Famous Shanks Poems by Famous Poets

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...e’s willyart glow’r,
 An’ how he star’d and stammer’d,
When, goavin, as if led wi’ branks,
An’ stumpin on his ploughman shanks,
 He in the parlour hammer’d.


I sidying shelter’d in a nook,
An’ at his Lordship steal’t a look,
 Like some portentous omen;
Except good sense and social glee,
An’ (what surpris’d me) modesty,
 I markèd nought uncommon.


I watch’d the symptoms o’ the Great,
The gentle pride, the lordly state,
 The arrogant assuming;
The fient a pride, nae pride had...Read more of this...

...temper-pin.


As o’er the moor they lightly foor,
 A burn was clear, a glen was green,
Upon the banks they eas’d their shanks,
 And aye she set the wheel between:
But Duncan swoor a haly aith,
 That Meg should be a bride the morn;
Then Meg took up her spinning-graith,
 And flang them a’ out o’er the burn.


We will big a wee, wee house,
 And we will live like king and queen;
Sae blythe and merry’s we will be,
 When ye set by the wheel at e’en.
A man may drink, and no be drun...Read more of this...

...Its stature seem’d lang Scotch ells twa,
The queerest shape that e’er I saw,
For fient a wame it had ava;
 And then its shanks,
They were as thin, as sharp an’ sma’
 As cheeks o’ branks.


“Guid-een,” quo’ I; “Friend! hae ye been mawin,
When ither folk are busy sawin!” 1
I seem’d to make a kind o’ stan’
 But naething spak;
At length, says I, “Friend! whare ye gaun?
 Will ye go back?”


It spak right howe,—“My name is Death,
But be na fley’d.”—Quoth I, “Guid faith,
Ye’re maybe...Read more of this...

...was play’d in mony lands,
An’ auld-light caddies bure sic hands,
That faith, the youngsters took the sands
 Wi’ nimble shanks;
Till lairds forbad, by strict commands,
 Sic bluidy pranks.


But new-light herds gat sic a cowe,
Folk thought them ruin’d stick-an-stowe;
Till now, amaist on ev’ry knowe
 Ye’ll find ane plac’d;
An’ some their new-light fair avow,
 Just quite barefac’d.


Nae doubt the auld-light flocks are bleatin;
Their zealous herds are vex’d an’ sweatin;
Mysel’, ...Read more of this...

...he wind it flutters free;
And so conducive to hygiene
 In its sublime simplicity.
No fool fly-buttons to adjust,--
 Wi' shanks and maybe buttocks bare;
Oh chiels, just take my word on trust,
 A bonny kilt's the only wear.

'Twill save a lot of siller too,
 (And here a canny Scotsman speaks),
For one good kilt will wear you through
 A half-a-dozen pairs of breeks.
And how it's healthy in the breeze!
 And how it swings with saucy tilt!
How lassies love athletic knees
 Below the...Read more of this...

...dge.

No ease from the eye
of the sharp-shinned hawk in the birdbook there,
with reddish-brown buffalo hair
on its shanks, one asectic talon

clasping the abstract imperial sky.
It says:
an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth.

No ease for the boy at the keyhole,
his telescope,
when the women's white bodies flashed
in the bathroom. Young, my eyes began to fail.

Nothing! No oil
for the eye, nothing to pour
on those waters or flames.
I am tired. Everyone's ...Read more of this...

...the quiet,
The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanks
Out in the dawn to the sea-breath.

Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,
Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west,
Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,
So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl
Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window....Read more of this...

...he wonders why on earth he went
Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.
Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;
Her dry shanks twitch at Paris' mumbled name.
So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;
And Paris slept on by Scamander side....Read more of this...

...eets the stifling fog rolls down,
Go, guzzle in a pub, or plod some bleak malarious grove,
But let me toast my shrunken shanks beside some Yankee stove.

The British people say they "don't believe in stoves, y' know;"
Perchance because we warmed 'em so completely years ago!
They talk of "drahfts" and "stuffiness" and "ill effects of heat,"
As they chatter in their barny rooms or shiver 'round the street;
With sunshine such a rarity, and stoves esteemed a sin,
What wonder they...Read more of this...

...
29 What word split up in clickering syllables 
30 And storming under multitudinous tones 
31 Was name for this short-shanks in all that brunt? 
32 Crispin was washed away by magnitude. 
33 The whole of life that still remained in him 
34 Dwindled to one sound strumming in his ear, 
35 Ubiquitous concussion, slap and sigh, 
36 Polyphony beyond his baton's thrust. 

37 Could Crispin stem verboseness in the sea, 
38 The old age of a watery realist, 
39 Triton, dissol...Read more of this...

...ey blunder into bed
World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion.

Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep,
These bone shanks will not wake immaculate
To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day : 
They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay....Read more of this...

...in:
"And why should we miss it? Between you and me
We've legs for tae run, and we've eyes for tae see.
You lend me your shanks and I'll lend you ma sicht,
And we'll baith hae a kyte-fu' o' haggis the nicht."

Oh the sky it wis dourlike and dreepin' a wee,
When Private McPhun gruppit Private McPhee.
Oh the glaur it wis fylin' and crieshin' the grun',
When Private McPhee guidit Private McPhun.
"Keep clear o' them corpses--they're maybe no deid!
Haud on! There's a big muckle cra...Read more of this...

...ped, lay bathing
In Sol's warm breath and shine as saving,
Which with her hands she chafes and stands
Rubbing her legs, shanks, thighs, and hands.
Her pretty toes, and fingers' ends
Nipped with this breath, she out extends
Unto the sun, in great desire
To warm her digits at that fire.
Doth hold her temples in this state
Where pulse doth beat, and head doth ache.
Doth turn, and stretch her body small,
Doth comb her velvet capital.
As if her little brain pan were
A volume of ch...Read more of this...

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