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Famous Magpies Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...men and the women;
Listened to their noisy talking,
To their laughter and their singing,
Heard them chattering like the magpies,
Heard them laughing like the blue-jays,
Heard them singing like the robins.
And whene'er some lucky maiden
Found a red ear in the husking,
Found a maize-ear red as blood is,
"Nushka!" cried they all together,
"Nushka! you shall have a sweetheart,
You shall have a handsome husband!"
"Ugh!" the old men all responded
From their seats beneath the pi...Read more of this...



by Hyakunin Isshu, Ogura
...If the "Magpie Bridge"--
Bridge by flight of magpies spanned,--
White with frost I see:--
With a deep-laid frost made white:--
Late, I know, has grown the night....Read more of this...

by Merwin, W S
...light bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins

And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...atel and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes, --
Hugged her and kissed her;
Squeezed and caressed her;
Stretched up their dishes,
Panniers and plates:
"Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and suck ...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...no sweeter voices in the music of the bush 
Than the roar of trams and buses, and the war-whoop of "the push"? 
Did the magpies rouse your slumbers with their carol sweet and strange? 
Did you hear the silver chiming of the bell-birds on the range? 
But, perchance, the wild birds' music by your senses was despised, 
For you say you'll stay in townships till the bush is civilized. 
Would you make it a tea-garden, and on Sundays have a band 
Where the "blokes" might take th...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...han half
my age, could be the person
 fashioning these lines.
That was late July of '60.
 I had heard
all about magpies, how they
 snooped and meddled
in the affairs of others, not
 birds so much
as people. If you dared
 to remove a wedding
ring as you washed away
 the stickiness of love
or the cherished odors of another
 man or woman,
as you turned away
 from the mirror
having admired your new-found
 potency -- humming
"My Funny Valentine" or
 "Body and Soul" --
...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...a spray,
And everything round got peppered,
When they counted 'is score... 'e'd got eight bulls eyes,
Four magpies, two lambs and a shepherd.

And the Sergeant for this got a D.C.M.
And the Colonel an O.B.E.
Lieutenant Bird got the D.S.O.
And Sam got... five days C.B....Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hear
The music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin' to an' fro
Among the rocks an' holler stumps in the ragged gulch below;
The pines an' hemlocks tosst their boughs (like they wuz arms) and made
Soft, sollum music on the slope where he had often played;
But for these lonesome, sollum voices on the mountain-side,
There wuz no sound the summer day that Marthy's y...Read more of this...

by Fincke, Gary
...When magpies die, each of the living swoops down 
           and pecks, one by one, in an accepted order.
 
He coaxed my car to start, the boy who’s killed himself.
He twisted a cable, performed CPR on
The carburetor while my three children shivered
Through the unanswerable questions about stalled.
He chose shotgun, full in the face, so no one ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...fair sisters,
All the sisters and their husbands,
Changed to birds of various plumage.
Some were jays and some were magpies,
Others thrushes, others blackbirds;
And they hopped, and sang, and twittered,
Perked and fluttered all their feathers,
Strutted in their shining plumage,
And their tails like fans unfolded.
"Only Oweenee, the youngest,
Was not changed, but sat in silence,
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly,
Looking sadly at the others;
Till Osseo, gazing upward,
Ga...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...tides are airborne.
Typically tuned keen, they
throw the ground away with wire feet
and swoop rings round it.

Magpies, listening askance
for their food in and under lawn,
strut so hair-trigger they almost
dangle on earth, out of the air.

Nearly anything can make their
tailcoats break into wings....Read more of this...

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