Famous Knocked Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Knocked poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous knocked poems. These examples illustrate what a famous knocked poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas, Dylan
...it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."
"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and gran...Read more of this...
by
Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me--
who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was
-but now that fiend and i are such
a total stranger one black day...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha's daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.
I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,
As yet was in a molten form
The leaden s...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...might touch her hand or the hem of her garment!
Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended,
And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her footsteps,
Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron;
Or at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village,
Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered
Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music.
But, among all who came, young Gabriel only was welcome;
...Read more of this...
by
Rossetti, Christina
...ed and caught her,
Coaxed and fought her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,
Kicked and knocked her,
Mauled and mocked her,
Lizzie uttered not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in;
But laughed in heart to feel the drip
Of juice that syruped all her face,
And lodged in dimples of her chin,
And streaked her neck which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
Worn out by her resistance,
Flung back her penny...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...--heigh ho!
XXIV.
Their ghosts still stand, as I said before,
Watching each fresco flaked and rasped,
Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er:
---No getting again what the church has grasped!
The works on the wall must take their chance;
``Works never conceded to England's thick clime!''
(I hope they prefer their inheritance
Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.)
XXV.
When they go at length, with such a shaking
Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly
Each m...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ndles it. She doesn't talk very much,
and she doesn't make any bad scenes. A good-looking woman, r
My friend knocked on the door and we could hear some-
body get up off the bed and come to the door.
"Who's there?" said a man on the other side.
"Me," my friend said, in a voice deep and recognizable
as any name.
"I'11 open the door. " A simple declarative sentence. He
undid about a hundred locks, bolts and chains and anchors
and steel sp...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...r>
The sprinkler to the side of Benjamin Franklin hit the left-
hand tree. It sprayed hard against the trunk and knocked some
leaves down from the tree, and then it hit the center tree,
sprayed hard against the trunk and more leaves fell. Then it
sprayed against Benjamin Franklin, the water shot out to the
sides of the stone and a mist drifted down off the water. Ben-
jamin Franklin got his feet wet.
The sun was shining down hard on me. The sun w...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ervase for the news he brought.
XXIX
Black-hearts and white-hearts, bubbled with the
sun, Hid in their leaves and knocked against each other.
Eunice was standing, panting with her run Up to the tool-house
just to get another
Basket. All those which she had brought were filled, And
still Gervase pelted her from above.
The buckles of his shoes flashed higher and higher Until
his shoulders strove
Quite through the top. "Eunice, your spirit's filled
This ...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle. broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over,
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than w...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...g.
The notes rose into the wide sun-mote
Which slanted through the window,
They lay like coloured beads a-row,
They knocked together and parted,
And started to dance,
Skipping, tripping, each one slipping
Under and over the others so
That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance
Or a comet's tail,
Behind them.
Then a wail arose -- crescendo --
And dropped from off the end of the bow,
And the dancing stopped.
A scent of lilies filled the room,
Long and slow. E...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...ee my children dead.
I've been about had some fun with you,
But you're a liar and I've done with you.
You've knocked me out, you didn't beat me;
Look out the next time that you meet me,
There'll be no friend to watch the clock for you
And no convenient thumb to crock for you,
And I'll take care, with much delight,
You'll get what you'd a got tonight;
That puts my meaning clear, I guess,
Now get to hell; I want to dress."
I dressed. My backers one...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...he pavement.
Farewell, Austerlitz, Tilsit, Presbourg;
Farewell, greatness departed.
Farewell, Imperial honours, knocked broadcast by the beating hammers
of ignorant workmen.
Straight, in the Spring moonlight,
Rises the deflowered arch.
In the silence, shining bright,
She stands naked and unsubdued.
Her marble coldness will endure the march
Of decades.
Rend her bronzes, hammers;
Cast down her inscriptions.
She is unconquerable, austere,
Cold as the ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...gh godly fear concerning his red wines.
For if these knaves should sack his holy house
And all the blessed casks be knocked o' the head,
HORRENDUM! all his Holiness' drink to be
Profanely guzzled down the reeking throats
Of scoundrels, and inflame them on to seize
The massy coffers of the Church's gold,
And steal, mayhap, the carven silver shrine
And all the golden crucifixes? No! --
And so the holy father Pope made stir
And had sent forth a legate to Cervolles,
And treat...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...tell me boldely."
This knave went him up full sturdily,
And, at the chamber door while that he stood,
He cried and knocked as that he were wood:* *mad
"What how? what do ye, Master Nicholay?
How may ye sleepen all the longe day?"
But all for nought, he hearde not a word.
An hole he found full low upon the board,
Where as the cat was wont in for to creep,
And at that hole he looked in full deep,
And at the last he had of him a sight.
This Nicholas sat ever gaping ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...t have been nothing at all
The few hundred books we’d brought and furniture bought
At auction in the town, left-overs knocked down to the few pounds
We had between us, dumped outside the red front door by the
Carrier’s cart; stared at by neighbours constantly grimacing
Though the grimy nets of the weavers’ cottage windows, baffled
As to who we were and how and why we’d come there.
I never gave it a thought (perhaps I should have) but with
The sense of ‘poet’ in ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...came a watchman's call
"A cloudy night. Rain beginning to fall."
And still he waited. The clock's slow tick
Knocked on the silence. Paul turned sick.
He filled his own glass full of wine;
From his pocket he took a paper. The twine
Was knotted, and he searched a knife
From his jumbled tools. The cord of life
Snapped as he cut the little string.
He knew that he must do the thing
He feared. He shook powder into the wine,
And holding it up so t...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...nd the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas,
until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard,
climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door
of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole:
"Let me in, I'm finished with praying, I'm the Revolution.
I am the darker, the older America."
She was as beautiful as a stone in the sunrise,
her voice had the gutturals of machine guns
across khaki deserts where the cactus flower
detonates like grenades, her sex was th...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...sm was opening, widening,
Between the Commons and the King;
I thought of the Commons in tears— in tears,
When Black Rod knocked at Parliament's door,
And they saw Rebellion straight before—
Weeping, and yet as hard as stone,
Knowing what the English have always known
Since then— and perhaps have known alone—
Something that none can teach or tell—
The moment when God's voice says; 'Rebel.'
Not to rise up in sudden gust
Of passion— not, though the cause be just;
Not to s...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...for a long time, looking up and looking down,
following the stairs with my eyes, having trouble believing.
Then I knocked on my creek and heard the sound of wood
I ended up by being my own trout and eating the slice of bread myself.
The Reply of Trout Fishing in America:
There was nothing I could do. I couldn't change a flight of stairs
into a creek. The boy walked back to where he came from.
The same thing once happened to me. I remember
mi...Read more of this...
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