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Famous Leak Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Frost, Robert
...may have shifted since I saw it
In eighty-five."

 "As long ago as that?"

"If I remember rightly, it had sprung
A leak and emptied then. And forty years
Can do a good deal to bad masonry.
You won't see any Mormon swimming in it.
But you have said it, and we're off to find it.
Old as I am, I'm going to let myself
Be dragged by you all over everywhere——"
"I thought you were a guide.”

 "I am a guide,
And that's why I can't decently refuse you."

We...Read more of this...



by Lawson, Henry
...thought of old folks,
Till I sighed in my heart to the sigh of the oaks;
For the years waste away like the waters that leak
Through the pebbles and sand of Eurunderee Creek....Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...ing it over, screwed a redhaired whore.
Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week.
A journalism doggy took a leak

against absconding coon ('but take one virtue,
without which a man can hardly hold his own')
the sun in the willow
shivers itself & shakes itself green-yellow
(Abba Pimen groaned, over the telephone,
when asked what that was:)

How feel a fellow then when he arrive
in fame but lost? but affable, top-shelf.
Quelle sad semaine.
He hardly know his...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...hought of old folks, 
Till I sighed in my heart to the sigh of the oaks; 
For the years waste away like the waters that leak 
Through the pebbles and sand of Eurunderee Creek....Read more of this...

by Thoreau, Henry David
...so I'm dumb. 

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, 
But only thinks and does; 
Though surely out 'twill leak 
Without the help of Greek, 
Or any tongue. 

A man may love the truth and practise it, 
Beauty he may admire, 
And goodness not omit, 
As much as may befit 
To reverence. 

But only when these three together meet, 
As they always incline, 
And make one soul the seat, 
And favorite retreat, 
Of loveliness; 

When under kindred shape, like loves ...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...re wars, 
the business of life continues 
unless you're the one that gets it. 
Mama, they say, as their intestines 
leak out. Even without wars 
life is dangerous. 
Boats spring leaks. 
Cigarettes explode. 
The snow could be radioactive. 
Cancer could ooze out of the radio. 
Who knows? 
Ms. Dog stands on the shore 
and the sea keeps rocking in 
and she wants to talk to God. 

Interrogator: 
Why talk to God? 

Anne: 
It's better than playing...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...of two people
one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other
never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or
the gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate
or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the
windowsill, it's raining in, and he replies Oh they're all right,

it's only raining straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it's the only known example of ...Read more of this...

by Chin, Staceyann
...in navy-blue conservative wear

In those years when I am grateful
I still have a good sturdy bladder
that does not leak undigested prune juice
onto diapers—no longer adorable
will I be more grateful for that
than for any forward movement in any current political cause
and will it have been worth it then
Will it have been worth the long hours
of not sleeping
that produced little more than reams
of badly written verses that catapulted me into literary spasms
but d...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ill write to the Times, deriding our parson
 Because my God has afflicted me.


 Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:
 Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week. . .
 The bottom is out of the Universe!


 Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
 For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
 And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
 Is n...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...e an old pile

oflumber. Weed.

 One early autumn day she loaned me to the woman next

door and I fixed a small leak in the roof of her woodshed.

The woman gave me a dollar tip, and I said thank you, and

the next time it rained, all the newspapers she had been sav-

ing for seventeen years to start fires with got soaking wet.

From then on out, I received a sour look every time I

passed her house. I was lucky I wasn't lynched.

 I didn't work for th...Read more of this...

by Wright, Judith
...black-frost night. the walls draw in to the warmth 
and the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle 
hisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that summer 
will turn up again some day in a wave of rambler-roses, 
thrust it's hot face in here to tell another yarn- 
a story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the winter. 
seventy years of stories he clutches round his bones, 
seventy years are hived in him like old honey. 

During that year, Cha...Read more of this...

by Twain, Mark
...through."

A panic struck the bravest hearts,
The boldest cheek turned pale;
For plain to all, this shoaling said
A leak had burst the ditch's bed!
And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,
Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead,
Before the fearful gale!

"Sever the tow-line! Cripple the mules!"
Too late! There comes a shock!
Another length, and the fated craft
Would have swum in the saving lock!

Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew
And took one last embrace,
While...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...see the rising Sun commands,
But who could first discern the rising Lands.
Who best could know to pump an Earth so leak
Him they their Lord and Country's Father speak.
To make a Bank was a great Plot of State;
Invent a Shov'l and be a Magistrate.
Hence some small Dyke-grave unperceiv'd invades
The Pow'r, and grows as 'twere a King of Spades.
But for less envy some Joynt States endures,
Who look like a Commission of the Sewers.
For these Half-anders, half ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ls spoke to me. The blame,
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
like green witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others.

In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every which way. It’s really beginning to take
shape.

Out the garage window he sees a group of ugly children
enter the forest. Their mouths lo...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...br>
Their radio is louder than yours,
They celebrate week-ends all the week.
When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.
They try to get their parties to mix
By supplying their guests with Pogo sticks,
And when their fun at last abates,
They go to the bathroom on roller skates.
I might love the people upstairs more
If only they lived on another floor....Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...
There's something in you— dutiful— meek—
You'll be saving your pin-money every week
To mend the roof. Well, let it leak.
Why should you care? SUSAN: But I do care,
John loved this place and my boy's the heir.

ROSAMUND: The heir to what? To a tiresome life
Drinking tea with the vicar's wife,
Opening bazaars, and taking the chair
At meetings for causes that you don't care
Sixpence about and never will;
Breaking your heart over every bill.
I've been in the Stat...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...
And for nine days during tempestuous weather their ship was tossed about
By the angry sea, and the barque she sprang a leak,
Still the crew wrought at the pumps till their hearts were like to break. 

And the pumps were kept constantly going for fourteen long hours,
And the poor men were drenched to the skin with sea spray showers;
Still they wrougnt at the pumps till they became rather clogged
Until at last the barque became thoroughly water-logged. 

Oh! hard was t...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...
It took 'im best part of a week. 
'Is clothes were wet through when 'e got there, 
And 'is boots were beginning to leak.

'E stood to 'is watch-chain in water, 
On Tower top, just before dark, 
When who should come sailing towards 'im 
But old Noah, steering 'is Ark.

They stared at each other in silence, 
'Til Ark were alongside, all but, 
Then Noah said: 'What price yer Maple?' 
Sam answered 'Three ha'pence a foot.'

Noah said 'Nay; I'll make thee an offer,...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...bullet and automatic
Purpose? Mozart's brain had it, and the shark's mouth
That hungers down the blood-smell even to a leak of its own 
Side and devouring of itself: efficiency which
Strikes too streamlined for any doubt to pluck at it
Or obstruction deflect. 

With a man it is otherwise. Heroisms on horseback, 
Outstripping his desk-diary at a broad desk, 
Carving at a tiny ivory ornament
For years: his act worships itself - while for him,
Though he bends to be blen...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things