Famous Pigeon Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pigeon poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pigeon poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pigeon poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
When de fiddle gits to singin' out a ol' Vahginny reel,
An' you 'mence to feel a ticklin' in yo' toe an' in yo' heel;
Ef you t'ink you got 'uligion an' you wants to keep it, too,
You jes' bettah tek a hint an' git yo'self clean out o' view.
Case de time is mighty temptin' when de chune is in de swing,
Fu'...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THERE was a wild pigeon came often to Hinkley’s timber.
Gray wings that wrote their loops and triangles on the walnuts and the hazel.
There was a wild pigeon.
There was a summer came year by year to Hinkley’s timber.
Rainy months and sunny and pigeons calling and one pigeon best of all who came.
There was a summer.
It is so long...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
They say that Monte Carlo is
A sunny place for shady people;
But I'm not in the gambling biz,
And sober as a parish steeple.
so though this paradisal spot
The devil's playground of the rich is,
I love it and I love it not,
As men may sometimes fall for bitches.
I lazed beneath the sky's blue bliss,
The sea swooned with a sequin glimmer;
The breeze was...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Jes' lak toddy wahms you thoo'
Sets yo' haid a reelin',
Meks you ovah good and new,
Dat 's de way I 's feelin'.
Seems to me hit 's summah time,
Dough hit 's wintah reely,
I 's a feelin' jes' dat prime—
An' huh name is Dely.
Dis hyeah love 's a cu'rus thing,
Changes 'roun' de season,
Meks you sad or meks you sing,
'Dout no urfly reason.
Sometimes I...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
(The Dark Side)
My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;
Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,
We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.
Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!
"Debout les...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
For months my hand was sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she knew not of.
The...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Toward a better world I contribute my modest smidgin;
I eat the squab, lest it become a pigeon....Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
though there's not much faith left
and very little snow
this scene of wimborne minster
still makes its christmas show
the building's warm proportions
its sense of move-me-not
catches this winter pagan
on a most forgiving spot
christmas itself unwinds
back to that moment when
mind first let a light in
and darkness cried amen
shopping today i glide
casually on worn ice
the ocean holds its breath
prehistory hides its price
the minster's...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE FLUTTER of blue pigeon’s wings
Under a river bridge
Hunting a clean dry arch,
A corner for a sleep—
This flutters here in a woman’s hand.
A singing sleep cry,
A drunken poignant two lines of song,
Somebody looking clean into yesterday
And remembering, or looking clean into
To-morrow, and reading,—
This sings here as a woman’s sleep cry sings.
Pigeon friend of mine,
Fly on, sing on....Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings,--
Little blue pigeon with velvet eyes;
Sleep to the singing of mother-bird swinging--
Swinging the nest where her little one lies.
Away out yonder I see a star,--
Silvery star with a tinkling song;
To the soft dew falling I hear it calling--
Calling and tinkling the night along.
In through the window a moonbeam comes,--
Little gold moonbeam with misty...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Robin-a-Bobbin
Bent his bow,
Shot at a pigeon,
And killed a crow....Read more of this...
by
Theodore Roethke
(My student, thrown by a horse)
I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Oh, why should a hen
have been run over
on West 4th Street
in the middle of summer?
She was a white hen
--red-and-white now, of course.
How did she get there?
Where was she going?
Her wing feathers spread
flat, flat in the tar,
all dirtied, and thin
as tissue paper.
A pigeon, yes,
or an English sparrow,
might meet such a fate,
but not that poor fowl.
Just now I went back
to look...Read more of this...
by
Yosa Buson
The behavior of the pigeon
is beyond reproach,
but the mountain cuckoo?...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
When young I was an Atheist,
Yea, pompous as a pigeon
No opportunity I missed
To satirize religion.
I sneered at Scripture, scoffed at Faith,
I blasphemed at believers:
Said I: "There's nothing after Death,--
Your priests are just deceivers."
In middle age I was not so
Contemptuous and caustic.
Thought I: "There's much I do not know:
I'd better be agnostic.
The hope of...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Long as unending threads, the long-drawn rain
Interminably, with its nails of grey,
Athwart the dull grey day,
Rakes the green window-pane—
So infinitely, endlessly, the rain,
The long, long rain.
The rain.
Since yesternight it keeps unravelling
Down from the frayed and flaccid rags that cling
About the sullen sky.
The low black sky;
Since yesternight, so slowly, patiently.
Unravelling its threads upon the roads.
Upon the roads and lanes, with even...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I done got 'uligion, honey, an' I 's happy ez a king;
Evahthing I see erbout me 's jes' lak sunshine in de spring;
An' it seems lak I do' want to do anothah blessid thing
But jes' run an' tell de neighbours, an' to shout an' pray an' sing.
I done shuk my fis' at Satan, an' I 's gin de worl' my...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
for Moremi, 1963
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life
As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.
The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
In de dead of night I sometimes,
Git to t'inkin' of de pas'
An' de days w'en slavery helt me
In my mis'ry—ha'd an' fas'.
Dough de time was mighty tryin',
In dese houahs somehow hit seem
Dat a brightah light come slippin'
Thoo de kivahs of my dream.
An' my min' fu'gits de whuppins
Draps de feah o' block an' lash
An' flies straight to somep'n' joyful
In a secon's...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You shall hear how Hiawatha
Prayed and fasted in the forest,
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
Not for triumphs in the battle,
And renown among the warriors,
But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.
First he built a lodge for fasting,
Built a wigwam in the forest,
By the...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo,
Remember, it's seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow;
Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow.
If ever an owner should tell you, "Back mine" -- don't you be such a flat.
He knows his own...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
My love came up from Barnegat,
The sea was in his eyes;
He trod as softly as a cat
And told me terrible lies.
His hair was yellow as new-cut pine
In shavings curled and feathered;
I thought how silver it would shine
By cruel winters weathered.
But he was in his twentieth year,
Ths time I'm speaking of;
We were...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Oh! qu'est-ce que c'est donc que l'Inconnu.")
{January, 1871.}
Who then—oh, who, is like our God so great,
Who makes the seed expand beneath the mountain's weight;
Who for a swallow's nest leaves one old castle wall,
Who lets for famished beetles savory apples fall,
Who bids a pigmy win where Titans...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
1.
I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never...Read more of this...
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