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Famous Rods Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kipling, Rudyard
...shore! )
 'Mid two hundred brothers.

There we met with famous men
 Set in office o'er us;
And they beat on us with rods-- 
Faithfully with many rods--
Daily beat us on with rods,
 For the love they bore us!

Out of Egypt unto Troy--
 Over Himalaya--
Far and sure our bands have gone--
Hy-Brazil or Babylon,
Islands of the Southern Run,
 And Cities of Cathaia!

And we all praise famous men--
 Ancients of the College;
For they taught us common sense--
Tried to teach us commo...Read more of this...



by Betjeman, John
...ing train gone by?

Yes, we said, for in summer the anglers use it,
Two and sometimes three
Will bring their catches of rods and poles and perches
To Westbury, home for tea.

There isn't a porter. The platform is made of sleepers.
The guard of the last train puts out the light
And high over lorries and cattle the Halt unwinking
Waits through the Wiltshire night.

O housewife safe in the comprehensive churning
Of the Warminster launderette!
O husband down at th...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.

Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,--
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.

Claudius, though he sang of flagons
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons
Never would his own replenish.

Even Redi, though he chaunted
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyram...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...
To Flora, and a nightingale shall light
Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods,
And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods
Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress.
Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness!
Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be
'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee:
Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak
Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek,
Trembling or stedfastness to this same voice,
And of three sweetest pleasu...Read more of this...

by Grahn, Judy
...f she isn't careful
we may even kill her.

Opening night
she lands on her carpet,
long fingered hands
like divining rods
bobbing and drawing the strands
of our attention,
as limousine drivers in blue jackets
stand on the hoods of their cars
to see the angel, talking

Davis, Dietrich, Wood
Tyson, Taylor, Gabor
Helen, when she goes to Hollywood
to be a walking star,
to be an actor

She is far more that a product
of Max Factor,
Max Factor didn't make her
though the make-up h...Read more of this...



by Cullen, Countee
...
In an old remembered way
Rain works on me night and day.

Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods,
Clay, and brittle bits of stone,
In a likeness like their own,
My conversion came high-priced;
I belong to Jesus Christ,
Preacher of humility;
Heathen gods are naught to me.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
So I make an idle boast;
Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,
Lamb of God, although I speak
With my mouth thus, in my heart
Do I play a double part.Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...?

And if Bezaleel and Aholiab drew
What the finger of God pointed to their view,
Shall we suffer the Roman and Grecian rods
To compel us to worship them as gods?

They stole them from the temple of the Lord
And worshipp'd them that they might make inspir?d art abhorr'd;

The wood and stone were call'd the holy things,
And their sublime intent given to their kings.
All the atonements of Jehovah spurn'd,
And criminals to sacrifices turn'd....Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...our brethren we.XXXVII


Because the days were dark with gods and kings
And in time's hand the old hours of time as rods,
When force and fear set hope and faith at odds,
Ye failed not nor abased your plume-plucked wings;
And we that front not more disastrous things,
How should we fail in face of kings and gods?XXXVIII


For now the deep dense plumes of night are thinned
Surely with winnowing of the glimmering wind
Whose feet we fledged with morning; and the breath
Begins ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...

The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom; -
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace....Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...t you;
Nor can your cavillers pretend
But that they answer well their end.
'Tis yours to yield to their command,
As rods in Providence's hand;
For when it means to send you pain,
You toss your foreheads up in vain;
Your way is, hush'd in peace, to bear it,
And make necessity a merit.
Hence sure perdition must await
The man, who rises 'gainst the State,
Who meets at once the damning sentence,
Without one loophole for repentance;
Ev'n though he gain the Royal See,
And r...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ng forth, or entering in:
Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on the AEmilian—some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, 
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and, more to west,
The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;
From the Asian kings (and Par...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...he baby

woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.

 My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and

the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls

of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and

her face was hot and flushed.

 We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small

drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out

of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for

some s...Read more of this...

by Agustini, Delmira
...Black and enormous, never thrashes;Piety for the spirits, illustrious,Carved of diamonds,High, clear, ecstaticLightning rods on pious domes;Piety for the lips like celestial settingsWhere the invisible pearls of the Host gleam;–Lips that never existed,Never seized anything,A fiery vampireWith more thirst and hunger than an abyss.Piety for the sacrosanct sexesThat armor themselves with sheathsFrom the astral vineyards of Chastity;Piety for the magnetized footsolesWho etern...Read more of this...

by Untermeyer, Louis
...beautiful as this
Obedient monster purring at its toil;
These naked iron muscles dripping oil
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss.
This long and shining flank of metal is
Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil;
While this vast engine that could rend the soil
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.

It does not vent its loathing, does not turn
Upon its makers with destroying hate.
It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn
Its master's bread and laughs to see this...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...and love; a lewd and lurking band
Of Powers -- dark Conspiracy, Cunning cold,
Gray Sorcery; magic cloaks and rings and rods;
Valkyries, heroes, Rhinemaids, giants, gods!

* * * * *

"O Wagner, westward bring thy heavenly art,
No trifler thou: Siegfried and Wotan be
Names for big ballads of the modern heart.
Thine ears hear deeper than thine eyes can see.
Voice of the monstrous mill, the shouting mart,
Not less of airy cloud and wave and tree,
Thou, thou, if even to t...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...s my soul upon the sea
That drinks the howling ships,
Though in black jest it bows and nods
Under the moons with silver rods,
I know it is roaring at the gods,
Waiting the last eclipse.

"And in the last eclipse the sea
Shall stand up like a tower,
Above all moons made dark and riven,
Hold up its foaming head in heaven,
And laugh, knowing its hour.

"And the high ones in the happy town
Propped of the planets seven,
Shall know a new light in the mind,
A noise about the...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...rayer,
     A slender crosslet framed with care,
     A cubit's length in measure due;
     The shaft and limbs were rods of yew,
     Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave
     Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave,
     And, answering Lomond's breezes deep,
     Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep.
     The Cross thus formed he held on high,
     With wasted hand and haggard eye,
     And strange and mingled feelings woke,
     While his anathema he spoke:—
...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ave spoilt this child; she laughs at you and man: 
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him: 
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire; 
She yields, or war.' 
Then Gama turned to me: 
'We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl: and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large: 
How say you, war or not?' 
'Not war, if possible, 
O king,' I said, 'lest from the abuse of war, 
The desecrated shrine, the trampled y...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...nd behold! the earthen kettles
All were changed to bowls of silver!
And the roof-poles of the wigwam
Were as glittering rods of silver,
And the roof of bark upon them
As the shining shards of beetles.
"Then Osseo gazed around him,
And he saw the nine fair sisters,
All the sisters and their husbands,
Changed to birds of various plumage.
Some were jays and some were magpies,
Others thrushes, others blackbirds;
And they hopped, and sang, and twittered,
Perked and flutter...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...nvulsive; 
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel; 
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides;
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar—now tapering in the distance; 
Thy great protruding head-light, fix’d in front; 
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple; 
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack; 
Thy knitted frame—thy springs and valves—the tremulous twinkle o...Read more of this...

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