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Famous Saw Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
..., 
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead, the flag we know, 
Warlike flag of the great Idea. 

(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
I stand again in leaden rain, your flapping folds saluting; 
I sing you over all, flying, beckoning through the fight—O the hard-contested fight! 
O the cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles! the hurtled balls scream! 

The battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour incessant from the line; 
Hark! the ringing word, Charge!—now th...Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...raphic Signs—

With Dungeons—They devised—
But through their thickest skill—
And their opaquest Adamant—
Our Souls saw—just as well—

They summoned Us to die—
With sweet alacrity
We stood upon our stapled feet—
Condemned—but just—to see—

Permission to recant—
Permission to forget—
We turned our backs upon the Sun
For perjury of that—

Not Either—noticed Death—
Of Paradise—aware—
Each other's Face—was all the Disc
Each other's setting—saw—

479

She de...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children 
and a keg of beer and an
accordion....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...For 
 Carl Solomon 


 I 

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 
 madness, starving hysterical naked, 
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn 
 looking for an angry fix, 
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 
 connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- 
 ery of night, 
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 
 up smoking in ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...s no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.

Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy
Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud
Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy
And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed
In wonder at her feet, not for the sake
Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.

Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!
And, if my lips be musicless, inspire
At least my life: was not thy glory hymned
By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre
L...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...ouchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow ofthe place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,
As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard
Shook horrid with such aspen-malady:
"O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,
Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
Look up, and let me see our doom in it;
Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape
Is Saturn'...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...e." 
 Here I
 stayed 
 My steps amid the darkness, and the Shade 
 That led me heard and turned, magnanimous, 
 And saw me drained of purpose halting thus, 
 And answered, "If thy coward-born thoughts be clear, 
 And all thy once intent, infirmed of fear, 
 Broken, then art thou as scared beasts that shy 
 From shadows, surely that they know not why 
 Nor wherefore. . . Hearken, to confound thy fear, 
 The things which first I heard, and brought me here. 
...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ge, link'd in high command, 
He mingled with the magnates of his land; 
Join'd the carousals of the great and gay, 
And saw them smile or sigh their hours away; 
But still he only saw, and did not share 
The common pleasure or the general care; 
He did not follow what they all pursued, 
With hope still baffled, still to be renew'd; 
Nor shadowy honour, nor substantial gain, 
Nor beauty's preference, and the rival's pain: 
Around him some mysterious circle thrown 
Repell'd app...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...bsp; But then there came a sight of joy;  It came at once to do me good;  I waked, and saw my little boy,  My little boy of flesh and blood;  Oh joy for me that sight to see!  For he was here, and only he.   Suck, little babe, oh suck again!  It cools my blood; it cools my brain;  Thy lips I feel them, baby! they  Draw from my heart the pai...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...in my boots, and went and had a good time:
(You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.) 

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west—the bride
 was a red girl; 
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they
 had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
 shoulders; 
On a bank lounged the trapper—he was drest mostly in skins—his
 luxuriant beard and curls protected h...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...d trumpets scream aloud
And the dense arrows drive.

Lady, by one light only
We look from Alfred's eyes,
We know he saw athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where One more than Melchizedek
Is dead and never dies.

Therefore I bring these rhymes to you
Who brought the cross to me,
Since on you flaming without flaw
I saw the sign that Guthrum saw
When he let break his ships of awe,
And laid peace on the sea.

Do you remember when we went
Under a dr...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...p—for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic r...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ontrol of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...mutton, or oysters, or eggs:
(Some think it keeps best in an ivory jar,
 And some, in mahogany kegs:)

"You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue:
 You condense it with locusts and tape:
Still keeping one principal object in view--
 To preserve its symmetrical shape."

The Butcher would gladly have talked till next day,
 But he felt that the Lesson must end,
And he wept with delight in attempting to say
 He considered the Beaver his friend.

While the Beaver confes...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...s.
When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a
flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty
Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. 

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?


Proverbs of Hell.

In seed time lear...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...br>" 

Roused into sudden passion, she
In tone of cold malignity:
"To others, yea: but not to thee." 

But when she saw him quail and quake,
And when he urged "For pity's sake!"
Once more in gentle tones she spake. 

"Thought in the mind doth still abide
That is by Intellect supplied,
And within that Idea doth hide: 

"And he, that yearns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow: 

"And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ajestically on . . .
The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror's advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senatehouse & prison & theatre
When Freedom left those who upon the free
Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...d 
The angel. 'Well, he won't find kings to jostle 
Him on his way; but does he wear his head? 
Because the last we saw here had a tussle, 
And ne'er would have got into heaven's good graces, 
Had he not flung his head in all our faces. 

XIX 

'He was, if I remember, king of France; 
That head of his, which could not keep a crown 
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance 
A claim to those of martyrs — like my own: 
If I had had my sword, as I had once 
When I cut...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur! - ...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...not look at the Nieva,
The dawn-drenched granite did not view,
And it appeared that that I, awake, my
Unforgettable, saw you..

But then the unexpected night
Covered the before-autumn town,
That, so as to assist my flight,
The ashen shadows melted down.

I only took with me the cross,
That you had given on day of treason
That wormwood steppe should be in bloom
And winds, like sirens, sing in season.

And here upon an empty wall
He keeps me from...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things