Famous Plaything Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Plaything poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous plaything poems. These examples illustrate what a famous plaything poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...balance is cast,
He’s gane to the devil for—naething.
The courtier cringes and bows,
Ambition has likewise its plaything;
A coronet beams on his brows;
And what is a coronet—naething.
Some quarrel the Presbyter gown,
Some quarrel Episcopal graithing;
But every good fellow will own
Their quarrel is a’ about—naething.
The lover may sparkle and glow,
Approaching his bonie bit gay thing:
But marriage will soon let him know
He’s gotten—a buskit up naethin...Read more of this...
by
Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
...,
A song of summer sweet and long,
A sound of storm and wind and rain,
A sound of joy—a glad refrain.
O plaything of the idle sea,
Whence come these changing tints of thine?
Have sunset clouds looked down on thee
And stained thee with their hues divine?
Oh, tell the secrets thou must know
Of clouds above and waves below;
Oh, whisper of the bending sky
And ocean caves where jewels lie.
O beauteous sea-shell, tinged with red,
What ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...or the tone, or something else—
Gripped like insidious fingers on her throat,
And then went foraging as if to make
A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved
And unsophisticated confidence
Went mercilessly home; and had she sat
Before a looking glass, the deeps of it
Could not have shown more clearly to her then
Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown,
The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes
With anguish and intolerable mist.
The blow th...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...(Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas.
I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff.
Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon.
Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky,
A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against a night sky,
And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand people here.
Among the Wednesday night thous...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Bliss is the plaything of the child --
The secret of the man
The sacred stealth of Boy and Girl
Rebuke it if we can...Read more of this...
by
Rossetti, Christina
...heart with care?
He lured me to his palace home -
Woe's me for joy thereof-
To lead a shameless shameful life,
His plaything and his love.
He wore me like a silken knot,
He changed me like a glove;
So now I moan, an unclean thing,
Who might have been a dove.
O Lady kate, my cousin Kate,
You grew more fair than I:
He saw you at your father's gate,
Chose you, and cast me by.
He watched your steps along the lane,
Your work among the rye;
He lifted you...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX.
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
Keeps for the haple...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...br>
There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him
Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything,
Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel
Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders.
Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness
Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice,
Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows,
And as its pantin...Read more of this...
by
Kilmer, Joyce
...
Saint Folly rode beside Jehanne
And broke the ranks of Hell with her,
And Folly's smile shone brightly on
Christ's plaything, Brother Juniper.
Our minds are troubled and defiled
By study in a weary school.
O for the folly of the child!
The ready courage of the fool!
Lord, crush our knowledge utterly
And make us humble, simple men;
And cleansed of wisdom, let us see
Our Lady Folly's face again....Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...ut
much loved donkey in the hearts of all
who learned di-dah di-dah at school
and have been stuck in the custard since
plaything political-tool pop-
star's goo - poetry's been made to garb
itself in all these rags and riches
this age applauds the eye - is one
of outward exploration - the earth
(in life) and universe (in fiction)
are there for scurrying over - haste
is everything and the beat is all
fireworks feed the fancy - a great ah
rewards the enterprise that fills
nig...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...hurch or state:
Sometimes the folly benefits mankind;
And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind.
Allow him but his plaything of a pen,
He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men:
Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind;
And knows no losses while the Muse is kind.
To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter;
The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,
Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;
And then--a perfect hermit in his diet.
Of little use the man y...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...the wall of stones
i am a hollow
scooped out by the sun
my substance dropped
over the wall - another
loosened boulder
a plaything for grass
the present sits in
my mouth for shelter
till the sun leans on his spade
the grass throttles the clock
around me
the stone cottage flies away
the wall leaps downhill
the wind is a mountain
the sun becomes gold ore
timelessness deflates me
look mother
i have found a fossil
here are the marks
of its hands and feet
it must be millions of ...Read more of this...
by
Untermeyer, Louis
...end, Leviathan, it is the end!
We hunger and we thirst! Ascend!" ...
Observe him first, my friend.
God's deathless plaything rolls an eye
Five hundred thousand cubits high.
The smallest scale upon his tail
Could hide six dolphins and a whale.
His nostrils breathe—and on the spot
The churning waves turn seething hot.
If he be hungry, one huge fin
Drives seven thousand fishes in;
And when he drinks what he may need,
The rivers of the earth recede.
Yet he is more ...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...rath, and swiftly lays
Thy beauty waste in wreck and agony!
Is Nature, then, a strife of jealous powers,
And man the plaything of unconscious fate?
Not so, my troubled heart! God reigns above
And man is greatest in his darkest hours:
Walking amid the cities desolate,
The Son of God appears in human love....Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ro.
If the strain should find a flaw,
Should a bolt or rivet draw,
Then -- God help them! for the vessel were a plaything in the tide!
With a face of honest cheer
Quoth an English engineer,
"I will answer for the engiines that were built on old Thames-side!
"For the stays and stanchions taut,
For the rivets truly wrought,
For the valves that fit their faces as a glove should fit the hand.
Give her every ounce of power;
If we make a knot an hour
Then it's...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...like a book
And covered with red leather. There it was—
There in his desk, the record he had made,
The spiritual plaything of his life:
There were the words no eyes had ever seen
Save his; there were the words that were not made
For glory or for gold. The pretty wife
Whom he had loved and lost had not so much
As heard of them. They were not made for her.
His love had been so much the life of her,
And hers had been so much the life of him,
That any way...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...erly, that any doubt
An ultimate Repose --
The manner of the Children --
Who weary of the Day --
Themself -- the noisy Plaything
They cannot put away --...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...pped and raised them again, and the little boy's face was glued
to the window-pane. Oh! What a glorious, wonderful
plaything!
Rings and rings of windy colour always moving! How had
any one ever preferred
those other toys which never stirred. "Nursie, come quickly. Look!
I want a windmill. See! It is never still. You
will buy me one, won't you?
I want that silver one, with the big ring of blue."
So a servant was sent to buy that one: silver, ringed ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ce she turned away
Before the awful darkness of the door,
And the great horror of the Wall of Man
Where Man is made the plaything of Taman,
An Eyeless Face that waits above and laughs.
But the third time she cried and put her palms
Against the hewn stone leaves, and prayed Taman
To spare Er-Heb and take her life for price.
They know who watched, the doors were rent apart
And closed upon Bisesa, and the rain
Broke like a flood across the Valley, washed
The mist away;...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...p is thrown,
I shrill impudent triumph at a breath.
I'm a humble little bit of tin and horn;
I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest;
The virtuoso looks on me with scorn;
But there's times when I am better than the best.
Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea;
Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine;
Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain--
There's a lowly, loving kingdom--and it's mine....Read more of this...
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