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Famous Scouring Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lindsay, Vachel
...many homesteads in black terror weep. 

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. 
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. 
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now 
The bitterness, the folly and the pain. 

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn 
Shall come:--the shining hope of Europe free: 
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth, 
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea. 

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, 
That all...Read more of this...



by Hirsch, Edward
...s turn, mournful and absolute.

Lay these words on the dead man's lips
like burning tongs, a tongue of flame.
A scouring eagle wheels and shrieks.
Let God pray to us for this man....Read more of this...

by Hill, Geoffrey
...r and proved spurs
They lie; they lie; secure in the decay
Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted,
Before the scouring fires of trial-day
Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head,
Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea
Across daubed rock evacuates its dead....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...your place of power and pride, and the feast that waits for you!
Why do you linger all alone in the splendid emptiness,
Scouring the Land of the Little Sticks on the trail of the caribou?

Why did you fall off the Earth, Tom Thorne, out of our social ken?
What did your deep damnation prove? What was your dark despair?
Oh with the width of a world between, and years to the count of ten,
If they cut out your heart to-night, Tom Thorne, her name would be graven there!

And you f...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming o...Read more of this...



by Marvell, Andrew
...Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
As but th'Off-scouring of the Brittish Sand;
And so much Earth as was contributed
By English Pilots when they heav'd the Lead;
Or what by th' Oceans slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrackt Cockle and the Muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the Sea
Fell to the Dutch by just Propriety.
Glad then, as Miners that have found the Oar,
They with mad labour fish'd the Land to Sh...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...and sway 
Of "Fancy-Lad" and "Maiden Coy," 
 Reached Jenny as she lay 
Beside her spouse; till springtide blood 
Seemed scouring through her like a flood 
 That whisked the years away. 

She rose, and rayed, and decked her head 
 To hide her ringlets thin; 
Upon her cap two bows of red 
 She fixed with hasty pin; 
Unheard descending to the street, 
She trod the flags with tune-led feet, 
 And stood before the Inn. 

Save for the dancers', not a sound 
 Disturbed the i...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...with pomatum, paints and slops,
And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy basin stands,
Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
The basin takes whatever comes,
The scrapings of her teeth and gums,
A nasty compound of all hues,
For here she spits, and here she spews.
But oh! it turned poor Strephon's bowels,
When he beheld and smelt the towels,
Begummed, besmattered, and beslimed
With dirt, and sweat, and ear-wax grimed.
No object Strephon's eye escapes:...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...outh who scoured 
His master's armour; and of such a one 
He asked, 'What means the tumult in the town?' 
Who told him, scouring still, 'The sparrow-hawk!' 
Then riding close behind an ancient churl, 
Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam, 
Went sweating underneath a sack of corn, 
Asked yet once more what meant the hubbub here? 
Who answered gruffly, 'Ugh! the sparrow-hawk.' 
Then riding further past an armourer's, 
Who, with back turned, and bowed above his work, 
Sat ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...ered rocks,
As on the blue light of a sword, a man
Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes
Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,
Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot
I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;
But with a voice that had unnatural music,
"A weary wooing and a long," he said,
"Speaking of love through other lips and looking
Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft
That put a passion in the sleeper there,
And when I had got my will an...Read more of this...

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