Famous Scoring Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Burnt Child

by W S Merwin
 Matches among other things that were not allowed
never would be
lying high in a cool blue box
that opened in other hands and there they all were
bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns
white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring
fire after fire gone before

I could hear the scratch and flare
when they were over
and catch the smell of the striking
I...Read more of this...

The Hon. Sec

by John Betjeman
 The flag that hung half-mast today
Seemed animate with being
As if it knew for who it flew
And will no more be seeing.

He loved each corner of the links-
The stream at the eleventh,
The grey-green bents, the pale sea-pinks,
The prospect from the seventh;

To the ninth tee the uphill climb,
A grass and sandy stairway,
And at the top the scent of thyme
And long extent...Read more of this...

My Feud

by Robert William Service
 I hate my neighbour Widow Green;
 I'd like to claw her face;
But if I did she'd make a scene
 And run me round the place:
For widows are in way of spleen
 A most pugnacious race.

And yet I must do something quick
 To keep the hag in line,
Since her red rooster chose to pick
 Five lettuce heads of mine:
And so...Read more of this...

Cows

by Paul Muldoon
 Even as we speak, there's a smoker's cough
from behind the whitethorn hedge: we stop dead in our tracks;
a distant tingle of water into a trough.

In the past half-hour—since a cattle truck
all but sent us shuffling off this mortal coil—
we've consoled ourselves with the dregs

of a bottle of Redbreast. Had Hawthorne been a Gael,
I insist, the scarlet A on Hester...Read more of this...

Translation From the Gull Language

by Thomas Moore
 'Twas grav'd on the Stone of Destiny,
In letters four, and letters three;
And ne'er did the King of the Gulls go by
But those awful letters scar'd his eye;
For he knew that a Prophet Voice had said
"As long as those words by man were read,
The ancient race of the Gulls should ne'er
One hour of peace or plenty share."
But years and years...Read more of this...

Nature Study

by Craig Raine
 (for Rona, Jeremy, Sam & Grace)

All the lizards are asleep--
perched pagodas with tiny triangular tiles,
each milky lid a steamed-up window.
Inside, the heart repeats itself like a sleepy gong,
summoning nothing to nothing.

In winter time, the zoo reverts to metaphor,
God's poetry of boredom:
the cobra knits her Fair-Isle skin,
rattlers titter over the same joke.
All of them endlessly finish spaghetti.
The python runs down...Read more of this...

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