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Famous Gilbert Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Carman, Bliss
...ow gray. 


Yet while they last how actual they seem! 
Their faces beam; 
I give them all their names, 
Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James, 
Each with his aims; 


One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse 
His friends rehearse; 
Another is full of law; 
A third sees pictures which his hand can draw 
Without a flaw. 


Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long 
They shift and throng, 
Moved by invisible will, 
Like a great breath which puffs across my s...Read more of this...



by Gilbert, Jack
...Woke up suddenly thinking I heard crying.
Rushed through the dark house.
Stopped, remembering. Stood looking
out at bright moonlight on concrete....Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...y hung the moon,
Right o'er a plot of ground
Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced
With lofty walls around:
'Twas Gilbert's garden­there, to-night
Awhile he walked alone;
And, tired with sedentary toil,
Mused where the moonlight shone. 

This garden, in a city-heart,
Lay still as houseless wild,
Though many-windowed mansion fronts
Were round it closely piled;
But thick their walls, and those within
Lived lives by noise unstirred;
Like wafting of an angel's wing,
Tim...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...heir last duet, in danger of their lives--
For the foe was armed with toasting forks and cruel carving knives.
Then GILBERT gave the signal to his fierce Mongolian horde;
With a frightful burst of fireworks the Chinks they swarmed aboard.
Abandoning their sampans, and their pullaways and junks,
They battened down the hatches on the crew within their bunks.

Then Griddlebone she gave a screech, for she was badly skeered;
I am sorry to admit it, but she quickly disa...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...dering stock on the grave may tread 
Unnoticed and undenied; 
But the smallest child on the Watershed 
Can tell you how Gilbert died. 
For he rode at dusk with his comrade Dunn 
To the hut at the Stockman's Ford; 
In the waning light of the sinking sun 
They peered with a fierce accord. 
They were outlaws both -- and on each man's head 
Was a thousand pounds reward. 

They had taken toll of the country round, 
And the troopers came behind 
With a black who tracked...Read more of this...



by Dyke, Henry Van
...ins that have dared 
In little ships to plough uncharted waves, --
Davis and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, 
Raleigh and Gilbert, -- all the other names, --
Are written in the chivalry of God
As men who served His purpose. I would claim 
A place among that knighthood of the sea;
And I have earned it, though my quest should fail!
For, mark me well, the honour of our life 
Derives from this: to have a certain aim 
Before us always, which our will must seek 
Amid the peril of...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful student...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...When the King of Siam disliked a courtier, 
he gave him a beautiful white elephant. 
The miracle beast deserved such ritual 
that to care for him properly meant ruin. 
Yet to care for him improperly was worse. 
It appears the gift could not be refused....Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ld; 
Hunt him away from his bedding, and sit yourself down by the wall, 
Till you hear how the old fellow saved me from Gilbert, O'Meally and Hall. 
* 

Gilbert and Hall and O'Meally, back in the bushranging days, 
Made themselves kings of the district -- ruled it in old-fashioned ways -- 
Robbing the coach and the escort, stealing our horses at night, 
Calling sometimes at the homesteads and giving the women a fright: 
Came to the station one morning (and why they did th...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe
watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came
out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted.
She did not know what to do. Already bewildered
by being thirteen and just that summer a woman,
she now had to walk past the American.
But she did fine. Went by and around the corner
with style, no...Read more of this...

by Dunbar, William
...the Lee:-- 
 Timor Mortis conturbat me. 

Clerk of Tranent eke he has tane, 
That made the anteris of Gawaine; 
Sir Gilbert Hay endit has he:-- 
 Timor Mortis conturbat me. 

He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill 
Slain with his schour of mortal hail, 
Quhilk Patrick Johnstoun might nought flee:-- 
 Timor Mortis conturbat me. 

He has reft Merseir his endite, 
That did in luve so lively write, 
So short, so quick, of sentence hie:-- 
 Timor Mortis conturbat me. ...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.

Those who, admirably, refuse
to falsify (as those who will not
risk pretensions) are excluded
from saying even so much.

Degas said he didn't paint
what he saw, but what
would enable them to see
the thing he had....Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...I'd walk her home after work
buying roses and talking of Bechsteins.
She was full of soul.
Her small room was gorged with heat
and there were no windows.
She'd take off everything
but her pants
and take the pins from her hair
throwing them on the floor
with a great noise.
Like Crete.
We wouldn't make love.
She'd get on the bed
with ...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.


I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep 
and two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley, 
past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze. 
She turned twelve last year and it was legal 
for the father to take her out of school. She knows 
her life is over. The sadness makes her fine, 
makes me happy. Her old red sweater makes 
...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night, 
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart 
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it. 
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world. 
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh 
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically 
along three rivers....Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...We find out the heart only by dismantling what 
the heart knows. By redefining the morning, 
we find a morning that comes just after darkness. 
We can break through marriage into marriage. 
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond 
affection and wade mouth-deep into love. 
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. 
But go...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German 
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, 
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. 
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question 
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion. 
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best. 
It was impossib...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...Love is apart from all things. 
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it. 
It is not the body that finds love. 
What leads us there is the body. 
What is not love provokes it. 
What is not love quenches it. 
Love lays hold of everything we know. 
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness 
at first...Read more of this...

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