Famous Panels Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

We can but follow to the Sun --

by Emily Dickinson
 We can but follow to the Sun --
As oft as He go down
He leave Ourselves a Sphere behind --
'Tis mostly -- following --

We go no further with the Dust
Than to the Earthen Door --
And then the Panels are reversed --
And we behold -- no more....Read more of this...

The Garden Wall

by Denise Levertov
 Bricks of the wall, 
so much older than the house - 
taken I think from a farm pulled down 
when the street was built - 
narrow bricks of another century. 

Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, 
a wall behind the flowers - 
roses and hollyhocks, the silver 
pods of lupine, sweet-tasting 
phlox, gray 
lavender - 
unnoticed - 
but...Read more of this...

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind

by Carl Sandburg
 “The past is a bucket of ashes.”

 1

THE WOMAN named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be...Read more of this...

The Fruit Shop

by Amy Lowell
 Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into
As she picked her dainty passage through
The dusty street. "Ah, Mademoiselle,
A dirty pathway, we need rain,
My poor fruits suffer, and the shell
Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain
Here in the sun it has shrunk again.
The baker down...Read more of this...

Picnic Lightning

by Billy Collins
 It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within....Read more of this...

The Sleeper

by Edgar Allan Poe
 At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

The Exeter Road

by Amy Lowell
 Panels of claret and blue which shine
Under the moon like lees of wine.
A coronet done in a golden scroll,
And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll
Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track.
They daren't look back!
They are whipping and cursing the horses. Lord!
What brutes men are when they think they're scored.
Behind, my bay gelding gallops with me,
In a...Read more of this...

I see thee better -- in the Dark --

by Emily Dickinson
 I see thee better -- in the Dark --
I do not need a Light --
The Love of Thee -- a Prism be --
Excelling Violet --

I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between --
The Miner's Lamp -- sufficient be --
To nullify the Mine --

And in the Grave -- I see Thee best --
Its little Panels be
Aglow -- All...Read more of this...

The Four Brothers

by Carl Sandburg
 MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
 Going along,
 Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in...Read more of this...

Panels

by Carl Sandburg
 THE WEST window is a panel of marching onions.
Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards.
The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace.
(How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums?)...Read more of this...

In The Picture Gallery

by Henrik Ibsen
 WITH palette laden 
She sat, as I passed her, 
A dainty maiden 
Before an Old Master. 

What mountain-top is 
She bent upon? Ah, 
She neatly copies 
Murillo's Madonna. 

But rapt and brimming 
The eyes' full chalice says 
The heart builds dreaming 
Its fairy-palaces. 

* * * 

The eighteenth year rolled 
By, ere returning, 
I greeted the dear old 
Scenes...Read more of this...

The Sliprails And The Spur

by Henry Lawson
 The colours of the setting sun
Withdrew across the Western land—
He raised the sliprails, one by one,
And shot them home with trembling hand;
Her brown hands clung—her face grew pale—
Ah! quivering chin and eyes that brim!—
One quick, fierce kiss across the rail,
And, 'Good-bye, Mary!' 'Good-bye, Jim!'

Oh, he rides hard to race the pain
Who rides from love, who rides from home;
But he...Read more of this...

Pick Offs

by Carl Sandburg
 THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust
on the clean steel sky and sends it to me.

The telephone picks off my voice and
sends it cross country a thousand miles.

The eyes in my head pick off pages of
Napoleon memoirs … a rag handler,
a head of dreams walks in a sheet of
mist … the palace panels shut in nobodies
drinking nothings out of silver
helmets...Read more of this...

Queen Mab in the Village

by Vachel Lindsay
 Once I loved a fairy, 
Queen Mab it was. Her voice 
Was like a little Fountain 
That bids the birds rejoice. 
Her face was wise and solemn, 
Her hair was brown and fine. 
Her dress was pansy velvet, 
A butterfly design. 

To see her hover round me 
Or walk the hills of air, 
Awakened love's deep pulses 
And boyhood's...Read more of this...

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