Famous Junior Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Among Children

...d heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the widows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and s...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip


An Antiquated Tree

...An Antiquated Tree
Is cherished of the Crow
Because that Junior Foliage is disrespectful now
To venerable Birds
Whose Corporation Coat
Would decorate Oblivion's
Remotest Consulate....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

An Incantation

...l first
Catch the buble, ere they burst?
Run, ye Squires, ye Viscounts, run,
Br-gd-n, T-ynh-m, P-lm-t-n; --
John W--lks junior runs beside ye!
Take the good the knaves provide ye!
See, with upturn'd eyes and hands,
Where the Shareman, Bri-gd-n, stands,
Gaping for the froth to fall
Down his gullet - lye and all.
See!---But hark my time is out --
Now, like some great water-spout,
Scaterr'd by the cannon's thunder,
Burst, ye bubbles, burst asunder!...Read more of this...
by Moore, Thomas

Beowulf (Modern English)

...d of the Scyldings.
Go ahead, bearing your weapons and battle-tackle.
I shall guide you. Likewise I shall command
my junior watchmen to keep your ship on the sand
hold this fresh-tarred float against every enemy,
with honor, until it carries again whichever beloved man,
of your right-performing troop, across the deep currents
the wood winding-necked, unto Wederish marches,
as it is given to escape, unharmed, the battle-rush.” (ll.286-300)

So they turned themselves ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Bobber

...Lindgren didn't drink. 
I liked him better than my dad for a time. 
He lets me steer his car, teased me 
about my name "Junior," and said 
one day I'd grow into a fine man, remember 
all this, and fish with my own son. 
But my dad was right. I mean 
he kept silent and looked into the river, 
worked his tongue, like a thought, behind the bait....Read more of this...
by Carver, Raymond


Dockery And Son

...'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Dream Song 88: Op. posth. no. 11

...in the London spring half-spent,
only the grand gift in his head

going for him, a seated ruin of a man
courteous to a junior, like one of the boarders,
or Dylan, with more to say
now there's no hurry, and we're all a clan.
You'd think off here one would be free from orders.
I didn't hear a single word. I obeyed....Read more of this...
by Berryman, John

Elegy: Walking the Line

...d, bringing Smokey home,
Was proud as Sherlock Holmes, and happier.
Above the spring, my sister’s cats, black Amy,
Grey Junior, down to meet us. The rose trees,
Domestic, Asiatic, my father’s favorites.
The bridge, marauding dragonflies, the bullfrog,
Camellias cracked and blackened by the freeze,
Bay tree, mimosa, mountain laurel, apple, 
Monkey pine twenty feet high, banana shrub,
The owls’ tall pine curved like a flattened S.
The pump house Mort and I built block by block,...Read more of this...
by Bowers, Edgar

Mazeppa

...led,
Which almost looked like want of head,
He thought their merits were his own.
His wife was not of his opinion;
His junior she by thirty years;
Grew daily tired of his dominion;
And, after wishes, hopes, and fears,
To virtue a few farewell tears,
A restless dream or two, some glances
At Warsaw's youth, some songs, and dances, 
Awaited but the usual chances,
Those happy accidents which render
The coldest dames so very tender,
To deck her Count with titles given,
'Tis said,...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Not all die early dying young --

...of Fate
Is consummated equally
In Ages, or a Night --

A Hoary Boy, I've known to drop
Whole statured -- by the side
Of Junior of Fourscore -- 'twas Act
Not Period -- that died....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Pain has but one Acquaintance

...Pain has but one Acquaintance
And that is Death --
Each one unto the other
Society enough.

Pain is the Junior Party
By just a Second's right --
Death tenderly assists Him
And then absconds from Sight....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Passage to India

...
The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,
Old occult Brahma, interminably far back—the tender and junior Buddha, 
Central and southern empires, and all their belongings, possessors, 
The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe, 
The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese, 
The first travelers, famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor,
Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d, 
The foot of ma...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song

...At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us--

her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman's. It is
the Our Father in French,

the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and

ready for anything. Sitting
together -- her separated
mother and father -- we can

hear the racket of traffic
shaking the main streets
...Read more of this...
by Grennan, Eamon

Song of Myself

...team also. 

In me the caresser of life wherever moving—backward as well as forward
 slueing; 
To niches aside and junior bending.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy shade! what is that
 you express in your eyes? 
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life. 

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on my distant and day-long ramble;

They rise together—they slowly circle around. 

I believe in those wing’d purpos...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Study of an Elevation In Indian Ink

...
And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led
 To the hoisting of Potiphar G.

 Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
 Is seven years junior to Me;
Each bridge that he makes either buckles or breaks,
 And his work is as rough as he.

 Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
 Is coarse as a chimpanzee;
And I can't understand why you gave him your hand,
 Lovely Mehitabel Lee.

 Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
 Is dear to the Powers that Be;
For They bow and They smile in an affable style,
 Which is seldom accorded ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Hypnotist

...g fee; 
But just as your case is drawing near 
I bob serenely and disappear. 
And away in another court I lurk 
While a junior barrister does your work; 
And I ask my fee with a courtly grace, 
Although I never came near the case. 
But the loss means ruin too you, maybe, 
But nevertheless I must have my fee! 
For the lawyer laughs in his cruel sport 
While his clients march to the Bankrupt Court." 


Third Man 
"I am a banker, wealthy and bold -- 
A solid man, and I keep my h...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The Junior God

...The Junior God looked from his place
 In the conning towers of heaven,
And he saw the world through the span of space
 Like a giant golf-ball driven.
And because he was bored, as some gods are,
 With high celestial mirth,
He clutched the reins of a shooting star,
 And he steered it down to earth.

The Junior God, 'mid leaf and bud,
 Passed on with a weary air,
T...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Mother-Lodge

...! Salaam!"
Inside -- "Brother", an' it doesn't do no 'arm.
We met upon the Level an' we parted on the Square,
An' I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!

We'd Bola Nath, Accountant,
 An' Saul the Aden Jew,
An' Din Mohammed, draughtsman
 Of the Survey Office too;
There was Babu Chuckerbutty,
 An' Amir Singh the Sikh,
An' Castro from the fittin'-sheds,
 The Roman Catholick!

We 'adn't good regalia,
 An' our Lodge was old an' bare,
But we knew the Ancient Landmarks,
 ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Onion Memory

...e
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears--
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust--the old flag blazes on its pole.

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass
from milky slump to crusty cadaver,
from crib to coffin--without palaver.
All's ...Read more of this...
by Raine, Craig

Wyther Park School Leeds Five

...ite mad about it and teaches nothing else",

The barely literate student teacher said.

Wittgenstein alternated between junior school teaching

And philosophy

Leavis ranted but read poetry inspirationally;

Twenty years later a stranger on a bus tapped my shoulder,

"What you taught me at nine got me two O'Levels,

That was all I ever got."...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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