Famous Limb Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Limb poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous limb poems. These examples illustrate what a famous limb poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
There were two brothers, John and James,
And when the town went up in flames,
To save the house of James dashed John,
Then turned, and lo! his own was gone.
And when the great World War began,
To volunteer John promptly ran;
And while he learned live bombs to lob,
James stayed at home and -- sneaked his job.
John came home with a missing limb;
That...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I swayed upon the gaudy stem
The butt-end of a steering-oar,
And saw wherever I could turn
A crowd upon a shore.
And though I would have hushed the crowd,
There was no mother's son but said,
"What is the figure in a shroud
Upon a gaudy bed?'
And after running at the brim
Cried out upon that thing beneath
- It had such dignity of limb -
By...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Ruggiero, to amaze the British host,
And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks,
The bridle of his winged courser loosed,
And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks;
High in the air, even to the topmost banks
Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse,
And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx,
And now across the sea...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
"He ought to be home," said the old man, "without there's something amiss.
He only went to the Two-mile -- he ought to be back by this.
He would ride the Reckless filly, he would have his wilful way;
And, here, he's not back at sundown -- and what will his mother say?
"He was always his mother's idol,...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Our tongues were made to bless the Lord,
And not speak ill of men:
When others give a railing word,
We must not rail again.
Cross words and angry names require
To be chastised at school;
And he's in danger of hell-fire
That calls his brother fool.
But lips that dare be so profane
To mock, and jeer, and scoff
At holy things, or holy men,
The Lord shall cut...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.
Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.
The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The cruel war was over -- oh, the triumph was so sweet!
We watched the troops returning, through our tears;
There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet glittering street,
And you scarce could hear the music for the cheers.
And you scarce could see the house-tops for the flags that flew between;
The bells were pealing madly to the sky;
And...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage
And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled,
No table or chair or stool not simple enough
For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant
That I myself for portions of the year
May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing
But what the great and passionate have used
Throughout so many varying centuries
We take it for the...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...
Each time I give lectures
or gather in the grants
you send me off to boarding school
in training pants.
God damn it, father-doctor,
I'm really thirty-six.
I see dead rats in the toilet.
I'm one of the lunatics.
Disgusted, mother put me
on the potty. She was...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Short of stature, large of limb,
Burly face and russet beard,
All the women stared at him,
When in Iceland he appeared.
"Look!" they said,
With nodding head,
"There goes Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest."
All the prayers he knew by rote,
He could preach like Chrysostome,
From the Fathers he could quote,
He had even been at Rome.
A learned clerk,
A man of mark,
Was this Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest.
He was quarrelsome and...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse,
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
Crown'd with a helmet and dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O ROUGH, rude, ready-witted Rankine,
The wale o’ cocks for fun an’ drinkin!
There’s mony godly folks are thinkin,
Your dreams and tricks
Will send you, Korah-like, a-sinkin
Straught to auld Nick’s.
Ye hae saw mony cracks an’ cants,
And in your wicked, drucken rants,
Ye mak a devil o’ the saunts,
An’ fill them fou;
And then their failings, flaws, an’ wants,
Are a’ seen...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?
'T is a marvel of great renown!
It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea
In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;
The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet
(As those who have tasted it say)
That good little children have only to eat
Of that fruit to be happy next day.
When you 've got...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Am I not he that hath made thee and begotten thee,
I, God, the spirit of man?
Wherefore now these eighteen years hast thou forgotten me,
From whom thy life began?
Thy life-blood and thy life-breath and thy beauty,
Thy might of hands and feet,
Thy soul made strong for divinity of duty
And service which was sweet.
Through the red sea brimmed with blood didst thou...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
High up above the open, welcoming door
It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.
Once, long ago, it was a waving tree
And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves
Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.
The winter snows had bent its branches down,
The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,
Summer had run like fire through its veins,
While...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds
The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds,
"I've got a letter here," he said, "that no one's understood,
Addressed as follows: 'To the bird that's like a piece of wood.'
"The soldier bird got very cross -- it wasn't meant for her;
The spurwing plover...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Before his lion-court,
Impatient for the sport,
King Francis sat one day;
The peers of his realm sat around,
And in balcony high from the ground
Sat the ladies in beauteous array.
And when with his finger he beckoned,
The gate opened wide in a second,--
And in, with deliberate tread,
Enters a lion dread,
And looks around
Yet utters no sound;
Then long he yawns
And shakes his mane,
And, stretching each...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length...Read more of this...
by
Warsan Shire
No one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well.
your neighbours running faster than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home when home won't let you stay.
no...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Making his advances
He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,
No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.
Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin
That work beneath her while she sprawls along
In her ungainly pace,
Her folds of skin that work and row
Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.
And so he strains beneath her housey wall,
And...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Break off! Dance no more!
Danger is at the door.
Music is in arms.
To signal war's alarms.
Hark, a sudden trumpet calling
Over the hill!
Why are you calling, trumpet, calling?
What is your will?
Men, men, men !
Men who are ready to fight
For their country's life, and the right
Of a liberty-loving land to be
Free, free, free!
Free from a tyrant's chain,
Free from...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
(A. D. 1200)
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
(All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
Or ever AEneas began.
Ash...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
With firm address and foreign air
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,
With glint of iron in his eyes,
But never doubt, nor yet surprise,
Appeared, adn stayed, and held his head
As one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert repose
About him, and about...Read more of this...
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