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Famous Mat Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...kles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill....Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...as gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!

Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet.
The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat.
His home is the camp, and waste, and the crowd --
He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed!

He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear --
(There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir);
The Red Mist of Doing has thinned to a cloud --
He has taken the Path for bairagi a...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...f blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,

XIII.

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening---nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,
Where a freaked fawn-coloured flaky crew
Of toadstools peep indulged.

XIV.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where th...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
fleet upon feet,
that of...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...an.
With lissome form and raven hair,
Instead of being fat and fair.

"Or if you'd sailed the Southern Seas
And mated with a Japanese
I might have been a squatty girl
With never golden locks to curl,
Who flirted with a painted fan,
And tinkled on a samisan,
And maybe slept upon a mat -
I'm very glad I don't do that.

"When I consider the romance
Of all your youth of change and chance
I might, I fancy, just as well
Have bloomed a bold Tahitian belle,
Or have been b...Read more of this...



by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...irl rolled over and squashed him flat; 
And, as she could not send him home that way, 
Used him thereafter as a bedside mat. 

Speaking at large, I will say this of her: S 
he did not spare expense to make him nice. 
Tanned on both sides and neatly edged with fur, 
The job would have been cheap at any price. 

And when, in winter, getting out of bed, 
Her large soft feet pressed warmly on the skin, 
The two glass eyes would sparkle in his head, 
The jaws extend th...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...Present no more—

Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—
At her low Gate—
Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat—

I've known her—from an ample nation—
Choose One—
Then—close the Valves of her attention—
Like Stone—

315

He fumbles at your Soul
As Players at the Keys
Before they drop full Music on—
He stuns you by degrees—
Prepares your brittle Nature
For the Ethereal Blow
By fainter Hammers—further heard—
Then nearer—Then so slow
Your Breath has ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ea
An old man sitting calm and peacefully.
Upon a weeded rock this old man sat,
And his white hair was awful, and a mat
Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet;
And, ample as the largest winding-sheet,
A cloak of blue wrapp'd up his aged bones,
O'erwrought with symbols by the deepest groans
Of ambitious magic: every ocean-form
Was woven in with black distinctness; storm,
And calm, and whispering, and hideous roar
Were emblem'd in the woof; with every shape
That skim...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...yth sturne schere ther he stod he stroked his berde,
And wyth a countenaunce dryyghe he droygh doun his cote,
No more mate ne dismayd for hys mayn dintez
Then any burne vpon bench hade broyght hym to drynk
of wyne.
Gawan, that sate bi the quene,
To the kyng he can enclyne:
"I beseche now with sayghez sene
This melly mot be myne.
"Wolde yghe, worthilych lorde," quoth Wawan to the kyng,
"Bid me boyghe fro this benche, and stonde by yow there,
That I wythoute ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ears
She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground,
Just where her fallen hair might be outspread
A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet.
One moon, with alteration slow, had shed
Her silver seasons four upon the night,
And still these two were postured motionless,
Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;
The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...My heart is weary of hypocrisy,
Cupbearer, bring some wine, I beg of thee!
This hooded cowl and prayer-mat pawn for wine,
Then will I boast me in security....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...main energy for the ballet comes from a description

of the Cobra Lily. The description could be used as a welcome

mat on the front porch of hell or to conduct an orchestra

of mortuaries with ice-cold woodwinds or be an atomic

mailman in the pines, in the pines where the sun never shines.

 "Nature has endowed the Cobra Lily with the means of

catching its own food. The forked tongue is covered with

honey glands which attract the insects upon which it feeds.Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then childre...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...e at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of Storm." 
Emerson,The Snow Storm. 


The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less tha...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...ad the tabloid of scents, 
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. 
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. 

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, 
says the cat, although I am more equal than you. 
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? 
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. 
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. 
My lusts glow like my eyes....Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...gut. 
The heat and smell and drinking deep 
Began to stun the gang to sleep. 
Some fell downstairs to sleep on mat, 
Some snored it sodden where they sat. 
Dick Twot had lost a tooth and wept; 
But all the drunken others slept. 
Jane slept beside me in the chair, 
And I got up; I wanted air. 

I opened window wide and leaned 
Out of that pigstye of the fiend 
And felt a cool wind go like grace 
About the sleeping market-place. 
The clock struck three,...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
..., the cup itself, from which our Lord 
Drank at the last sad supper with his own. 
This, from the blessd land of Aromat-- 
After the day of darkness, when the dead 
Went wandering o'er Moriah--the good saint 
Arimathan Joseph, journeying brought 
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn 
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. 
And there awhile it bode; and if a man 
Could touch or see it, he was healed at once, 
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times 
Gr...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat;
She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!

But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
And when all the family's in bed and asleep,
She tucks up her skirts to the basement to creep.
She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice--
Their behaviour's not good and t...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

"Come in!"—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His ***** long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor b...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...of chalcedony.
At his side, in all her beauty,
Sat the lovely Minnehaha,
Sat his daughter, Laughing Water,
Plaiting mats of flags and rushes;
Of the past the old man's thoughts were,
And the maiden's of the future.

He was thinking, as he sat there,
Of the days when with such arrows
He had struck the deer and bison,
On the Muskoday, the meadow;
Shot the wild goose, flying southward,
On the wing, the clamorous Wawa;
Thinking of the great war-parties,
How they came to b...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things