Famous Old Work Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Old Work poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous old work poems. These examples illustrate what a famous old work poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...the dragon there,
seized by the sword-edge. Then as I have heard
he plundered the hoard in the tomb, all alone,
the old work of giants, the cups and dishes
loading up his bosom at his own discretion.
The standard also was taken, brightest of beacons.
The sword of his elder lord had already injured,
iron-edged, the one who had been the protector
of those treasures for a very long while,
who carried forth a lighted terror,
hot before the hoard, a deadly welling
at m...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...els. No vestige now
was seen of the serpent: the sword had ta’en him.
Then, I heard, the hill of its hoard was reft,
old work of giants, by one alone;
he burdened his bosom with beakers and plate
at his own good will, and the ensign took,
brightest of beacons. -- The blade of his lord
-- its edge was iron -- had injured deep
one that guarded the golden hoard
many a year and its murder-fire
spread hot round the barrow in horror-billows
at midnight hour, till it met ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere,
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
That never touch with inarticulate pang
Those dying generations-at their song.
The One remains, the many change and pass
The expiring swan, and as he sings he dies.
The earth, the stars, the light, the day, the skies,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars an...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...sea and the sea’s wife, the wind, for my last friends
And my kinfolk never knew anything about it at all.
Salt from an old work of eating our graveclothes is here.
The sea-kin of my thousand graves,
The sea and the sea’s wife, the wind,
They are all here to-night
between the circle of horizons,
between the cross of the wireless
and the seven old warm stars.
Out of a thousand sea-holes I came yesterday.
Out of a thousand sea-holes I come to-morrow.
I am kin of the chan...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...e
So full-strong as ever, the window frame
A scaffold in space, for eyes to lean on
Supporting the body, shaped to its old work
Making small movements in gray air
Numbed from the blurred accident
Of having lived, the fatal, real injury
Under the amnesia
Something tries to save itself-searches
For defenses-but words evade
Like flies with their own notions
Old age slowly gets dressed
Heavily dosed with death's night
Sits on the bed's edge
Pulls its pieces together
Loosely t...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Ted
...proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
Yet this is you....Read more of this...
by
Pound, Ezra
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