Famous Mend Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ill clutch -- and clutch

by Emily Dickinson
 I'll clutch -- and clutch --
Next -- One -- Might be the golden touch --
Could take it --
Diamonds -- Wait --
I'm diving -- just a little late --
But stars -- go slow -- for night --

I'll string you -- in fine Necklace --
Tiaras -- make -- of some --
Wear you on Hem --
Loop up a Countess -- with you...Read more of this...

The delectable ballad of the waller lot

by Eugene Field
 Up yonder in Buena Park
There is a famous spot,
In legend and in history
Yclept the Waller Lot.

There children play in daytime
And lovers stroll by dark,
For 't is the goodliest trysting-place
In all Buena Park.

Once on a time that beauteous maid,
Sweet little Sissy Knott,
Took out her pretty doll to walk
Within the Waller Lot.

While thus she fared, from Ravenswood
Came Injuns o'er the plain,
And...Read more of this...

135. Epigram on Rough Roads

by Robert Burns
 I’M now arrived—thanks to the gods!—
 Thro’ pathways rough and muddy,
A certain sign that makin roads
 Is no this people’s study:
Altho’ Im not wi’ Scripture cram’d,
 I’m sure the Bible says
That heedless sinners shall be damn’d,
 Unless they mend their ways....Read more of this...

Yes, I’ll marry you, my dear

by Pam Ayres
Yes, I’ll marry you, my dear.
And here’s the reason why.
So I can push you out of bed
When the baby starts to cry.
And if we hear a knocking
And it’s creepy and it’s late,
I hand you the torch you see,
And you investigate.

Yes I’ll marry you, my dear,
You may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble-drier goes
It’s you that has to mend it.
You have...Read more of this...

Try To Remember Some Details

by Yehuda Amichai
 Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing 
of the one you love 
so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen 
wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. 
Try to remember some details. For they have no face 
and their soul is hidden and their crying 
is the same as their laughter, 
and their...Read more of this...

Song For Saint Cecilias Day 1687

by John Dryden
 From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony
 This universal frame began:
 When nature underneath a heap
 Of jarring atoms lay
 And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
 Arise, ye more than dead!
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry
In order to their stations leap,
 And Music's power obey.
From Harmony, from heavenly harmony
 This universal frame began:
...Read more of this...

25. My Father was a Farmer: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 MY father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O,
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, O;
For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth regarding, O.


Then out into the world my course I did determine, O;
Tho’ to be rich was not my...Read more of this...

Woman Work

by Maya Angelou
 I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall...Read more of this...

God-Forgotten

by Thomas Hardy
 I towered far, and lo! I stood within 
 The presence of the Lord Most High, 
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win 
 Some answer to their cry. 

 --"The Earth, say'st thou? The Human race? 
 By Me created? Sad its lot? 
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: 
 Such world I fashioned...Read more of this...

To mend each tattered Faith

by Emily Dickinson
 To mend each tattered Faith
There is a needle fair
Though no appearance indicate --
'Tis threaded in the Air --

And though it do not wear
As if it never Tore
'Tis very comfortable indeed
And spacious as before --...Read more of this...

Begging Another

by Ben Jonson
 For love's sake, kiss me once again;
I long, and should not beg in vain,
Here's none to spy or see;
Why do you doubt or stay?
I'll taste as lightly as the bee
That doth but touch his flower and flies away.

Once more, and faith I will be gone;
Can he that loves ask less than one?
Nay, you may err in this
And all your...Read more of this...

Old Chairs To Mend

by Mother Goose
If I'd as much money as I could spend,
I never would cry old chairs to mend;
Old chairs to mend, old chairs to mend;
I never would cry old chairs to mend.

If I'd as much money as I could tell,
I never would cry old clothes to sell;
Old clothes to sell, old clothes to sell;
I never would cry old clothes to sell....Read more of this...

Sonnet CIII

by William Shakespeare
 Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside!
O, blame me not, if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
Were it not...Read more of this...

To My Antenor

by Katherine Philips
 My dear Antenor now give o're,
For my sake talk of Graves no more;
Death is not in our power to gain,
And is both wish'd and fear'd in vain
Let's be as angry as wee will,
Grief sooner may distract then kill,
And the unhappy often prove
Death is as coy a thing as Love.
Those whose own sword their death did give,
Afraid were or asham'd...Read more of this...

Denial

by George Herbert
 When my devotions could not pierce 
Thy silent ears; 
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse: 
My breast was full of fears 
And disorder: 

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, 
Did fly asunder: 
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, 
Some to the wars and thunder 
Of alarms. 

As good go any where, they...Read more of this...

The Colossus

by Sylvia Plath
 I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and...Read more of this...

Whitsunday

by George Herbert
 Listen sweet Dove unto my song, 
And spread thy golden wings in me; 
Hatching my tender heart so long, 
Till it get wing, and fly away with thee.

Where is that fire which once descended
On thy Apostles? thou didst then
Keep open house, richly attended, 
Feasting all comers by twelve chosen men.

Such glorious gifts thou didst bestow, 
That th'earth did like...Read more of this...

Sonnet LI

by Edmund Spenser
 DOe I not see that fayrest ymages
Of hardest Marble are of purpose made?
for that they should endure through many ages,
ne let theyr famous moniments to fade.
Why then doe I, vntrainde in louers trade,
her hardnes blame which I should more co[m]mend?
sith neuer ought was excellent assayde,
which was not hard t'atchiue and bring to end.
Ne ought so hard, but he that...Read more of this...

Lizards And Snakes

by Anthony Hecht
 On the summer road that ran by our front porch
 Lizards and snakes came out to sun.
It was hot as a stove out there, enough to scorch
 A buzzard's foot. Still, it was fun
To lie in the dust and spy on them. Near but remote,
 They snoozed in the carriage ruts, a smile
In the set of the jaw, a...Read more of this...

Cripples And Other Stories

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...

The Candle Indoors

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—

Come you indoors, come home;...Read more of this...

Rune of the Finland Woman

by Marilyn Hacker
 For Sára Karig

"You are so wise," the reindeer said, "you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand."—H. C. Andersen, "The Snow Queen"

She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
She could find the world's words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from...Read more of this...

Hilaire Belloc - The South Country

by Hilaire Belloc
 When I am living in the Midlands
 That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
 My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
 Come back into my mind.

The great hills of the South Country
 They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
 That I could wish to be,
And...Read more of this...

Genoa and the Mediterranean

by Thomas Hardy
 O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea, 
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee 
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me. 

And multimarbled Genova the Proud, 
Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed, 
I first beheld thee clad--not as the Beauty but the Dowd. 

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit 
On housebacks pink,...Read more of this...

Binsey Poplars

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 felled 1879


 My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
 Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
 All felled, felled, are all felled;
 Of a fresh and following folded rank
 Not spared, not one
 That dandled a sandalled
 Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank. 
 O if we but knew what we do
...Read more of this...

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