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Famous Scored Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Browning, Robert
...nce to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counci...Read more of this...



by Tolkien, J R R
...light upon her banners laid.

In panolpy of ancient kings,
in chained rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm from him;
his bow was made of dragon-horn,
his arrows shorn of ebony;
of silver was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
his sword of steel was valient,
of adamant his helmet tall,
an eagle-plume upon his crest,
upon his breast an emerald.

Beneath the Moon and under star
he wandered far from northern s...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips, 
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East 
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, 
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased, 

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give m...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...y
Is where your speech alone is understood,

And greeted as the natural noise of good,
Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity....Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...of dumbfounded 
While the Swifts started cheering like mad! 

'Twere his own goal as he’d kicked the ball through 
He’d scored for his foes ‘gainst his friends
For he’d slept through the referee’s whistle 
And at half time he hadn’t changed ends! 

Joe was transferred from the West Wigan Whippets 
To the Todmorden Swifts, where you’ll see 
Still minding the clothes for the others 
And chucking clods at referee!...Read more of this...



by Pinsky, Robert
...appreciation of his guidance

Threading a long night through the rules and channels
Of their collaborative linking-poem
Scored in their teacher's heart: live, rigid, fluid

Like passages etched in a microscopic cicuit.
Elliot had in his memory so many jokes
They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture

Inside his brain, one so much making another
It was impossible to tell them all:
In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana.

Imagine a court of one: the queen a yo...Read more of this...

by Morris, William
...say;

"Grim curses out of Peter and of Paul;
Judging of strange sins in Leviticus;
Another sort of writing on the wall,
Scored deep across the painted heads of us.

"Christ sitting with the woman at the well,
And Mary Magdalen repenting there,
Her dimmed eyes scorch'd and red at sight of hell
So hardly 'scaped, no gold light on her hair.

"And if the priest said anything that seemed
To touch upon the sin they said we did,
(This in their teeth) they looked as if they d...Read more of this...

by Shapiro, Karl
...k by a great savage khan,
Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable,
Not like the old electrum, chased and scored,
Mottoed and sculptured to a turn,
But notched and whelked and pocked and smashed
With the great company names
(Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States).
This rustproof artifact of my street,
Long after roads are melted away will lie
Sidewise in the grave of the iron-old world,
Bitten at the edges,
Strong with its cryptic American,
Its dated beaut...Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow. 

Words scored upon a bone, 
Scratched in despair or rage -- 
Nine hundred years have gone; 
Now, in another age, 
They burn with passion on 
A scholar's tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen 
And turns the bone about, 
And writes those words again. 
Once more they seethe and shout 
And through a human brain 
Undying hate rings out.

"I loved her whe...Read more of this...

by Olds, Sharon
...of matter which
swayed, on the last day, on his tongue.
Tamarack, Western hemlock,
manzanita, water birch
with its scored bark,
I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it,
then I lay down on my father's grave.
The sun shone down on me, the powerful
ants walked on me. When I woke,
my cheek was crumbly, yellowish 
with a mustard plaster of earth. Only
at the last minute did I think of his body
actually under me, the can of 
bone, ash, soft as a goosedown
pill...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...out getting away
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
and taking a room on the square
with a landlady whose hands are scored
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
that you are from Alaska, and listen
to what they have to say about Alaska
until you have learned much more about Alaska
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and think
"I am about to learn what it's like to live here."
Oftentime...Read more of this...

by Housman, A E
...or ill and not for good. 
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale 
Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 
Out of a stem that scored the hand 
I wrung it in a weary land. 
But take it: if the smack is sour, 
The better for the embittered hour; 
It should do good to heart and head 
When your soul is in my soul's stead; 
And I will friend you, if I may, 
In the dark and cloudy day. 

There was a king reigned in the East: 
There, when kings will sit to feast, 
They get their f...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...clusions well assured; 
The simple life I can't afford, 
Besides, I do not like the grub-- 
I want a mash and sausage, `scored'-- 
Will someone take me to a pub? 

I know where Men can still be found, 
Anger and clamorous accord, 
And virtues growing from the ground, 
And fellowship of beer and board, 
And song, that is a sturdy cord, 
And hope, that is a hardy shrub, 
And goodness, that is God's last word-- 
Will someone take me to a pub? 

Envoi 
Prince, Bayard would have s...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
..., 
Well armed both with buckler and sword - 
But the Normans had best combination, 
And when half-time came neither had scored.

So the Duke called his cohorts together 
And said - 'Let's pretend that we're beat,
Once we get Saxons down on the level 
We'll cut off their means of retreat.'

So they ran - and the Saxons ran after, 
Just exactly as William had planned,
Leaving 'Arold alone on the hill-top 
On his 'orse with his 'awk in his 'and.

When the Conqueror s...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...n Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires. 

The land's sharp features seemed to be
     The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every sp...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...f yore,
in lewd and tempting mirrors sullied o'er;
The proud, mute vows that to himself he made
Are here—for he hath scored and cancelled them,
As one may cut and notch a diadem;
And here, inert and prone, his will is laid,
Whose gestures flashed like lightning keen before.
But that he now can raise in strength no more.


The grave-digger digs to the sound of the knell
'Mid the yews and the deaths in yonder dell.
Since ages longer than he can tell.


Here is hi...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ite:
Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark,
When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.

Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm,
In that Indian paper -- made his seniors squirm,
Quated office scandals, wrote the tactless truth --
Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game,
Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame;
When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore,
Boanerges Blitzen only wrot...Read more of this...

by Shapiro, Karl
...ree.
You cannot find in twisted Italy
So straight a one; it stands not on a crag,
Is not humpbacked with bearing in scored stone,
But perfectly erect in my front yard,
Oblivious of its fame. The fruit is hard, 
Multitudinous, acid, tight on the stem;
The leaves ride boat-like in the brimming sun,
Going nowhere and scooping up the light.
It is the silver tree, the holy tree,
Tree of all attributes.

 Now on the lawn
The olives fall by thousands, and I delight
T...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...you I mean--they're both too common." 
The lawyer gave a laugh among his papers 
As if with some idea that she had scored. 
"I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets. 
It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though: 
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. 
Somehow I'll make it right with her--she'll see. 
She's going to do my scouting in the field, 
Over stone walls and all along a wood 
And by a river bank for water flowers, 
The float...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...nd conceit,
Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;
To him the unreal sounds are sweet,--
No discord mars the silent strain
Scored on life's latest, starlit page--
The voiceless melody of age.

Sweet are the lips of all that sing,
When Nature's music breathes unsought,
But never yet could voice or string
So truly shape our tenderest thought
As when by life's decaying fire
Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre!...Read more of this...

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