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Famous Keeper Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Edgar, Marriott
...id 'Well, I am vexed!'

Then Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom -
Quite rightly, when all's said and done -
Complained to the Animal Keeper,
That the Lion had eaten their son.

The keeper was quite nice about it;
He said 'What a nasty mishap.
Are you sure that it's your boy he's eaten?'
Pa said "Am I sure? There's his cap!'

The manager had to be sent for.
He came and he said 'What's to do?'
Pa said 'Yon Lion's 'et Albert,
'And 'im in his Sunday clothes, too.'

Then Mother...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...; 
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize; 
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator, 
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.


I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept 
for three years, telling all she does not say 
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept, 
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day 
with your blood, will I drink down your glass 
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years 
goes to my shelf to wait for my ag...Read more of this...

by Moody, William Vaughn
...fell away at night 
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust 
Obscurely in a common grave with him 
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. 
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb 
In nature's busy old democracy 
To flush the mountain laurel when she blows 
Sweet by the southern sea, 
And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: -- 
The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew 
This mountain fortress for no earthly hold 
Of temporal quarrel, but th...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...unset—
Then—my Diadem put on.

Big my Secret but it's bandaged—
It will never get away
Till the Day it's Weary Keeper
Leads it through the Grave to thee....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...de - being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper --
Luxuriant song.

Hic. Why should you leave the lamp
Burning alone beside an open book,
And trace these characters upon the sands?
A style is found by sedentary toil
And by the imitation of great masters.

Ille. Because I seek an image, not a book.
Those men that in their writings are most wise,
Own nothing but their blind, stupe...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...of the soul, shall not heaven bow down?
Time, father of life, and more great than the life it begat and began,
Earth's keeper and heaven's and their fate, lives, thinks, and hath substance in man.
Time's motion that throbs in his blood is the thought that gives heart to the skies,
And the springs of the fire that is food to the sunbeams are light to his eyes.
The minutes that beat with his heart are the words to which worlds keep chime,
And the thought in his pulses ...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...in the same crime to
 its expiation; I heard the same cry.

A bad mountain to build your world on. Am I another keeper of
 the people, that on my own shore,
On the gray rock, by the grooved mass of the ocean, the
 sicknesses I left behind me concern me?

Here where the surf has come incredible ways out of the splendid
 west, over the deeps
Light nor life sounds forever; here where enormous sundowns
 flower and burn through color to quietness;

Then the ecstasy of the ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...he drunkard nods by the
 bar-room stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves—the policeman travels his beat—the
 gate-keeper marks who pass; 
The young fellow drives the express-wagon—(I love him, though I do not know
 him;) 
The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race; 
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young—some lean on their rifles,
 some sit on logs, 
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The gr...Read more of this...

by Bible, The
...because the sun hath
           looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they
           made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard
           have I not kept.

22:001:007 Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where
           thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as
           one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?

22:001:008 If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, g...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...Sophia, or Adrianople. The poison was mixed in the cup of coffee, which is presented before the sherbet by the bath-keeper, after dressing. 

(34) The Turkish notions of almost all islands are confined to the Archipelago, the sea alluded to. 

(35) Lambro Canzani, a Greek, famous for his efforts in 1789-90, for the independence of his country. Abandoned by the Russians, he became a pirate, and the Archipelago was the scene of his enterprises. He is said to...Read more of this...

by Field, Edward
...ing at his chains and slurping,
ready to go right to it:
He has been well prepared for coupling
by his pinching leering keeper who's been saying for weeks,
"Ya gonna get a little nookie, kid,"
or "How do you go for some poontang, baby?"
All the evil in him is focused on this one thing now
as he is led into her very presence.

She awakens slowly,
she bats her eyes,
she gets up out of the equipment,
and finally she stands in all her seamed glory,
a monster princess with a h...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ride among the children,
the fancy amid the absurd
and awkward, that horn for hounds
that skipper homeward, that museum
keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze
within the pilgrim woman,
a clown mender, a dove's
cheek among the stones,
my Lady of first words,
this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays
fastened to his Crucifix
so that love may praise
his sacrifice
and not the grotesque metaphor,
you come, a brave ghost, to fix
in my mind without praise
or paradi...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...nd like the shaking of a timbrel 
Cackles the laughter of the whimbrel.. 

In the old quarry-pit they say 
Head-keeper Pike was made away. 
He walks, head-keeper Pike, for harm, 
He taps the windows of the farm; 
The blood drips from his broken chin, 
He taps and begs to be let in. 
On Wood Top, nights, I've shaked to hark 
The peewits wambling in the dark 
Lest in the dark the old man might 
Creep up to me to beg a light.

But Wood Top grass is short and ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...idle hear
Jingeling  in a whistling wind as clear,
And eke as loud, as doth the chapel bell,
There as this lord was keeper of the cell.
The rule of Saint Maur and of Saint Benet, 
Because that it was old and somedeal strait
This ilke* monk let olde thinges pace, *same
And held after the newe world the trace.
He *gave not of the text a pulled hen,* *he cared nothing
That saith, that hunters be not holy men: for the text*
Ne that a monk, when he is cloisterless;...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...rce dared follow,
And shelved to the chamber secluded
Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.
The King bailed his keeper, an Arab
As glossy and black as a scarab,*1
And bade him make sport and at once stir
Up and out of his den the old monster.
They opened a hole in the wire-work
Across it, and dropped there a firework,
And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;
A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled,
The blackness and silence so utter,
By the firework's slow s...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...it road?
And what is the spur that keeps the pace,
What is the galling goad?
And now they beat at the prison door,
"Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within,
And we fain would take him away
"From those who ride fast on our heels
With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence,
And the rope they bear is long."
They have fooled the jailer with lying words,
They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn,
And...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...rt attend, 
Approves the Conduct, and from Sheep and Curs 
Transfers the Sway, and changed his Wool to Furrs. 
Lord-Keeper now, as rightly he divides 
His just Decrees, and speedily decides; 
When his sole Neighbor, whilst he watch'd the Fold, 
A Hermit poor, in Contemplation old, 
Hastes to his Ear, with safe, but lost Advice, 
Tells him such Heights are levell'd in a trice, 
Preferments treach'rous, and her Paths of Ice: 
And that already sure 't had turn'd his Brain, 
...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...rand;
     With changed cheer, the mower blithe
     Left in the half-cut swath his scythe;
     The herds without a keeper strayed,
     The plough was in mid-furrow staved,
     The falconer tossed his hawk away,
     The hunter left the stag at hay;
     Prompt at the signal of alarms,
     Each son of Alpine rushed to arms;
     So swept the tumult and affray
     Along the margin of Achray.
     Alas, thou lovely lake! that e'er
     Thy banks should echo sou...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...I saw him borne to bliss
In mine vision, so God me wiss.* *direct
So did our sexton, and our fermerere,* *infirmary-keeper
That have been true friars fifty year, --
They may now, God be thanked of his love,
Make their jubilee, and walk above.
And up I rose, and all our convent eke,
With many a teare trilling on my cheek,
Withoute noise or clattering of bells,
Te Deum was our song, and nothing else,
Save that to Christ I bade an orison,
Thanking him of my revelatio...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...d heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness....Read more of this...

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