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Famous Rook Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Newbolt, Sir Henry
...nted again to canter back 
I saw across a field in the broad sunlight 
A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along 
With a rook-rifle held at the read, and -- would you believe it? -- 
A domestic cat, soberly marching beside him. 

So I laughed, and felt quite well disposed to the youngster, 
And shouted out "the top of the morning" to him, 
And wished him "Good sport!" -- and then I remembered 
My rank, and his, and what I ought to be doing: 
And I rode nearer, and added, "...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...e furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
in the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooning the woods' praise,
who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't hone...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...rs are in the offing,
And sitting by the fire to-night
I sip a grog to ease my coughing.
It's true I'm raucous as a rook,
But feeling bibulously "bardy,"
These lines I'm scribbling in a book:
The verse complete of Thomas Hardy. 

Although to-day he's read by few,
Him have I loved beyond all measure;
So here to-night I riffle through
His pages with the oldtime pleasure;
And with this book upon my knee,
(To-day so woefully neglected)
I muse and think how soon I'll be
My...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers; 
Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping—folk, flocks, and flowers. 

Yet ah! this air I gat...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...ood
 And the mussel pooled and the heron
 Priested shore
 The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
 Myself to set foot
 That second
 In the still sleeping town and set forth.

 My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
 Above the farms and the white horses
 And I rose
 In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and...Read more of this...

by Brown, Thomas Edward
...s it broad'--
And so he frowns; but is he nearer God?

One saith that God is in the note of bird,
And piping wind, and brook,
And all the joyful things that speak no word:
Then if from sunny nook
Or shade a fair child's laugh
Is heard,
Is not God half?
And if a strong man gird
His loins for laughter, stirred
By trick of ape or calf--
Is he no better than a cawing rook?

Nay 'tis a Godlike function; laugh thy fill!
Mirth comes to thee unsought;
Mirth sweeps before it like a fl...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...he Franklin by the sea,
And Mark, the man from Italy,
And Colan of the Sacred Tree,
From the old tribe on Usk.

The rook croaked homeward heavily,
The west was clear and warm,
The smoke of evening food and ease
Rose like a blue tree in the trees
When he came to Eldred's farm.

But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,
Like an old cripple's bones,
And Eldred's tools were red with rust,
And on his well was a green crust,
And purple thistles upward thrust,
Between the kitchen s...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...tauntless;
Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine. 

Frowning and forefending angel-warder
Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;
 March, kind comrade, abreast him;
Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order. 

How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill,
When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach
 Yields tender as a pushed peach,
Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will! 

Then though I should tread tufts of con...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all thc blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I ...Read more of this...

by Goose, Mother
...R>"I," said the owl,"With my spade and trowelI'll dig his grave."Who'll be the parson?"I," said the rook,"With my little book,I'll be the parson."Who'll be chief mourner?"I," said the dove,"I mourn for my love,I'll be chief mourner."Who'll sing a psalm?"I," said the thrush,"As I sit in a bush.I'll sing a psalm."Who'll carry the coffin?"I," said the kite,"If it's not in the night,I'll carry...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...usiness active;
We gels wot gains our bread by sin
Have got to make ourselves attractive.
I hope yer dentist was no rook?"
Says I: "A quid is what he took."

Says Polly Crump: "The shoes you wear
Are down at heel and need new soleing;
Why doncher buy a better pair?
The rain goes in and out the holeing.
They're squelchin' as ye walk yer beat. . . ."
Says I: "blokes don't look at me feet."

Says Polly Crump: "You cough all day;
It just don't do i...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...orm and mien,
     Your hunting-suit of Lincoln green,
     That tasselled horn so gayly gilt,
     That falchion's crooked blade and hilt,
     That cap with heron plumage trim,
     And yon two hounds so dark and grim.
     He bade that all should ready be
     To grace a guest of fair degree;
     But light I held his prophecy,
     And deemed it was my father's horn
     Whose echoes o'er the lake were borne.'
     XXIV.

     The stranger smiled:—'Since to y...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...nds as if the dull sky shook
In flakes of shadow down; and through the gap
Between the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.

The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and still
With fair flakes settling down on it.--Beyond, the town
Is lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.

And all things are possessed by silence, and they can brood
Wrapped up in the sky's dim space of hoarse silence
Earnestly--and oh for me this class is a bitter rood.


II

=T...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...ng about thereon, 
and wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a 
dull grey. 

(Triolet) 

Rook.--Throughout the field I find no grain; 
 The cruel frost encrusts the cornland! 
Starling.--Aye: patient pecking now is vain 
 Throughout the field, I find . . . 
Rook.--No grain! 
Pigeon.--Nor will be, comrade, till it rain, 
 Or genial thawings loose the lorn land 
 Throughout the field. 
Rook.--I find no grain: 
 ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
 feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.

Last summer's reeds are all engraved in ice
 as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
 can be struck from rock to make heart's waste
grow green again? Who'd walk in this bleak place?...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs