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Famous Keepers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tebb, Barry
...ge and maroon

Old-fashioned flowers

For a tired mind.





18



“Millionnaires of Leeds!

You are your brothers’ keepers.”

Finders keepers, losers weepers

Loidis in Elmete

Leeds upon Aire

The smell of molten tar

On a May morning

Puts the road back

Forty years.





19



The Bridgewaters and the Falmouths

Are scheduled for clearance

The word has gone out

From the City Fathers

In the Council Chamber

To the City Engineer

The last photograph ever

Has...Read more of this...



by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...ou whom the East 
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, 
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased, 

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent: 
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees....Read more of this...

by Homer,
...aring and the gifts of garland-loving Aphrodite, like the nurses of king's children who deal justice, or like the house-keepers in their echoing halls. There the daughters of Celeus, son of Eleusis, saw her, as they coming for easy-drawn water, to carry it in pitchers of bronze to their dear father's house: four were they and like goddesses in the flower of their girlhood, Callidice and Cleisidice and lovely Demo and Callithoe who was the eldest of them all. They knew...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the
 water, 
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the horseman in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances, 
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives
 waiting, 
The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard, 
The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite g...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers. 

Let Shedeur rejoice with Pyrausta, who dwelleth in a medium of fire, which God hath adapted for him. 

Let Shelumiel rejoice with Olor, who is of a goodly savour, and the very look of him harmonizes the mind. 

Let Jael rejoice with the Plover, who whistles for his live, and foils the marksmen and their guns. 

Let Raguel rejoice w...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...of snow, and so press in, perforce
Of multitude, as crowds that in an hour
Of civic tumult jam the doors, and bear
The keepers down, and throng, their rags and the
The basest, far into that council-hall
Where sit the best and stateliest of the land?

³Can I not fling this horror off me again, 
Seeing with how great ease Nature can smile 
Balmier and nobler from her bath of storm, 
At random ravage? and how easily 
The mountain there has cast his cloudy slough, 
Now towering ...Read more of this...

by Hannah, Sophie
...m Healds).
He has slept with non-smokers and smokers
In commercial and cultural fields.

He has slept with book-keepers, book-binders,
Slept with auditors, florists, PAs
Child psychologists, even child minders,
With directors of firms and of plays.

He has slept with the stupid and clever.
He has slept with the rich and the poor
But he sadly admits that he's never
Slept with a poet before.

Real poets are rare, he confesses,
While it's easy to find a cashi...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ity, precedents, pallor,
 dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief! 
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be put in prison! let those
 that
 were prisoners take the keys! Say! why might they not just as well be transposed?) 
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or
 insane person appear on each of the stands! 
Let the Asiatic, the African, the Europ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...or suffering;
See myself in prison shaped like another man, 
And feel the dull unintermitted pain. 

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch; 
It is I let out...Read more of this...

by Bible, The
...swer.

22:005:007 The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me,
           they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil
           from me.

22:005:008 I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved,
           that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

22:005:009 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest
           among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved,
           t...Read more of this...

by Sitwell, Dame Edith
...heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear---
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain---
Then--- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune---
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,---dark-smirc...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...hates to cram the sick with slops:
He scorns to make his art a trade;
Nor bribes my lady's fav'rite maid.
Old nurse-keepers would never hire
To recommend him to the squire;
Which others, whom he will not name,
Have often practis'd to their shame.

The statesman tells you with a sneer,
His fault is to be too sincere;
And, having no sinister ends,
Is apt to disoblige his friends.
The nation's good, his master's glory,
Without regard to Whig or Tory,
Were all the sch...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...very Cleopatra,
Drunk with enormous, salvation-con temning
 Love for a tinker.

How, while he hid from Sir Thomas's keepers,
Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight
Dews, he had listened to gipsy Juliet
 Rail at the dawning.

How at Bankside, a boy drowning kittens
Winced at the business; whereupon his sister--
Lady Macbeth aged seven--thrust 'em under,
 Sombrely scornful.

How on a Sabbath, hushed and compassionate--
She being known since her birth to th...Read more of this...

by Merwin, W S
...e dried blood of the masonry
no hour remains on the sundial
by now the owls of the tower corners
are waking on their keepers' fists
but it is still day
out in the air
and three falcons appear there
over the courtyard

no feathers on heads or breasts
and they fly down to us
to our wrists and between them
then hover and perch just above us
keeping us in sight
waiting
they are waiting for us

this time they will come with us
when we leave the island
tonight fo...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...s of wood stuck in the ground;
And as the people gazed on the weird-like scene, their silence was profound;
And the shopkeepers closed their shops, and hotel-keepers closed in the doorways,
And with torchlight and gaslight, Berlin for once was all ablaze.
The authorities of Berlin in honour of the Emperor considered it no sin,
To decorate with crape the beautiful city of Berlin;
Therefore Berlin I declare was a city of crape,
Because few buildings crape decoration did esc...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...g-backed stile you’ve clapped your eyes on.
There was an iron-spiked fence round all the coverts, 
And civil-spoken keepers I couldn’t trust, 
And the main earth unstopp’d. The fox I found 
Was always a three-legged ’un from a bag, 
Who reeked of aniseed and wouldn’t run.
The farmers were all ploughing their old pasture 
And bellowing at me when I rode their beans 
To cast for beaten fox, or galloped on 
With hounds to a lucky view. I’d lost my voice 
Although...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...e,
That hath no business to appear
When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 

XI
A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was; - my broken chain
With links unfasten'd did remain,
And it was to liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
A...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...disappear'd. 
The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled, 
And howling left the unburied dead; 
The camels from their keepers broke; 
The distant steer forsook the yoke — 
The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain, 
And burst his girth, and tore his rein; 
The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh, 
Deep-mouth'd arose, and doubly harsh; 
The wolves yell'd on the cavern'd hill 
Where echo roll'd in thunder still; 
The jackal's troop, in gather'd cry, [8] 
Bay'd from afar compla...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...fer; and I come to you, 
At last, through many storms and through much night.

Yet whatsoever I have undergone, 
My keepers in this instance are not hard. 
But for the chance of an ingratitude, 
I might indeed be curious of their mercy, 
And fearful of their leisure while I wait,
A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome, 
Not always to return—but not that now. 
Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me 
With eyes that are at last more credulous 
Of my identit...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...st
 Which cleansed our East with steel.

Hail and farewell! We greet you here,
 With tears that none will scorn--
O Keepers of the House of old,
 Or ever we were born!

One service more we dare to ask--
 Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
 We do not shame the Day!...Read more of this...

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