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Famous Scarf Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...rns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself ...Read more of this...



by Jennings, Elizabeth
...you wear?
I wore a blue suit, a white shirt, yellow tie, and yellow socks.
What did you wear?
I wore nothing. A scarf of pain kept me warm.
Who did you sleep with?
I slept with a different woman each night.
Who did you sleep with?
I slept alone. I have always slept alone.
Why did you lie to me?
I always thought I told the truth.
Why did you lie to me?
Because the truth lies like nothing else and I love the truth.
Why are you going?
Because noth...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,' she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;

'Who touches a hair of yon g...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...unners had holes,

Her ankles were bare, she wore a

Washed-out flower-patterned frock.





 33



You wore a torn scarf

Over your hair

As we sat in the dark

Square of the church,

The footsteps of penitents

Echoing, Christ bleeding,

Candles burning, the confessionals

Closed.





34



In the attic were a hundred pre-war

‘Picture Posts’ with sepia prints

Of Boer War soldiers and pyramids

Of cannon balls stacked by their gun:

“Make war, not love”, the motto...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...smells.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can shew,
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound,
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.
But far above, in spangled sheen,
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced
Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced
A...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...t, more whitely sweet
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose
From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;
'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million
Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,
Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,
Handfuls of daisies."--"Endymion, how strange!
Dream within dream!"--"She took an airy range,
And then, towards me, like a very maid,
Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,
And press'd me...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as Cleop...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...evel lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.


Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware
That all the decks were dense with stately forms,
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a w...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...d away:--and still she comb'd, and kept
Sighing all day--and still she kiss'd, and wept.

LII.
Then in a silken scarf,--sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,--
She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

LIII.
And she forgot the ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...life away. 
His follower once, and now his only guide, 
Kneels Kaled watchful o'er his welling side, 
And with his scarf would stanch the tides that rush 
With each convulsion in a blacker gush; 
And then, as his faint breathing waxes low, 
In feebler, not less fatal tricklings flow: 
He scarce can speak, but motions him 'tis vain, 
And merely adds another throb to pain. 
He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage, 
And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...th logic or with luck
 and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
 who insists his playmates run. 

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
 like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
 should inflame the sleeping town. 

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their mon...Read more of this...

by Silverstein, Shel
...ecoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it'...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ove and Mars.

He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South-Cove and City-wharf;
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath,—
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow;
Open the daunting map beneath,—
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...he Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats.. . .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
 O farmerman.
 Cram their insides till they w...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God, in one-millionth of an inch.

Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf women dancing,
Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks—flying hair of fire, flying feet upside down;
Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling, fire running wild out of the steady and fastened ovens;
Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for themselves;
Ears and noses of fire, gibberin...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...rees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia's bard

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet's plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hect...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...came up in gorgeous attire
1.24 (As that fond age, doth most of all desire),
1.25 His Suit of Crimson, and his Scarf of Green.
1.26 In's countenance, his pride quickly was seen.
1.27 Garland of Roses, Pinks, and Gillyflowers
1.28 Seemed to grow on's head (bedew'd with showers).
1.29 His face as fresh, as is Aurora fair,
1.30 When blushing first, she 'gins to red the Air.
1.31 No wooden horse, but one of metal try'd:
1.32 He...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...hilted brand, 
Came quickly flashing through the shallow ford 
Behind them, and so galloped up the knoll. 
A purple scarf, at either end whereof 
There swung an apple of the purest gold, 
Swayed round about him, as he galloped up 
To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly 
In summer suit and silks of holiday. 
Low bowed the tributary Prince, and she, 
Sweet and statelily, and with all grace 
Of womanhood and queenhood, answered him: 
'Late, late, Sir Prince,' she said,...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...tue propt against the wall, 
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, 
Half child half woman as she was, had wound 
A scarf of orange round the stony helm, 
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk, 
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook 
Glow like a sunbeam: near his tomb a feast 
Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests, 
And there we joined them: then the maiden Aunt 
Took this fair day for text, and from it preached 
An universal culture for the crowd, 
And all ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...orever seemed to sing
"A silver music on the mossy lawn,
And still before her on the dusky grass
Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn.--
"In her right hand she bore a crystal glass
Mantling with bright Nepenthe;--the fierce splendour
Fell from her as she moved under the mass
"Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her
"Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
Her fair hair swe...Read more of this...

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