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Famous Franklin Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...e the water,
Then up among thae lakes and seas,
They’ll mak what rules and laws they please:
Some daring Hancocke, or a Franklin,
May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin;
Some Washington again may head them,
Or some Montgomery, fearless, lead them,
Till (God knows what may be effected
When by such heads and hearts directed),
Poor dunghill sons of dirt and mire
May to Patrician rights aspire!
Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville,
To watch and premier o’er the pack vile,—
An’...Read more of this...



by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...way, the last, the best 
Of countries where the arts shall rise and grow 
Luxuriant, graceful; and ev'n now we boast 
A Franklin skill'd in deep philosophy, 
A genius piercing as th' electric fire, 
Bright as the light'nings flash explain'd so well 
By him the rival of Britannia's sage. 
This is a land of ev'ry joyous sound 
Of liberty and life; sweet liberty! 
Without whose aid the noblest genius fails, 
And science irretrievably must die. 



ACASTO. 
This is a ...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...Prudence Mears hath an old blue plate
Hid away in an oaken chest,
And a Franklin platter of ancient date
Beareth Amandy Baker's crest;
What times soever I've been their guest,
Says I to myself in an undertone:
"Of womenfolk, it must be confessed,
These do I love, and these alone."

Well, again, in the Nutmeg State,
Dorothy Pratt is richly blest
With a relic of art and a land effete--
A pitcher of glass that's cut, not presse...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Franklin fathered bastards fourteen,
 (So I read in the New Yorker);
If it's true, in terms of courtin'
 Benny must have been a corker.
To be prudent I've aspired,
 And my passions I have mastered;
So that I have never sired
 A single bastard.

One of course can never know;
 But I think that if I had
It would give me quite a glow
 When a kiddie calle...Read more of this...

by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
...end,
like a conscience-
 then nothing
can possibly overthrow poetry. 
1973 

Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin...Read more of this...



by Belloc, Hilaire
...Who caroused in the Dirt and was corrected by His Uncle.

His Uncle came upon Franklin Hyde
Carousing in the Dirt.
He Shook him hard from Side to Side
And Hit him till it Hurt,

Exclaiming, with a Final Thud,
"Take that! Abandoned boy!
For Playing with Disgusting Mud
As though it were a Toy!"

Moral:
From Franklin Hyde's adventure, learn
To pass your Leisure Time
In Cleanly Merriment, and turn
From Mud and Ooze and Slime
And every...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...
That what you found before's

Still here: a spiral of touch and go,

Lightning licking a tree

Imagining itself Aretha Franklin

*
Singing "You make me feel like a natural woman" 

In basso profondo,

Firing the bark with its otherworld ice

The way you fire, lifting me 

Off my own floor, legs furled 

Round your trunk as that tree goes up 

At an angle inside the lightning, roots in

The orange and silver of Dumfries.

*

Now I'm the lightning now you, you are,

As you...Read more of this...

by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
...horses, gladly exchange, 
for one reminder of life, 
all its memories. 
1974

Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin...Read more of this...

by Freneau, Philip
...
Philosopher, 'tis hard to part!-- 

When monarchs tumble to the ground, 
Successors easily are found: 
But, matchless FRANKLIN! what a few 
Can hope to rival such as YOU, 
Who seized from kings their sceptered pride, 
And turned the lightning darts aside....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...ross from the church.

 There were three poplar trees in the middle of the park

and there was a statue of Benjamin Franklin in front of the

trees. We sat there and drank port.

 At home my wife was pregnant.

 I would call on the telephone after I finished work and say,

"I won't be home for a little while. I'm going to have a drink

with some friends. "

 The three of us huddled in the park, talking. They were

both broken-down artists from New ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...s wheelchair and

just lay there without moving.

 Snoring loudly.

 Above him were the metal works of Benjamin Franklin

like a clock, hat in hand.

 Trout Fishing in America Shorty lay there below, his

face spread out like a fan in the grass.

 A friend and I got to talking about Trout Fishing in Ameri

ca Shorty one afternoon. We decided the best thing to do witl:

him was to pack him in a big shipping crate with a couple of

cases of sweet wine and se...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...itting in the woods.

 Unit 4 had a big wooden table with benches attached to it

like a pair of those old Benjamin Franklin glasses, the ones

with those funny square lenses. I sat down on the left lens

facing the Sawtooth Mountains. Like astigmatism, I made

myself at home.












 FOOTNOTE CHAPTER TO "THE

 SHIPPING OF TROUT FISHING

 IN AMERICA SHORTY TO

 NELSON ALGREN"



Well, well, Trout Fishing in America Shorty's back in town,

but I don't thin...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...overs down his throat.

 There were three sprinklers going in the park. There was

one in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue and one to the

side of him and one just behind him. They were all turning in

circles. I saw Benjamin Franklin standing there patiently

through the water.

 The sprinkler to the side of Benjamin Franklin hit the left-

hand tree. It sprayed hard against the trunk and knocked some

leaves down from the tree, and then it hit t...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...h.

 2

While I ate a baked potato
Six thousand miles apart,

In Brooklyn, in 1916,
Aged two, irrational.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt
Was an Arrow Collar ad.

O Nicholas! Alas! Alas!
My grandfather coughed in your army,

Hid in a wine-stinking barrel,
For three days in Bucharest

Then left for America
To become a king himself.

 3

I am my father's father,
You are your children's guilt.

In history's pity and terror
The child is Aeneas again;

Troy is ...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...turn to the sky
An everlasting laugh.

The King went gathering Christian men,
As wheat out of the husk;
Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,
And Mark, the man from Italy,
And Colan of the Sacred Tree,
From the old tribe on Usk.

The rook croaked homeward heavily,
The west was clear and warm,
The smoke of evening food and ease
Rose like a blue tree in the trees
When he came to Eldred's farm.

But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,
Like an old cripple's bones,
And Eldred's ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...d on the belt-- 
Old streak of leather--doesn't love me much 
Because I make him spit fire at my knuckles, 
The way Ben Franklin used to make the kite-string. 
That must be it. Some days he won't stay on. 
That day a woman couldn't coax him off. 
He's on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth 
Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys. 
Everything goes the same without me there. 
You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw 
Caterwaul...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...utler,
Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde
And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,
And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,
Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier
By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,
And secretly conferred.
But in the hall
Disorder reigned and when the marshal came
And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out
And locked them up.
Meanwhile within a room
Back in the basement of the church, with Blood
Counseled the wisest heads. Judge ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...celestial smoke. 
Then Satan said to Michael, 'Don't forget 
To call George Washington, and John Horne Tooke, 
And Franklin;' — but at this time was heard 
A cry for room, though not a phantom stirr'd. 

LXXXV 

At length with jostling, elbowing, and the aid 
Of cherubim appointed to that post, 
The devil Asmodeus to the circle made 
His way, and look'd as if his journey cost 
Some trouble. When his burden down he laid, 
'What's this?' cried Michael; 'why, 'tis n...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...d:
 'Who wants them bloody bones?'
None did, so they were scattered far
 And God knows where they are.

A friend of Franklin and of Pitt
 He lived a stormy span;
The flame of liberty he lit
 And rang the Rights of Man.
Yet pilgrims from Vermont and Maine
In hero worship seek in vain
 The bones of Thomas Paine....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...CA



The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken

late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin

statue in San Francisco's Washington Square.

Born 1706--Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a

 pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture.

 He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.

Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:





 PRESENTED BY

 H. D. COGSWELL

 TO OUR

 BOYS AND GIRLS

 W...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Franklin poems.


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