Famous Scraping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Amphion

...ry sparrows in the hedge 
Scarce answer to my whistle; 
'Or at the most, when three-parts-sick 
With strumming and with scraping, 
A jackass heehaws from the rick, 
The passive oxen gaping. 

But what is that I hear ? a sound 
Like sleepy counsel pleading; 
O Lord !--'tis in my neighbour's ground, 
The modern Muses reading. 
They read Botanic Treatises, 
And Works on Gardening thro' there, 
And Methods of transplanting trees 
To look as if they grew there. 

The wither'd Miss...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord


As the Teams Head- Brass

...f treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word, 
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, 
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole, 
The ploughman said. 'When will they take it away? '
'When the war's over.' So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten, 
A minute more and the same interval.
...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Edward

Buckwheat

...ering mountain sunsets
Under the valley roads of her eyes.

There was a late autumn cricket,
A hangover of summer song,
Scraping a tune
Of the late night clocks of summer,
In the late winter night fireglow,
This in a circle of black velvet at her neck.

2In pansy eyes a flash, a thin rim of white light, a beach bonfire ten miles across dunes, a speck of a fool star in night’s half circle of velvet.

In the corner of the left arm a dimple, a mole, a forget-me-not, and it flutt...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Chasers

...answer than, “Hai, hai, hai,”?
Did I go up those same crags yesterday and the day before
Scruffing my shoe leather and scraping the tough gnomic stuff
Of stones woven on a cold criss-cross so long ago?
Have I not sat there … watching the white foam up,
The hoarse white lines coming to curve, foam, slip back?
Didn’t I learn then how the call comes, “Hai, hai, hai”?...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Dolphin

...
When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body
caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,
the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . .
I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself--
to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, 
an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting 

my eyes have seen what my hand did....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert


Elegy For Jane

...under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, ...Read more of this...
by Roethke, Theodore

Fall of the Evening Star

...fall of wings as birds
complain against the gathering dark...

Exaggerate the green blood in grass;
the music of leaves scraping space;

Multiply the stillness by one sound;
by one syllable of your name...

And all that is little is soon giant,
all that is rare grows in common beauty

To rest with my mouth on your mouth
as somewhere a star falls

And the earth takes it softly, in natural love...
Exactly as we take each other...
and go to sleep......Read more of this...
by Patchen, Kenneth

Five Bells

...ing their fireballs wearily each to each, 
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard 
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal 
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells, 
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out. 
Five bells....Read more of this...
by Slessor, Kenneth

I In My Intricate Image

...
Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years' recorders. The circular world stands still.)

III

They suffer the undead water where the turtle nibbles,
Come unto sea-stuck towers, at the fibre scaling,
The flight of the carnal skull
And the cell-stepped thimble;
Suffer, my topsy-turvies, that a double angel
Sprout from the stony lockers like a tree on Aran.

Be by your on...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

Little Mack

...
He gathers in his telegrams, and Houser pays the bills;
What though there be a dearth of news, he has a happy knack
Of scraping up a lot of scoops,
Does little Mack.

And learning? Well he knows the folks of every tribe and age
That ever played a part upon this fleeting human stage;
His intellectual system's so extensive and so greedy
That, when it comes to records, he's a walkin' cyclopedy;
For having studied (and digested) all the books a-goin',
It stands to reason he must...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

Marksman Sam

...s skin,
And the lads all cleared int' t' neighbouring field,
And started to dig 'emselves in.

"Ooh, Sergeant! I hear a scraping noise,"
Said Sam, "What can it be?"
The noise that 'e 'eard were lieutenant Bird,
'Oo were climbing the nearest tree.

"Ooh, Sergeant!" said Sam, "I've 'it the bull!
What price my shooting now?"
Said the Sergeant, "A bull? Yer gormless fool,
Yon isn't a bull... it's a cow!"

At fifty yards 'is musket kicked,
And went off with a noise like a blizzard...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott

Peter Quince At The Clavier

...
61 Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings 
62 Of those white elders; but, escaping, 
63 Left only Death's ironic scraping. 
64 Now, in its immortality, it plays 
65 On the clear viol of her memory, 
66 And makes a constant sacrament of praise....Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

Reluctance

...ed.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go w...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Snow

...dn’t thank me?”

“When I told her ‘Gone,’
‘Well then,’ she said, and ‘Well then’—like a threat.
And then her voice came scraping slow: ‘Oh, you,
Why did you let him go’?”

“Asked why we let him?
You let me there. I’ll ask her why she let him.
She didn’t dare to speak when he was here.

Their number’s—twenty-one? The thing won’t work.
Someone’s receiver’s down. The handle stumbles.

The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
It’s theirs. She’s dropped it from her hand and g...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Ballad Of The Leather Medal

...-
Ugh! How it makes me shudder! The horrible thing occurred...

'Twas the day when frocks were frilly, and skirts were scraping the ground,
And the snowy flounces of Millie like sea foam round her swept;
Humbly adoring I watched her - when oh, my heart gave a bound!
Hoary and scarred and hideous, out from the tree...it...crept.

A whiskered, beady-eyes monster, grisly and grim of hue;
Savage and slinking and silent, born of the dark and dirt;
Dazed by the glare and the glitt...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Early Purges

...st saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout 
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remain...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus

The Everlasting Mercy

...ing one of them will dirt you, 
Dirt you with the stain of mean 
Cheating trade and going between, 
Pinching, starving, scraping, hoarding 
To see if Sue, the prentice lean, 
Dares to touch the margarine. 
Fawning, cringing, oiling boots, 
Raging in the crowd's pursuits, 
Flinging stones at all the Stephens, 
Standing firm with all the evens 
Making hell for all the odd, 
All the lonely ones of God, 
Those poor lonely ones who find 
Dogs more mild than human kind. 
For dogs,"...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

...a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

"Come in!"—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His ***** long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy ski...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Seed-At-Zero

...er on the town
With a star-flanked garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-tomorrow
Range on the sky-scraping place.

Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the star-flanked fields of space,
Thunders on the foreign town
With a sand-bagged garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-to-morrow
Range from the grave-groping place....Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

...ked with dried ****, seesawed along--
Not even mild contempt in their expressionless,
Pale eyes, & their brays like the scraping of metal.
Except for one village that had a kind
Of museum where I stopped to rest, & saw
A dead Scythian soldier under glass,
Turning to dust while holding a small sword
At attention forever, there wasn't much to look at.
Wind, leaves, goats, the higher passes
Locked in stone, the peasants with their fate
Embroidering a stillness into them,
And a s...Read more of this...
by Levis, Larry

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