Famous Knot Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland

by William Butler Yeats
 He stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled...Read more of this...

428. Song—Phillis the Queen o' the fair

by Robert Burns
 ADOWN winding Nith I did wander,
 To mark the sweet flowers as they spring;
Adown winding Nith I did wander,
 Of Phillis to muse and to sing.


Chorus.—Awa’ wi’ your belles and your beauties,
 They never wi’ her can compare,
Whaever has met wi’ my Phillis,
 Has met wi’ the queen o’ the fair.


The daisy amus’d my fond fancy,
 So artless, so...Read more of this...

Faithless Nelly Gray

by Thomas Hood
 A Pathetic Ballad

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, 'Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot.'

The army-surgeons made him limbs:
Said he, 'They're only pegs;
But there's as wooden members quite,
As represent my legs.'

Now...Read more of this...

Freedom And Love

by Thomas Campbell
 How delicious is the winning
Of a kiss at love's beginning,
When two mutual hearts are sighing
For the knot there's no untying!
Yet remember, 'Midst our wooing,
Love has bliss, but Love has ruing;
Other smiles may make you fickle,
Tears for other charms may trickle.
Love he comes, and Love he tarries,
Just as fate or fancy carries;
Longest stays, when sorest chidden;
Laughs and flies, when press'd...Read more of this...

El Nudo (The Knot)

by Delmira Agustini
Spanish    Su idilio fue una larga sonrisa a cuatro labios…En el regazo cálido de rubia primaveraAmáronse talmente que entre sus dedos sabiosPalpitó la divina forma de la Quimera.    En los palacios fúlgidos de las tardes en calmaHablábanse un lenguaje sentido como un lloro,Y se besaban hondo hasta morderse el alma!…Las horas deshojáronse como flores de oro,    Y el Destino interpuso sus dos manos...Read more of this...

When Man Enters Woman

by Anne Sexton
 When man,
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach...Read more of this...

The Ax-Helve

by Robert Frost
 I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
From striking at another alder's roots,
And that was, as I say, an alder branch.
This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day
Behind me on the snow in my own yard
Where I was working at the chopping block,
And...Read more of this...

Sestina VI

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA VI. Anzi tre di creata era alma in parte. THE HISTORY OF HIS LOVE; AND PRAYER FOR HELP.  Life's three first stages train'd my soul in partTo place its care on objects high and new,And to disparage what men often prize,But, left alone, and of her fatal courseAs yet uncertain,...Read more of this...

Come Sleep O Sleep! The Certain Knot Of Peace

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!
O make in me those civil wars to cease!— 
I will good tribute pay...Read more of this...

At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge Part Latin Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended The English Thus Began

by John Milton
 Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,
Driving dum silence from the portal dore,
Where he had mutely sate two years before:
Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that thence can...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart Three Person'd God

by John Donne
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves...Read more of this...

Any Woman

by Katharine Tynan
 I am the pillars of the house;
The keystone of the arch am I.
Take me away, and roof and wall
Would fall to ruin me utterly.

I am the fire upon the hearth,
I am the light of the good sun,
I am the heat that warms the earth,
Which else were colder than a stone.

At me the children warm their hands;
I am their light...Read more of this...

The Thread

by Denise Levertov
 Something is very gently, 
invisibly, silently, 
pulling at me-a thread 
or net of threads 
finer than cobweb and as 
elastic. I haven't tried 
the strength of it. No barbed hook 
pierced and tore me. Was it 
not long ago this thread 
began to draw me? Or 
way back? Was I 
born with its knot about my 
neck, a bridle?...Read more of this...

Celia Beeding To the Surgeon

by Thomas Carew
 Fond man, that canst believe her blood
Will from those purple channels flow;
Or that the pure untainted flood
Can any foul distemper know;
Or that thy weak steel can incise
The crystal case wherein it lies:

Know, her quick blood, proud of his seat,
Runs dancing through her azure veins;
Whose harmony no cold nor heat
Disturbs, whose hue no tincture stains:
And the hard rock wherein it...Read more of this...

Canzone X

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 76] CANZONE X. Poichè per mio destino. IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: IN THEM HE FINDS EVERY GOOD, AND HE CAN NEVER CEASE TO PRAISE THEM.  Since then by destinyI am compell'd to sing the strong desire,Which here condemns me ceaselessly to sigh,May Love, whose quenchless fireExcites...Read more of this...

Blackberry-Picking

by Seamus Heaney
 Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent...Read more of this...

The Landlady

by Margaret Atwood
 This is the lair of the landlady

She is
a raw voice
loose in the rooms beneath me.

the continuous henyard
squabble going on below
thought in this house like
the bicker of blood through the head.

She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells
that bulge in under my doorsill;
she presides over my
meagre eating, generates
the light for eyestrain.

From her I rent my time:
she slams
my days like doors.
Nothing is...Read more of this...

The Months have ends -- the Years -- a knot

by Emily Dickinson
 The Months have ends -- the Years -- a knot --
No Power can untie
To stretch a little further
A Skein of Misery --

The Earth lays back these tired lives
In her mysterious Drawers --
Too tenderly, that any doubt
An ultimate Repose --

The manner of the Children --
Who weary of the Day --
Themself -- the noisy Plaything
They cannot put away --...Read more of this...

This lofty Wheel, whose trade it is to tyrannize, has

by Omar Khayyam
This lofty Wheel, whose trade it is to tyrannize, has
never loosed for man the knot of any difficulty. Wherever
it has seen an ulcerated heart, there has it come to add
wound unto wound....Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Red Earl

by Rudyard Kipling
 (It is not for them to criticize too minutely
the methods the Irish followed, though they might deplore some of
their results. During the past few years Ireland had been going
through what was tantamount to a revolution. -- EARL SPENCER)



Red Earl, and will ye take for guide
 The silly camel-birds,
That ye bury your head in an Irish thorn,
 On a desert...Read more of this...

The Akond of Swat

by Edward Lear
 Who, or why, or which, or what, Is the Akond of SWAT?

Is he tall or short, or dark or fair?
Does he sit on a stool or a sofa or a chair,
 or SQUAT,
 The Akond of Swat?

Is he wise or foolish, young or old?
Does he drink his soup and his coffee cold,
 or HOT,
 The Akond of Swat?

Does he...Read more of this...

Love

by Pablo Neruda
 What's wrong with you, with us, 
what's happening to us? 
Ah our love is a harsh cord 
that binds us wounding us 
and if we want 
to leave our wound, 
to separate, 
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us 
to drain our blood and burn together. 

What's wrong with you? I look at you 
and I...Read more of this...

I Go Back To The House For A Book

by Billy Collins
 I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost...Read more of this...

All Night

by Lisel Mueller
 All night the knot in the shoelace 
waits for its liberation, 
and the match on the table packs its head 
with anticipation of light. 
The faucet sweats out a bead of water, 
which gathers strength for the free fall, 
while the lettuce in the refrigerator 
succumbs to its brown killer. 
And in the novel I put down 
before I...Read more of this...

To the Ladies

by Lady Mary Chudleigh
 WIFE and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name : 
For when that fatal knot is ty'd, 
Which nothing, nothing can divide : 
When she the word obey has said, 
And man by law supreme has made, 
Then all that's kind is laid aside, 
And nothing left but state and pride : 
Fierce as an eastern prince...Read more of this...

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