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Famous Quills Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Berryman, John
...ers.
I wish the rabbit & the 'coons could be friends,
I'm sorry about the poker
but I'm too busy now for nipping or quills
I've given up literature & taken down pills,
and that rabbit doesn't trust me...Read more of this...



by Jeffers, Robinson
...it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."
Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road
With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.
She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin
Soon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows,
I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,
T...Read more of this...

by Slessor, Kenneth
...you breath 
Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice? 

I looked out my window in the dark 
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light 
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand 
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze, 
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys 
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each, 
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard 
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal 
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...h Swain to th'Okes and rills, 
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray, 
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, 
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: 
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, 
And now was dropt into the Western bay; 
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: 
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new....Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e went Hiawatha, 
Dressed for travel, armed for hunting; 
Dressed in deer-skin shirt and leggings, 
Richly wrought with quills and wampum; 
On his head his eagle-feathers, 
Round his waist his belt of wampum, 
In his hand his bow of ash-wood, 
Strung with sinews of the reindeer; 
In his quiver oaken arrows, 
Tipped with jasper, winged with feathers; 
With his mittens, Minjekahwun, 
With his moccasins enchanted.
Warning said the old Nokomis, 
"Go not forth, O Hiawatha!
To ...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...sin of the Fir-tree, 
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure, 
Made each crevice safe from water.
"Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog! 
All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog! 
I will make a necklace of them, 
Make a girdle for my beauty, 
And two stars to deck her bosom!"
From a hollow tree the Hedgehog 
With his sleepy eyes looked at him, 
Shot his shining quills, like arrows, 
Saying with a drowsy murmur, 
Through the tangle of his whiskers, 
"Take my quills, O Hiawath...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...fringed with ermine, 
All inwrought with beads of wampum; 
He was dressed in deer-skin leggings,
Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine, 
And in moccasins of buck-skin, 
Thick with quills and beads embroidered. 
On his head were plumes of swan's down, 
On his heels were tails of foxes, 
In one hand a fan of feathers, 
And a pipe was in the other.
Barred with streaks of red and yellow, 
Streaks of blue and bright vermilion, 
Shone the face of Pau-Puk-Keewis. 
Fro...Read more of this...

by Hunt, James Henry Leigh
...ut not an archer breakfasted
Till he twinkled from the sky.

All the morning they were wont
To fly their grey-goose quills
At butts, or wands, or trees, or twigs,
Till theirs was the skill of skills.

With swords too they played lustily,
And at quarter-staff;
Many a hit would have made some cry,
Which only made them laugh.

The horn was then their dinner-bell;
When like princes of the wood,
Under the glimmering summer trees,
Pure venison was their food.

Pure ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...! Boom! Ta-ra!

The old mandarin nods under his purple umbrella. The 
rose in his hand
shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then 
they collapse
and shrivel like red embers. The fire sizzles.

Tommy is galloping his cavalry, two by two, over the floor. They 
must pass
the open terror of the door and gain the enemy encamped under the 
wash-stand.
The mounted band is very grand, playing allegro and leading the 
infantry on
at the double quick.<...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new....Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...s.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero.

Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah.
"I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.

Drowned walker, revenant.
After my mother fell on...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...umbering all units
in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth
to droop or rise in unison like porcupine-quills.
He lets himself be flattened out by gravity,
as seaweed is tamed and weakened by the sun,
compelled when extended, to lie stationary.
Sleep is the result of his delusion that one must do as well
 as one can for oneself,
sleep--epitome of what is to him the end of life.
Demonstrate on him how the lady placed a forked stick
on the innocuous...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...41 Preeminence in all and each is yours;
42 Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. 

43 And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
44 And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
45 If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
46 Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays.
47 This mean and unrefined ore of mine
48 Will make your glist'ring gold but more...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...on his "boko", 
Who is perpetually 
Pursuing the ballet, 
He is always the "true Orinoco". 

We must slave with our quills -- 
Keep the cash -- pay the bills -- 
Keep account of the liquor and victuals -- 
So I think you'll agree 
That the gay A.D.C. 
Has a life that's not all beer and skittles!...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm,
In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills,
Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills.

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please,
Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys.
Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim,
As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn."

Catharine, child of a neighbor, curl...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...reeminence in each and all is yours,
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.


8

And oh, ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey, still catch your praise,
If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give wholesome parsley wreath, I ask no bays:
This mean and unrefinèd stuff of mine,
Will make your glistering gold but more to shine.
...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...o found, indeed, the facts to multiply 
With such rapidity of vice and woe, 
That he had stripp'd off both his wings in quills, 
And yet was in arrear of human ills. 

IV 

His business so augmented of late years, 
That he was forced, against his will no doubt, 
(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers,) 
For some resource to turn himself about, 
And claim the help of his celestial peers, 
To aid him ere he should be quite worn out 
By the increased demand for his rema...Read more of this...

by Twain, Mark
...annual bills!

And so 'twill be when I'm aground
These yearly duns will still go round,
While other bards, with frantic quills,
Shall damn and damn these annual bills!...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...ntain's plashy moor, 
Or find in farmer's yard a safe retreat 
From gipsy thieves and foxes sly and fleet; 
If thy grey quills by lawyer guided, trace 
Deeds big with ruin to some wretched race, 
Or love-sick poet's sonnet, sad and sweet, 
Wailing the rigour of some lady fair; 
Or if, the drudge of housemaid's daily toil, 
Cobwebs and dust thy pinion white besoil, 
Departed goose! I neither know nor care. 
But this I know, that thou wert very fine, 
Seasoned with sage and...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...iers undermined Root,
And in its Branches tough to hang,
While at my Lines the Fishes twang!

But now away my Hooks, my Quills,
And Angles, idle Utensils.
The Young Maria walks to night:
Hide trifling Youth thy Pleasures slight.
'Twere shame that such judicious Eyes
Should with such Toyes a Man surprize;
She that already is the Law
Of all her Sex, her Ages Aw.

See how loose Nature, in respect
To her, it self doth recollect;
And every thing so whisht and fine,
Sta...Read more of this...

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