Famous Scythes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Visitor

by Carolyn Forche
 In Spanish he whispers there is no time left. 
It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat,
the ache of some field song in Salvador.
The wind along the prison, cautious
as Francisco's hands on the inside, touching 
the walls as he walks, it is his wife's breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It...Read more of this...

The Unconquered Dead

by John McCrae
 ". . . defeated, with great loss."



Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the...Read more of this...

Requiem for the Croppies

by Seamus Heaney
 The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day: 
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry, 
Then retreat through hedges...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

Reapers

by Jean Toomer
 Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade....Read more of this...

Egypt Tobago

by Derek Walcott
 There is a shattered palm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helm-
et of a dead warrior.

Numb Antony, in the torpor
stretching her inert
sex near him like a sleeping cat,
knows his heart is the real desert.

Over the dunes
of her heaving,
to his heart's drumming
fades the mirage of the legions,

across love-tousled sheets,
the triremes fading.
Ar the carved door of her temple
a fly wrings its...Read more of this...

The Tree of Laughing Bells

by Vachel Lindsay
 [A Poem for Aviators]


How the Wings Were Made

From many morning-glories 
That in an hour will fade, 
From many pansy buds 
Gathered in the shade, 
From lily of the valley 
And dandelion buds, 
From fiery poppy-buds 
Are the Wings of the Morning made. 


The Indian Girl Who Made Them

These, the Wings of the Morning, 
An Indian Maiden wove, 
Intertwining subtilely...Read more of this...

Song For The Last Act

by Louise Bogan
 Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I...Read more of this...

Tis Eve On The Hillside

by Mihai Eminescu

'Tis eve on the hillside, the bagpipes are distantly wailing, 
Flocks going homewards, and stars o'er the firmament sailing, 
Sound of the bubbling spring sorrow's legend narrating, 
And beneath a tall willow for me, dear one, you are waiting. 

The wandering moon up the heavens her journey is wending, 
Big-eyed you watch through the boughs her gold lantern ascending, ...Read more of this...

There was an old person of Blythe

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of Blythe,Who cut up his meat with a scythe;When they said, "Well! I never!" he cried, "Scythes for ever!"That lively old person of Blythe. ...Read more of this...

The Pasha And The Dervish

by Victor Hugo
 ("Un jour Ali passait.") 
 
 {XIII, Nov. 8, 1828.} 


 Ali came riding by—the highest head 
 Bent to the dust, o'ercharged with dread, 
 Whilst "God be praised!" all cried; 
 But through the throng one dervish pressed, 
 Aged and bent, who dared arrest 
 The pasha in his pride. 
 
 "Ali Tepelini, light of...Read more of this...

Harvest Song

by Jean Toomer
 I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. 
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. 
And I hunger. 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. 
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. 
I hunger. 

My eyes are caked with...Read more of this...

Evening Hawk

by Robert Penn Warren
 From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion 
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk...Read more of this...

Prisoners

by Yusef Komunyakaa
 Usually at the helipad
I see them stumble-dance
across the hot asphalt
with crokersacks over their heads,
moving toward the interrogation huts,
thin-framed as box kites
of sticks & black silk
anticipating a hard wind
that'll tug & snatch them
out into space. I think
some must be laughing
under their dust-colored hoods,
knowing rockets are aimed
at Chu Lai—that the water's
evaporating & soon the nail
will make contact with metal.
How can anyone...Read more of this...

The Hayloft

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Through all the pleasant meadow-side 
The grass grew shoulder-high, 
Till the shining scythes went far and wide 
And cut it down to dry. 

Those green and sweetly smelling crops 
They led the waggons home; 
And they piled them here in mountain tops 
For mountaineers to roam. 

Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail, 
Mount Eagle and Mount High;-- 
The mice...Read more of this...

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