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Famous Gargoyles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ke a head from a block. 

On the windowpanes, grey raindrops 
howled together, 
piling on a grimace 
as though the gargoyles 
of Notre Dame were howling. 

Damn you! 
Isn¡¯t that enough? 
Screams will soon claw my mouth apart. 

Then I heard, 
softly, 
a nerve leap 
like a sick man from his bed. 
Then, 
barely moving, 
at first, 
it soon scampered about, 
agitated, 
distinct. 
Now, with a couple more, 
it darted about in a desperate dance. 

The plast...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir



...




21



There were pigeons on the roof

So still I thought they were stone

Grey and brown and slate-blue

Beeston’s gargoyles

Made me think of you.





22



So far away I thought of you

On a morning like this forty

Years ago I was waiting at the

Corner of Falmouth Place

And you came running and my heart

Was still as the sun as you spun

On the tips of your toes and the rose

In your hair is everywhere

And your laughter is Spring, eternal

Primavera under the gasl...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...ALL I can give you is broken-face gargoyles.
It is too early to sing and dance at funerals,
Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and throwing his feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now you see it and now you don’t.

Fish to swim a pool in your garden flashing a speckled silver,
A basket of wine-saps filling your room with flame-dark for your eye...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...de me pass
His rapt evangel to mankind;
I cannot even match, alas!
The ululation of the wind.

The gross grey gods like gargoyles spit
On every poet's holy head;
No mustard-seed of truth or wit
In those curst furrows, quick or dead!

A tithe of what I know would cleanse
The leprosy of earth; and I -
My limits are like other men's.
I must live dumb, and dumb must die!...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister
...n the heavy rain, night after night, 
 Thanking the season's all-resistless might; 
 And, when the gutters choke, its gargoyles four 
 From granite mouths in anger spit and pour 
 Upon the hated ivy hour by hour. 
 
 As to the sword rust is, so lichens are 
 To towering citadel with which they war. 
 Alas! for Corbus—dreary, desolate, 
 And yet its woes the winters mitigate. 
 It rears itself among convulsive throes 
 That shake its ruins when the tempest blows. 
...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor



...streets
He came at last to shelter in a porch
Where gothic saints and warriors made a shield
To cover him, and tortured gargoyles spat
One long continuous stream of silver rain
That clattered down from myriad roofs and spires
Into a darkness, loud with rushing sound
Of water falling, gurgling as it fell,
But always thickly dark. Then as he leaned
Unconscious where, the great oak door blew back
And cast him, bruised and dripping, in the church.
His eyes from long sojourning in...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...hammered, and
praying, and putting their songs and prayers into
the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstones
and gargoyles--all their children and kisses of
women and wheat and roses growing.
I say, William Morris, I'm glad you're gone, I'm glad
you're a dead man.
Guns on the battle lines have pounded a year now between
Brussels and Paris....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...nt.


*

Kerry timber 
sold to the Canaries.
Pregnant girls

*

hung in their own hair
on city walls. Plague 
crumpling gargoyles

*

through Munster. "They spoke 
like ghosts crying
out of their graves."...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth
...d incubate his woes,
And fan the hate of mate for mate, the evil Artic knows.
In dreams the Lapland withes gloomed like gargoyles overhead,
While the devils three of Helsinkee came cowering by his bed.
"Go take," said they, "the yellow loot he's clinking in his belt,
And leave the sneaking wolverines to snout around his pelt.
Last night he called you Swedish scum, from out the glory-hole;
To-day he said you were a bum, and damned your mother's soul.
Go, plug with lead his scu...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...acings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved 
tracings,
squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the 
gargoyles, coils round
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It 
leaps into the night
and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning 
stain on the white,
wet night.

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to 
it begin to scorch.
Boom! The bohemian glass on the `etagere' is no longer 
there.
Boom! A stalk of flame sways agai...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...The years become you as Oxford becomes you,

As you became Oxford through the protest years;

From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May,

From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square

To Balliol, Balliol in the rain.



The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you,

As you became that road through silent years,

From the famous crossing to the stunted bridge

Caparisoned with carnivals of children,

Cohorts of coloured clowns and Father Christmases.


...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...owns, jewels & golden torches streaming
like a horse's mane, antiquity riding through in a wheel carriage
here, through gargoyles & gothic towers rocketing swordfish lanced crosses
pointing up at a God threatening rain
& it is stunning at this moment when raised beer steins cheer
the music on, hot & heavy, still humming & cooking
basic african-american rhythms alive here
in this ancient grand place of europe
this confluence point of nations & cultures
jumping off place for be...Read more of this...
by Troupe, Quincy

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry