Famous Sale Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Flat Lands

by Carl Sandburg
 FLAT lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions,
The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat lands—blood and fire of sunsets thousands of years have been pouring over you.
And the stars follow the sunsets. One gold star. A shower of blue stars. Blurs of white and gray...Read more of this...

At The Window

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Every morning, as I walk down
From my dreary lodgings, toward the town,
I see at a window, near the street,
The face of a woman, fair and sweet,
With soft brown eyes and chestnut hair,
And red lips, warm with the kisses left there.
And she stands there as long as she can see
The man who walks just ahead of me.

At night, when I...Read more of this...

An Old Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 So long as 'neath the Kalka hills
 The tonga-horn shall ring,
So long as down the Solon dip
 The hard-held ponies swing,
So long as Tara Devi sees
 The lights of Simla town,
So long as Pleasure calls us up,
 Or Duty drivese us down,
 If you love me as I love you
 What pair so happy as we two?

So long as...Read more of this...

Baseball and Writing

by Marianne Moore
 Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers...Read more of this...

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

by Ezra Pound
 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es. IV. 

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre 

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...

A Song of Defeat

by G K Chesterton
 The line breaks and the guns go under, 
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain; 
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder, 
And the whole of my heart grows young again. 
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it; 
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace; 
Earth will grow worse till...Read more of this...

Outbid

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When Cupid held an auction sale,
 I hastened to his mart,
For I had heard that he would sell
 The blue-eyed Dora’s heart.

I brought a wealth of truest love,
 The most that I could proffer,
Because, forsooth, of stocks or bonds
 I had not one to offer.

When Cupid offered Dora’s heart,
 I bid my whole heart’s love,
A love that reached from...Read more of this...

A Walgett Episode

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The sun strikes down with a blinding glare; 
The skies are blue and the plains are wide, 
The saltbush plains that are burnt and bare 
By Walgett out on the Barwon side -- 
The Barwon River that wanders down 
In a leisurely manner by Walgett Town. 
There came a stranger -- a "Cockatoo" -- 
The word means farmer, as...Read more of this...

On The Sale By Auction Of Keats Love Letters

by Oscar Wilde
 These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant's price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet's heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Is it...Read more of this...

Garage Sale

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
  I sold her bed for a song. 
A song of yearning like an orphan’s. 
Or the one knives carve into bread. 

 But the un-broken bread 
song too. For the song that rivers 
sing to the ferryman’s oars. With 

 that dread in it. 
For a threadbare tune: garroted, 
chest-choked, cheap. A sparrow’s, 

 beggar’s, a foghorn’s call....Read more of this...

The Auction Sale

by Robert William Service
 Her little head just topped the window-sill;
She even mounted on a stool, maybe;
She pressed against the pane, as children will,
And watched us playing, oh so wistfully!
And then I missed her for a month or more,
And idly thought: "She's gone away, no doubt,"
Until a hearse drew up beside the door . . .
I saw a tiny coffin carried out.

And after...Read more of this...

On The Boulevard

by Robert William Service
 Oh, it's pleasant sitting here,
Seeing all the people pass;
You beside your bock of beer,
I behind my demi-tasse.
Chatting of no matter what.
You the Mummer, I the Bard;
Oh, it's jolly, is it not? --
Sitting on the Boulevard.

More amusing than a book,
If a chap has eyes to see;
For, no matter where I look,
Stories, stories jump at me.
Moving tales my pen might write;
Poems...Read more of this...

A Hymn

by G K Chesterton
 O God of earth and altar, 
Bow down and hear our cry, 
Our earthly rulers falter, 
Our people drift and die; 
The walls of gold entomb us, 
The swords of scorn divide, 
Take not thy thunder from us, 
But take away our pride. 

From all that terror teaches, 
From lies of tongue and pen, 
From all the easy speeches...Read more of this...

For Sale

by Susan Rich
 Xhosa women in clothes too light

for the weather have brought wild flowers

and sit sloped along the Claremont road.

I see her through rolled windows,

watch her watch me to decide if I’ll pay.

It’s South Africa, after all, after apartheid;

but we’re still idling here, my car to her curb,

my automatic locks to her inadequate wage....Read more of this...

Wholl Buy Gods Of Love?

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 OF all the beauteous wares
Exposed for sale at fairs,
None will give more delight
Than those that to your sight
From distant lands we bring.
Oh, hark to what we sing!
These beauteous birds behold,
They're brought here to be sold.

And first the big one see,
So full of roguish glee!
With light and merry bound
He leaps upon the ground;
Then springs up on the bougd,
We will not...Read more of this...

To Ladies Of A Certain Age

by John Trumbull
 Ye ancient Maids, who ne'er must prove
The early joys of youth and love,
Whose names grim Fate (to whom 'twas given,
When marriages were made in heaven)
Survey'd with unrelenting scowl,
And struck them from the muster-roll;
Or set you by, in dismal sort,
For wintry bachelors to court;
Or doom'd to lead your faded lives,
Heirs to the joys of former wives;
Attend! nor fear in state...Read more of this...

April 24

by David Lehman
 Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading and I introduced them
to an audience that already knew them,
and there were bottles of Evian at the table.
As air to the lungs of a drowning man was
a glass of this...Read more of this...

The Celebrated Woman - An Epistle By A Married Man

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Can I, my friend, with thee condole?--
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?--
Poor martyr,--most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;--
A faithless wife,--I grant the curse,--
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale...Read more of this...

Felix Schmidt

by Edgar Lee Masters
 It was only a little house of two rooms --
Almost like a child's play-house --
With scarce five acres of ground around it;
And I had so many children to feed
And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
From bearing children.
One day lawyer Whitney came along
And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
Who owned three thousand acres of land,
Had bought the...Read more of this...

The New World

by Philip Levine
 A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."

My grandfather in his prime could outshout
the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles
along the river. Hamtramck hungered

for yellow freestone peaches, downriver
wakened from a dream of work, Zug Island danced
into the bright day glad to be alive.

Full-figured women in their negligees
streamed into the...Read more of this...

The Sightless Man

by Robert William Service
 Out of the night a crash,
A roar, a rampart of light;
A flame that leaped like a lash,
Searing forever my sight;
Out of the night a flash,
Then, oh, forever the Night!

Here in the dark I sit,
I who so loved the sun;
Supple and strong and fit,
In the dark till my days be done;
Aye, that's the hell of it,
Stalwart and twenty-one.

Marie is stanch...Read more of this...

The discreet collector

by Eugene Field
 Down south there is a curio-shop
Unknown to many men;
Thereat do I intend to stop
When I am south again;
The narrow street through which to go--
Aha! I know it well!
And may be you would like to know--
But no--I will not tell!

'T is there to find the loveliest plates
(The bluest of the blue!)
At such surprisingly low rates
You'd not believe it true!
And there...Read more of this...

Our New Horse

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The boys had come back from the races 
All silent and down on their luck; 
They'd backed 'em, straight out and for places, 
But never a winner they's struck. 
They lost their good money on Slogan, 
And fell most uncommonly flat 
When Partner, the pride of the Bogan, 
Was beaten by Aristocrat. 
And one said, "I move that instanter...Read more of this...

The Ghosts

by Robert William Service
 Smith, great writer of stories, drank; found it immortalized his pen;
Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a soul-thought -- Bing!
Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie
 stripped to the buff in swinish...Read more of this...

Terence This is Stupid Stuff

by A E Housman
 ‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff: 
You eat your victuals fast enough; 
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, 
To see the rate you drink your beer. 
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,  5
It gives a chap the belly-ache. 
The cow, the old cow, she is dead; 
It sleeps well, the horned head: 
We poor lads, ’tis...Read more of this...

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