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Famous Neighbours Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Chesterton, G K
...nd adequately tall; 
I tie the noose on in a knowing way

As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours—on the wall— 
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"

The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all 
I think I will not hang myself to-day. 
To-morrow is the time I get my pay—

My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall— 
I see a little cloud all pink and grey—

Perhaps the rector's mother will not call— I fancy that I ...Read more of this...



by Rossetti, Christina
...o see
I found no apples there.
With dangling basket all along the grass
As I had come I went the selfsame track:
My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
So empty-handed back.

Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by,
Their heaped-up basket teazed me like a jeer;
Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky,
Their mother's home was near.

Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full,
A stronger hand than hers helped it along;
A voice talked with her thro' ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...n of lies,
They talk one to the other,
Bullock to bullock's brother
Resting after their labours,
Each in stall with his neighbours.
But man with goad and whip,
Breaks up their fellowship,
Shouts in their silky ears
Filling their soul with fears.
When he has ploughed the land,
He says: "They understand."
But the beasts in stall together,
Freed from the yoke and tether,
Say as the torn flanks smoke:
"Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke."...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...ing make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like ...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his ...Read more of this...



by Marvell, Andrew
...us to relax 
The joys of state, for the new Peace and Tax. 
So Holland with us had the mastery tried, 
And our next neighbours, France and Flanders, ride. 

But a fresh news the great designment nips, 
Of, at the Isle of Candy, Dutch and ships! 
Bab May and Arlington did wisely scoff 
And thought all safe, if they were so far off. 
Modern geographers, 'twas there, they thought, 
Where Venice twenty years the Turk had fought, 
While the first year our navy is but s...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...read like the sores

Of syphilis and more regulations in a decade of Blair

Than in the century before.

"Shop your neighbours. Prove it. Bring birth certificates to A&E

If you want NHS treatment free. Be careful not to bleed to death

While finding the certificate. Blunkett wants us all to have ID

Photo cards, genetic codes, DNA database, eye scans, the lot – 

And kiss good-bye to the last bits of freedom we’ve got"

"At the end of the day she shopped ...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...ders hand
And on the road will eager stoop
To pick the sprouting thistle up
Oft answering on his weary way
Some distant neighbours sobbing bray
Dining the ears of driving boy
As if he felt a fit of joy
Wi in its pinfold circle left
Of all its company bereft
Starvd stock no longer noising round
Lone in the nooks of foddering ground
Each skeleton of lingering stack
By winters tempests beaten black
Nodds upon props or bolt upright
Stands swarthy in the summer light
And oer the g...Read more of this...

by Fu, Du
...and wipe their tears. I floated through this disordered life, By chance I have managed to return alive. The neighbours all lean over the wall, And they as well are sighing and sobbing. Late at night we bring out candles, And face each other as in a dream....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Hee speaks, let us draw nigh. Matchless in might,
The glory late of Israel, now the grief;
We come thy friends and neighbours not unknown 
From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful Vale
To visit or bewail thee, or if better,
Counsel or Consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage
The tumors of a troubl'd mind,
And are as Balm to fester'd wounds.

Sam: Your coming, Friends, revives me, for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counte...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
..., there is something strange
In a shop with goods at so wide a range
Each from the other, as swords and seeds.
Your neighbours must have greatly differing needs."
"My neighbours," he said, and he stroked his chin,
"Live everywhere from here to Pekin.
But you are wrong, my sort of goods
Is but one thing in all its moods."
He took a shagreen letter case
From his pocket, and with charming grace
Offered me a printed card.
I read the legend, "Ephraim Bard.
...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...write a rhyme
 Of "Casey's Billy-goat."

Pat Casey had a billy-goat he gave the name of Shamus,
Because it was (the neighbours said) a national disgrace.
And sure enough that animal was eminently famous
For masticating every rag of laundry round the place.
For shirts to skirts prodigiously it proved its powers of chewing;
The question of digestion seemed to matter not at all;
But you'll agree, I think with me, its limit of misdoing
Was reached the day it swallowed...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
.... .

Christmas Eve in the school-house! A scene of glitter and glee;
The children eager and joyful; parents and neighbours too;
Right in the forefront, Millie, close to the Christmas Tree.
While Billie, her brother, recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew."

I reckon you've heard the opus, a ballad of guts and gore;
Of a Yukon frail and a frozen trail and a fight in a dringing dive,
It's on a par, I figger, with "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor,"
And the boys who w...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...very came with food: but still, my brain  Was weak, nor of the past had memory.  I heard my neighbours, in their beds, complain  Of many things which never troubled me;  Of feet still bustling round with busy glee,  Of looks where common kindness had no part.  Of service done with careless cruelty,  Fretting the fever round the languid heart,  And groans, which, as ...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...hallenge, nor did seek.
2.46 My foe should weltering, with his bowels reek.
2.47 I had no Suits at law, neighbours to vex,
2.48 Nor evidence for land did me perplex.
2.49 I fear'd no storms, nor all the winds that blows.
2.50 I had no ships at Sea, no fraughts to loose.
2.51 I fear'd no drought, nor wet; I had no crop,
2.52 Nor yet on future things did place my hope.
2.53 This was mine innocence, but oh the seeds
2.5...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...riors from all
countries were wont to repair, to aid the Teutonic Order in their
continual conflicts with their heathen neighbours in "Lettowe"
or Lithuania (German. "Litthauen"), Russia, &c.

8. Algesiras was taken from the Moorish king of Grenada, in
1344: the Earls of Derby and Salisbury took part in the siege.
Belmarie is supposed to have been a Moorish state in Africa;
but "Palmyrie" has been suggested as the correct reading. The
Great Sea, or the Gre...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...t will satisfy her?" 
"It's as I say: she's turned from him, that's all." 
"But why, when she's well off? Is it the neighbours, 
Being cut off from friends?" 
"We have our friends. 
That isn't it. Folks aren't afraid of us." 
"She's let it worry her. You stood the strain, 
And you're her mother." 
"But I didn't always. 
I didn't relish it along at first. 
But I got wonted to it. And besides-- 
John said I was too old to have grandchildren.<...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...r, and there in swoon he lay.
Up started Alison and Nicholay,
And cried out an "harow!"  in the street.
The neighbours alle, bothe small and great
In ranne, for to gauren* on this man, *stare
That yet in swoone lay, both pale and wan:
For with the fall he broken had his arm.
But stand he must unto his owen harm,
For when he spake, he was anon borne down
With Hendy Nicholas and Alisoun.
They told to every man that he was wood*; *mad
He was aghaste* so of No...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...t to say
That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially pipers:
And, whether they pipe us free...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ocked down to the few pounds

We had between us, dumped outside the red front door by the

Carrier’s cart; stared at by neighbours constantly grimacing

Though the grimy nets of the weavers’ cottage windows, baffled

As to who we were and how and why we’d come there.



I never gave it a thought (perhaps I should have) but with

The sense of ‘poet’ in my soul, a book to read and one

To write, night walks in the valley’s hyaline air through

Brambled woods and on down tra...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things