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Famous Marbles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Herrick, Robert
...stence to thy house, and proof
What Genii support thy roof,
Goodness and greatness, not the oaken piles;
For these, and marbles have their whiles
To last, but not their ever; virtue's hand
It is which builds 'gainst fate to stand.
Such is thy house, whose firm foundations trust
Is more in thee than in her dust,
Or depth; these last may yield, and yearly shrink,
When what is strongly built, no chink
Or yawning rupture can the same devour,
But fix'd it stands, by her own po...Read more of this...



by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.

It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying an...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...eans, circle the planet.
When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks.
We might listen to boys fighting for marbles.
The grasshopper will look good to us.

So it goes …...Read more of this...

by Burgess, Gelett
...73 YERO was Noted for the Way with which he Helped his Comrades Play; 
74 He 'd Lend his Cart, he 'd Lend his Ball, his Marbles, and his Tops and All!
75 And Yet (I Doubt if you' ll Believe), he Wiped his Nose upon his Sleeve!

76 The Zealous ZIBEON was Such as Casual Callers Flatter Much.
77 His Maiden Aunts would Say, with Glee, 'How Good, how Pure, how Dear is He!'
78 And Yet, he Drove his Mother Crazy -- he was so Slow, he was so Lazy!...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...he dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea....Read more of this...



by Elytis, Odysseus
...Drinking Corinthian Sun 
Translated by Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris 

Drinking Corinthian sun
Reading the old marbles
Striding through vineyard seas
Aiming the harpoon
At a votive fish that slips away
I found the leaves the sun's psalm learns by heart
The living shore desire rejoices
To open 

I drink water I cut fruit
I thrust my hand in the wind's foliage
Lemon trees irrigate the summer pollen
Green birds tear my dreams
I leave with a glance
A wide gl...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...en--out of memory:
Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred
Thermopylæ its heroes--not yet dead,
But in old marbles ever beautiful.
High genitors, unconscious did they cull
Time's sweet first-fruits--they danc'd to weariness,
And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
Of some strange history, potent to send
A young mind from its bodily tenement.
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...e throws, 
And joining straight the Theban tower arose; 
Then as he strokes them with a touch more sweet, 
The flocking marbles in a palace meet; 
But for the most the graver notes did try, 
Therefore the temples reared their columns high: 
Thus, ere he ceased, his sacred lute creates 
Th' harmonious city of the seven gates. 

Such was that wondrous order and consent, 
When Cromwell tuned the ruling Instrument, 
While tedious statesmen many years did hack, 
Framing a libe...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...l, for him, straightaway.

God calls home the angels promptly
At the setting sun;
I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
After playing the Crown!...Read more of this...

by Philips, Katherine
...estiny her rigour made,
And the more to augment her right,
Her crime is ever in her sight.


11

There upon antique marbles trac'd,
Devices of past times we see,
Here age ath almost quite defac'd,
What lovers carv'd on every tree.
The cellar, here, the highest room
Receives when its old rafters fail,
Soil'd with the venom and the foam
Of the spider and the snail:
And th'ivy in the chimney we
Find shaded by a walnut tree.


12

Below there does a cave extend,
Where...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...e through his cypress-trees! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mourful marbles play! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 
And Love can never lose its own! 

We sped the time with stories old, 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
"The Chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...>

Walk
Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer 
away without touching.
On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass 
marbles,
with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet
clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red 
striped agates.
The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into 
the gutters
under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus 
in the air,
but there are no flowers anywhere, o...Read more of this...

by Kay, Jackie
...sh my nipples through

Feel the ferocity of her lips

IV
Here
Landed in a place I recognize

My eyes in the mirror
Hard marbles glinting

Murderous light
My breasts sag my stomach

Still soft as a baby's
My voice deep and old as ammonite

I am a stranger visiting
Myself occasionally

An empty ruinous house
Cobwebs dust and broken stairs

Inside woodworm
Outside the weeds grow tall

As she must be now

V
She, my little foreigner
No longer familiar with my womb

Kicking her lan...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman
by a silver thread.

They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, 
for there
are no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises 
are cased
in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The 
basket
is heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites 
and throws them away.
They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce
over the edge and disappear....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...
Outside, Pakistan is swallowed in a mouthful.

I rock. I rock.
You are my stone child
with still eyes like marbles.
There is a death baby
for each of us.
We own him.
His smell is our smell.
Beware. Beware.
There is a tenderness.
There is a love
for this dumb traveler
waiting in his pink covers.
Someday,
heavy with cancer or disaster
I will look up at Max
and say: It is time.
Hand me the death baby
and there will be
that final r...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...age he throws,
And joyng streight the Theban Tow'r arose;
Then as he strokes them with a Touch more sweet,
The flocking Marbles in a Palace meet;
But, for he most the graver Notes did try,
Therefore the Temples rear'd their Columns high:
Thus, ere he ceas'd, his sacred Lute creates
Th'harmonious City of the seven Gates.
Such was that wondrous Order and Consent,
When Cromwell tun'd the ruling Instrument;
While tedious Statesmen many years did hack,
Framing a Liberty that s...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...and, if you bungle, they can;
And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't it a man? )
There's some waste money on marbles, the same as M'Cullough tried --
Marbles and mausoleums -- but I call that sinful pride.
There's some ship bodies for burial -- we've Pied 'em, soldered and packed,
Down in their wills they wrote it, and nobody called them cracked.
But me -- I've too much money, and people might . . . All my fault:
It come o' hoping for grandsons ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...paced, 
I first, and following through the porch that sang 
All round with laurel, issued in a court 
Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths 
Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay 
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. 
The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, 
Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst; 
And here and there on lattice edges lay 
Or book or lute; but hastily we past, 
And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs