Famous Quilt Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Quilt poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous quilt poems. These examples illustrate what a famous quilt poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Du Fu
Continuous wind long rain autumn numerous and confused Four seas eight wastes together one cloud Go horse come ox no longer distinguish Muddy Jing clear Wei how now distinguish Grain head grow ear millet ear black Farmer field wife without news City in ten litres rice exchange quilt silk Agree better consider both mutual worth ...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Fu (this) duke old guest Finish wine drunk sing open gold halberd Ride horse suddenly remember youth time Scatter hoof pour fall Qutang stone Baidicheng gate water cloud outside Lower body straight down eight thousand feet Whitewashed battlements lightning pass purple loose reins East gain level ridge out heaven cliff River village country hall fight enter eye...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dolly sits a-quilting by her mother, stich by stitch,
Gracious, how my pulses throb, how my fingers itch,
While I note her dainty waist and her slender hand,
As she matches this and that, she stitches strand by strand.
And I long to tell her Life's a quilt and I'm a patch;
Love will do the stitching if she'll only be my match.
...Read more of this...
by
Sir John Suckling
One of her hands one of her cheeks lay under,
Cosening the pillow of a lawful kiss,
Which therefore swell'd, and seem'd to part asunder,
As angry to be robb'd of such a bliss!
The one look'd pale and for revenge did long,
While t'other blush'd, 'cause it had done the wrong.
Out of the bed the other fair hand was
On a green satin quilt,...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
I leave the office, take the stairs,
in time to mail a letter
before 3 in the afternoon--the last dispatch.
The red, white and blue air mail
falls past the slot for foreign mail
and hits bottom with a sound
that tells me my letter is alone.
They will have to bring in a plane
from a place of coastline and beaches,
from a climate of fresh figs...Read more of this...
by
James A Emanuel
I
My friends do not know.
But what could my friends not know?
About what? What friends?
II
She sleeps late each day,
stifling each reason to rise,
choked into the quilt.
III
"I'll never find work."
She swallows this thought with pills,
finds tears in the glass....Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
I
Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip
-- hiss -- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams,
and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip -- hiss -- the rain
never stops.
The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above,
dim,
in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead
hammers and chinks
the rain....Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs
but I've never seen wheat in a pile.
Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots
make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek
as a seal hauled out in the winter sun.
I can see you as a great goose egg
or a single juicy and fully ripe peach.
You swell like a natural...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The dead child lay in the shroud,
And the widow watched beside;
And her mother slept, and the Channel swept
The gale in the teeth of the tide.
But the mother laughed at all.
"I have lost my man in the sea,
And the child is dead. Be still," she said,
"What more can ye do to me?"
The widow watched the dead,
...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What...Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging,
continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten
veins of fire deep in the earth and raising
tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra.
Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's
airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses,
our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering
like fog over warm water, thickening to rain.
Sometimes...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,
Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,
Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.
I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
From peak snow-diademed to regal star;
Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.
The Here, the Now,...Read more of this...
by
Mark Doty
Because she could find no one else to paint a picture of the old family place where she and her sisters lived. . .she attended an adult education class in Montpelier. In one evening Bessie Drennan learned everything she would need to accomplish her goals. . .
The Vermont Folklife Center Newsletter
Bessie, you've made space dizzy
with your perfected technique for...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
An elephant went to bed and pulled a crazy quilt up under
its tusks.
But just as the great gray head began filling with the gray
wrinkles of sleep it was awakened by the thud of its tail
falling out of bed.
Would you get my tail? said the elephant to another
elephant also tucked up under a crazy quilt.
...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
Here's a girl from a dangerous town
She crops her dark hair short
so that less of her has to frown
when someine gets hurt.
She folds her memories like a parachute.
Dropped she collects the peat
and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot
here where they eat.
Ah there's more sky in these parts than say
ground. Hence her voice's pitch
and her stare stains your...Read more of this...
by
Robert Lowell
"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I...Read more of this...
by
Michael Ondaatje
All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
Threats of being traded
cuts and wounds
--all this pleases you.
O my god! you say at breakfast
reading the sports page over the Alpen
as another player breaks his ankle
or assaults the coach.
When I thought of daughters
I wasn't expecting this
but I like this more.
I like all your faults
even...Read more of this...
by
William Henry Davies
Now do I hear thee weep and groan,
Who hath a comrade sunk at sea?
Then quaff thee of my good old ale,
And it will raise him up for thee;
Thoul't think as little of him then
As when he moved with living men.
If thou hast hopes to move the world,
And every effort it doth fail,
Then...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Mother focused with a frown
The part of me where I sit down.
Said she: "Your pants are wearing through;
Let me sew on a patch for you."
And so she did,--of azure blue.
My britches were of sober grey,
And when I went to school next day,
The fellows said: "Excuse our smile:
We saw your patch 'way off a mile."
Said I: "Sure, it's the latest...Read more of this...
by
Alfonsina Storni
Teeth of flowers, hairnet of dew,
hands of herbs, you, perfect wet nurse,
prepare the earthly sheets for me
and the down quilt of weeded moss.
I am going to sleep, my nurse, put me to bed.
Set a lamp at my headboard;
a constellation; whatever you like;
all are good: lower it a bit.
Leave me alone: you hear the buds breaking through . . .
a...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
After a Print by George Cruikshank
It was a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
I hate this City, seated on the Plain,
The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar,
Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain,
This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar.
The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight,
Screening my happiness as evening...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Eight month autumn high wind angry howl Sweep off my house on three layers thatch Thatch fly across river sprinkle river beside High ones catch stick great forest top Low ones float turn sink pool hollow South village mob children bully me old without strength Bear able to face to steal be robbers Openly carry thatch...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
In the wide bed
Under the freen embroidered quilt
With flowers and leaves always in soft motion
She is like a wounded bird resting on a pool.
The hunter threw his dart
And hit her breast,--
Hit her but did not kill.
"O my wings, lift me--lift me!
I am not dreadfully hurt!"
Down she dropped and was still.
Kind people come to the edge of the pool with...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Quilt poems.