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Famous Lank Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...’s dune, she’s unco weel;
But gentlemen, an’ ladies warst,
Wi’ ev’n-down want o’ wark are curst.
They loiter, lounging, lank an’ lazy;
Tho’ deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy;
Their days insipid, dull, an’ tasteless;
Their nights unquiet, lang, an’ restless.
 An’ev’n their sports, their balls an’ races,
Their galloping through public places,
There’s sic parade, sic pomp, an’ art,
The joy can scarcely reach the heart.
 The men cast out in party-matches,
Then sowther a’ in deep de...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...Bewailing old-time wrecks and robberies,
They shrive to priestly pines with many a sigh,
Breathe salutary balms through lank-lock'd hair
Of sick men's heads, and soon -- this world outworn --
Sink into saintly heavens of stirless air,
Clean from confessional. One died, this morn,
And willed the world to wise Queen Tranquil: she,
Sweet sovereign Lady of all souls that bide
In contemplation, tames the too bright skies
Like that faint agate film, far down descried,
Restraining s...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...sixteen feet of stone, Knostrop is gone,

Mount St. Mary’s boarded up.



Why does your image haunt me

Night and day?

Lank February grass

Pale lemon straw

The colour of your hair

Your voice in dreams

“I am here, I am waiting.”





36



Margaret, you are waking this February morning

When Leeds is clear and cold, the ‘Valentines’ Fair 

Is still, the carousels closed, the great wheel’s tip

Has stopped above the Town Hall clock, Spencer Place

Has nothing to say but “R...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...


Margaret, this Saturday morning in June

There is a queue at the ‘Princess’ for

The matin?e, down the alley by the blank

Concrete of the cinema’s side I hide

With you, we are counting our picture

Money, I am counting the stars in your

Hair, bound with a cheap plastic comb.





9



You have no idea of my need for you

A lifetime long, every wrong decision

I made betrayed my need; forty years on

Hear my song and take my hand and move

Us to the house of love where w...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...sun who might be Margaret’s

Daughter or Margaret herself half a

Lifetime earlier, with straw-gold hair

The colour of lank February grass.





2



Cook’s Moor End Works with three broken

Windows, lathes and benches open to the

Wind of my eyes this Sunday morning as I

Fly over the cobbles of Leeds nine to the

Aire’s side, the steps broken under the weight

Of the Transpennine Trail; forty years ago

I stood here with Margaret who whispered

In my ear, “I love you, I lo...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...ealed stone,
But rigid looks of chaste austerity,
And noble grace that dashed brute violence
With sudden adoration and blank awe?
So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted tem...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...,
Tho' parched with thirst and faint beneath
The summer's scorching sun.

For sometimes when no passing breeze
The long lank sedges waved,
All white with foam and heaving high
Its deafening billows raved;

And when the tempest from its base
The rooted pine would shake,
The powerless storm unruffling swept
Across the calm dead lake.

And ever then when Death drew near
The house of Arlinkow,
Its dark unfathom'd depths did send
Strange music from below.

The Lord of Arlinkow was...Read more of this...
by Southey, Robert
...itory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter-faces, whose skin's slack;
Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack;
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made;
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
To vex their souls at Resurrection;
Name not these living deaths-heads unto me,
For these, not ancient, but antique be.
I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
Wit...Read more of this...
by Donne, John
...Hold hard, these ancient minutes in the cuckoo's month,
Under the lank, fourth folly on Glamorgan's hill,
As the green blooms ride upward, to the drive of time;
Time, in a folly's rider, like a county man
Over the vault of ridings with his hound at heel,
Drives forth my men, my children, from the hanging south.

Country, your sport is summer, and December's pools
By crane and water-tower by the seedy trees
Lie this fifth m...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...his result: "O dreams of day and night!
O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
O lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these horrors new?
Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?
Am I to leave this haven of my rest,
This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
These crystalline pavilions, and pure fane...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...lossom wild
Fond as a parent to a child
And cull them in my childish joy
By swarms and swarms and never cloy
When their lank shades oer morning pearls
Shrink from their lengths to little girls
And like the clock hand pointing one
Is turnd and tells the morning gone
They leave their toils for dinners hour
Beneath some hedges bramble bower
And season sweet their savory meals
Wi joke and tale and merry peals
Of ancient tunes from happy tongues
While linnets join their fitful son...Read more of this...
by Clare, John
...rts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the
 promenaders; 
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the
 shod horses on the granite floor; 
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs; 
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs; 
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside, borne to the hospital;
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall; 
The excited crowd, the policeman with h...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...existences—you are so dear to me. 

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs! 
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! 
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! 
You doors and ascending steps! you arches! 
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
F...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...s vanity and greed.

"Then came I to a land I knew no man had ever seen,
A haggard land, forlornly spanned by mountains lank and lean;
The nitchies said 'twas full of dread, of smoke and fiery breath,
And no man dare put foot in there for fear of pain and death.

"But I was made all unafraid, so, careless and alone,
Day after day I made my way into that land unknown;
Night after night by camp-fire light I crouched in lonely thought;
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth--I knew...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...rth to him, 
198 A northern west or western north, but north, 
199 And thereby polar, polar-purple, chilled 
200 And lank, rising and slumping from a sea 
201 Of hardy foam, receding flatly, spread 
202 In endless ledges, glittering, submerged 
203 And cold in a boreal mistiness of the moon. 
204 The spring came there in clinking pannicles 
205 Of half-dissolving frost, the summer came, 
206 If ever, whisked and wet, not ripening, 
207 Before the winter's vacancy re...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...n: she's like him there. 
She wants our hens to be the best there are. 
You never saw this room before a show, 
Full of lank, shivery, half-drowned birds 
In separate coops, having their plumage done. 
The smell of the wet feathers in the heat! 
You spoke of John's not being safe to stay with. 
You don't know what a gentle lot we are: 
We wouldn't hurt a hen! You ought to see us 
Moving a flock of hens from place to place. 
We're not allowed to take them upside down, 
All we ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...oodoo-man has yet
A better native right to make men sweat?

The whole world on a raft! A Duke is here
At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer.
Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes,
In life's skullduggery he takes the prize —
Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams.
Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams.
The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam.
A candle shines from one lone cabin home.
The waves reflect it like a drunken star.

A banjo and a hymn are heard afa...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...whizz of my cross-bow!

PART FOUR

'I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.

I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.'--
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
An...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...
All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could. 

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him. 

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude: 

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry