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Famous Litter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...isted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly m...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip



...you can never lasso


I am also what surrounds you: 
my brain 
scattered with your 
tincans, bones, empty shells, 
the litter of your invasions.


I am the space you desecrate
as you pass through....Read more of this...
by Atwood, Margaret
...ule cake dotted thick wi plumbs
Is on each supper table found
And cats look up for falling crumbs
Which greedy childern litter round
And huswifes sage stuffd seasond chine
Long hung in chimney nook to drye
And boiling eldern berry wine
To drink the christmass eves 'good bye'...Read more of this...
by Clare, John
...d listened them awhile,
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds
That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep.
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,
And stole upon the air, that even Silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more,
Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of Death. Bu...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...might at the threshold one hour wait
To hear the marriage melodies, and then
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semilucent mist,
Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst,
Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought;
And scarcely for one moment could be caught
His sluggish form reposing motionless.
Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress
Of vision search'd for him, as one would look
Athwart the sallows of a river nook
To catch a glance at silv...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry, -- sweets for bitter. 

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar's gardens blow, -- 
And a quince in hand, -- not one
Is set upon your boughs below;
Not set, because their buds not spring;
Spring not, 'cause world is wintering. 

But these were found in the East and South
Where Winter is the clime forgot. -- 
The dewdrop o...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...
Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man, 
Their chance of booty from the morning's raid, 
Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier, 
Such as they brought upon their forays out 
For those that might be wounded; laid him on it 
All in the hollow of his shield, and took 
And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm, 
(His gentle charger following him unled) 
And cast him and the bier in which he lay 
Down on an oaken settle in the hall, 
And then departed, hot in haste to join 
Thei...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,

Mill a litter of breasts like jellyfish.
To nourish
The cellos of moans I eat eggs --
Eggs and fish, the essentials,

The aphrodisiac squid.
My mouth sags,
The mouth of Christ
When my engine reaches the end of it.

The tattle of my
Gold joints, my way of turning
Bitches to ripples of silver
Rolls out a carpet, a hush.

And there is no end, no end of it.
I shall nev...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...s deeper than the sea

Love is more always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less litter than forgive

It's most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...ed 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 his star, quickly working his passage to
 the centre of the crowd; 
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes; 
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sun-struck, or in fits; 
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhorsed and shredded in the ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...y master's hands were on the keys
Of the Maria organ, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-gl...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...nt
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough 
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me. 
"you can make it," I said to him. 
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few s...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...ssues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
And Betty otherwise employed,
Stole in and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.
Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide
And turned it round on every side.
On such a point few words are best,
And Strephon bids us guess the rest;
And swears how damnably the men lie
In calling Celia sweet and...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan
...him the same.
Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.
Cave-Right is the right of the Father -- to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.
Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.
Now these are the Laws of the Jungl...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes....Read more of this...
by Kunitz, Stanley
...All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor....Read more of this...
by Roethke, Theodore
...ent out a proclamation
that anyone who could discover
where the princesses did their dancing
could take his pick of the litter.
However there was a catch.
If he failed, he would pay with his life.
Well, so it goes.

Many princes tried,
each sitting outside the dormitory,
the door ajar so he could observe
what enchantment came over the shoes.
But each time the twelve dancing princesses
gave the snoopy man a Mickey Finn
and so he was beheaded.
Poof! Like a basketball.

It so ha...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...ly as a Madonna's, and as crude 
As any animal's beatitude— 
Crude as my own black cat's, who used to bring 
Her newest litter to me every spring, 
And say, with green eyes shining in the sun: 
'Behold this miracle that I have done.' 
And John came home on leave, and all was joy 
And thankfulness to me, because my boy 
Was not a baby only, but the heir— 
Heir to the Devon acres and a name 
As old as England. Somehow I became
Almost an English woman, almost at one
With all the...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer
...ories, and white and red clover, and the song of
 the
 phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal,
 and
 the
 cow’s calf, 
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, 
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious
 liquid, 
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him. 

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things