Famous Kneed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dulce Et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen
 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick,...Read more of this...

Nicholas Nye

by Walter de la Mare
 Thistle and darnell and dock grew there, 
And a bush, in the corner, of may, 
On the orchard wall I used to sprawl 
In the blazing heat of the day; 

Half asleep and half awake, 
While the birds went twittering by, 
And nobody there my lone to share 
But Nicholas Nye. 

Nicholas Nye was lean and gray, 
Lame of...Read more of this...

To an Ungentle Critic

by Robert Graves
 The great sun sinks behind the town 
Through a red mist of Volnay wine.... 
But what’s the use of setting down 
That glorious blaze behind the town? 
You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look 
For newer pictures in this book; 
You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine. 

A fresh wind fills the evening air 
With horrid crying of night...Read more of this...

At Lulworth Cove A Century Back

by Thomas Hardy
 Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:

"You see that man?" -- I might have looked, and said,
"O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head.
So...Read more of this...

A Hillside Thaw

by Robert Frost
 To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them...Read more of this...

Child Margaret

by Carl Sandburg
 THE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers.
All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child’s room.
Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps.
The 6 and 9 salute as dancing sisters, elder and younger,...Read more of this...

Saint Judas

by James Wright
 When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this...Read more of this...

The Battle of Alma

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas on the heights of Alma the battle began.
But the Russians turned and fled every man;
Because Sir Colin Campbell's Highland Brigade put them to flight,
At the charge of the bayonet, which soon ended the fight. 

Sir Colin Campbell he did loudly cry,
Let the Highlanders go forward, they will win or die,
We'll hae nane but Hieland bonnets here,
So forward, my...Read more of this...

The Butter Factory

by Les Murray
 It was built of things that must not mix:
paint, cream, and water, fire and dusty oil.
You heard the water dreaming in its large
kneed pipes, up from the weir. And the cordwood
our fathers cut for the furnace stood in walls
like the sleeper-stacks of a continental railway.

The cream arrived in lorried tides; its procession
crossed a platform of workers' stagecraft: Come here
Friday-Legs!...Read more of this...

For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Hands

by Delmore Schwartz
 Athlete, virtuoso,
Training for happiness,
Bend arm and knee, and seek
The body's sharp distress,
For pain is pleasure's cost,
Denial is route
To speech before the millions
Or personal with the flute.

The ape and great Achilles,
Heavy with their fate,
Batter doors down, strike
Small children at the gate,
Driven by love to this,
As knock-kneed Hegel said,
To seek with a sword their peace,
That the child may be taken away
From...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

by Anne Sexton
 The end of the affair is always death. 
She's my workshop. Slippery eye, 
out of the tribe of myself my breath 
finds you gone. I horrify 
those who stand by. I am fed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Finger to finger, now she's mine. 
She's not too far. She's my encounter. 
I beat her like a bell....Read more of this...

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