Famous Pendulum Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dillard Sissman

by Edgar Lee Masters
 The buzzards wheel slowly
In wide circles, in a sky
Faintly hazed as from dust from the road.
And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie
Beating the grass into long waves.
My kite is above the wind,
Though now and then it wobbles,
Like a man shaking his shoulders;
And the tail streams out momentarily,
Then sinks to rest.
And the buzzards wheel and wheel,
Sweeping the...Read more of this...

Three Balls

by Carl Sandburg
 JABOWSKY’S place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls.
When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation:
A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone,
And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented.
I passed to-day...Read more of this...

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain

by Jim Carroll
 1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance 

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift 

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese...Read more of this...

A Clock stopped

by Emily Dickinson
 A Clock stopped --
Not the Mantel's --
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing --
That just now dangled still --

An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain --
Then quivered out of Decimals --
Into Degreeless Noon --

It will not stir for Doctors --
This Pendulum of snow --
This Shopman importunes it --
While cool -- concernless No --

Nods from the Gilded...Read more of this...

Twas later when the summer went

by Emily Dickinson
 'Twas later when the summer went
Than when the Cricket came --
And yet we knew that gentle Clock
Meant nought but Going Home --
'Twas sooner when the Cricket went
Than when the Winter came
Yet that pathetic Pendulum
Keeps esoteric Time....Read more of this...

I think the longest Hour of all

by Emily Dickinson
 I think the longest Hour of all
Is when the Cars have come --
And we are waiting for the Coach --
It seems as though the Time

Indignant -- that the Joy was come --
Did block the Gilded Hands --
And would not let the Seconds by --
But slowest instant -- ends --

The Pendulum begins to count --
Like little Scholars -- loud --
The...Read more of this...

The Clock strikes one that just struck two --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Clock strikes one that just struck two --
Some schism in the Sum --
A Vagabond for Genesis
Has wrecked the Pendulum --...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 09: Cabaret

by Conrad Aiken
 We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.
You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing
As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .'
Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only,
'How deathly pale my face looks in that glass . . .'

You say: 'We sit and talk, of things important . . .
How many others...Read more of this...

To A Child

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a...Read more of this...

Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward

by Anne Sexton
 Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You...Read more of this...

Freedom of Love

by Andre Breton
 (Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti)

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white...Read more of this...

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