;
Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a soul-thought -- Bing!
Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie
 stripped to the buff in swinish...Read more of this...

April 24

by David Lehman
 Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading and I introduced them
to an audience that already knew them,
and there were bottles of Evian at the table.
As air to the lungs of a drowning man was
a glass of this...Read more of this...

The Search

by Robert William Service
 I bought a young and lovely bride,
 Paying her father gold;
Lamblike she rested by my side,
 As cold as ice is cold.
No love in her could I awake,
 Even for pity's sake.

I bought rich books I could not read,
 And pictures proud and rare;
Reproachfully they seemed to plead
 And hunger for my care;
But to their beauty I was blind,
...Read more of this...

Felix Schmidt

by Edgar Lee Masters
 It was only a little house of two rooms --
Almost like a child's play-house --
With scarce five acres of ground around it;
And I had so many children to feed
And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
From bearing children.
One day lawyer Whitney came along
And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
Who owned three thousand acres of land,
Had bought the...Read more of this...

A Mountain Station

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I bought a run a while ago, 
On country rough and ridgy, 
Where wallaroos and wombats grow -- 
The Upper Murrumbidgee. 
The grass is rather scant, it's true, 
But this a fair exchange is, 
The sheep can see a lovely view 
By climbing up the ranges. 

And She-oak Flat's the station's name, 
I'm not surprised at that, sirs: 
The...Read more of this...

On The Sale By Auction Of Keats Love Letters

by Oscar Wilde
 These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant's price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet's heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Is it...Read more of this...

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood
 The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of 
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You...Read more of this...

For Sale

by Susan Rich
 Xhosa women in clothes too light

for the weather have brought wild flowers

and sit sloped along the Claremont road.

I see her through rolled windows,

watch her watch me to decide if I’ll pay.

It’s South Africa, after all, after apartheid;

but we’re still idling here, my car to her curb,

my automatic locks to her inadequate wage....Read more of this...

The Auction Sale

by Robert William Service
 Her little head just topped the window-sill;
She even mounted on a stool, maybe;
She pressed against the pane, as children will,
And watched us playing, oh so wistfully!
And then I missed her for a month or more,
And idly thought: "She's gone away, no doubt,"
Until a hearse drew up beside the door . . .
I saw a tiny coffin carried out.

And after...Read more of this...

Broadway

by Mark Doty
 Under Grand Central's tattered vault
--maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit--
one saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim

billowed over some minor constellation
under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers' windows. For sale,

glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,
the birds lined...Read more of this...

The Pearl

by George Herbert
 The Kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, 
seeking goodly pearls; who, when he had found one, 
sold all that he had and bought it.—Matthew 13.45


I know the ways of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of itself, like a good huswife, spun
In laws and...Read more of this...

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