Famous Shapely Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shapely poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shapely poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shapely poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...thee,
Ance in a day.
Thou ance was i’ the foremost rank,
A filly buirdly, steeve, an’ swank;
An’ set weel down a shapely shank,
As e’er tread yird;
An’ could hae flown out-owre a stank,
Like ony bird.
It’s now some nine-an’-twenty year,
Sin’ thou was my guid-father’s mear;
He gied me thee, o’ tocher clear,
An’ fifty mark;
Tho’ it was sma’, ’twas weel-won gear,
An’ thou was stark.
When first I gaed to woo my Jenny,
Ye then was trotting wi’ your minnie:
T...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...She might, so noble from head
To great shapely knees
The long flowing line,
Have walked to the altar
Through the holy images
At pallas Athene's Side,
Or been fit spoil for a centaur
Drunk with the unmixed wine....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...;
Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and
factories;
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door-lintels—the
mallet,
the
tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb,
Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and
the
fire
under the kettle,
The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the mould of
the
moulder, the working-knife of the b...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...r space.
"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."
First thought, best thought.
Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid.
Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.
Consonants around vowels make sense.
Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.
Subject is known by what she sees.
Others can measure their vision by what we see.
Candor ends p...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...>
I wish it were spring
cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire,
and kindling shapely little conflagrations
curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.
I wish that spring
would start the thundering traffic of feet
new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.
I wish it were spring, thundering
delicate, tender spring.
I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corr...Read more of this...
by
Kenyon, Jane
...host
does not reside in the play of light
on cutlery!
A Woman makes lace,
with a moist-eyed spaniel lying
at her small shapely feet.
Even the maid with the chamber pot
is here; the naughty, red-cheeked girl. . . .
And the merchant's wife, still
in her yellow dressing gown
at noon, dips her quill into India ink
with an air of cautious pleasure....Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...act likeness, the simplicity of a child,
And that proud look as though she had gazed into the
burning sun,
And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray.
I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will
be done:
I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day....Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...our body quailed at my stroke,
And my courage failed to give you the last
Fine torture you did deserve.
You are shapely, you are adorned,
But opaque and dull in the flesh,
Who, had I but pierced with the thorned
Fire-threshing anguish, were fused and cast
In a lovely illumined mesh.
Like a painted window: the best
Suffering burnt through your flesh,
Undrossed it and left it blest
With a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: but now
Who shall take you afresh? ...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...r me
Is dreams of pleasure fled!
Our boys ain't what they used to be
When Willie wet the bed.
Had I my choice, no shapely dame
Should share my couch with me,
No amorous jade of tarnished fame,
Nor wench of high degree;
But I would choose and choose again
The little curly head,
Who cuddled close beside me when
He used to wet the bed....Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...um.
I melted it, and made a mould,
And poured it in the opening,
And worked it, when the cast was cold,
Into a shapely ring.
And when my ring was smooth and bright,
Holding it on a rounded stick,
For seal, I bade a Turco write
Maktoob in Arabic.
Maktoob! "'Tis written!" . . . So they think,
These children of the desert, who
From its immense expanses drink
Some of its grandeur too.
Within the book of Destiny,
Whose leaves are time,...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...h with eye agleam
Put off his robe and dance with glee.
The maid her crutches threw away;
Her withered limbs seemed shapely fine;
And there the two with radiance gay
Divinely danced in soft entwine:
While the blind man, his sight restored,
Guitared the Glory of the Lord....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ttered so hideously.
I can't believe that it's mine.
My body was white and sweet,
Flawless and fair and fine,
Shapely from head to feet;
Oh no, I can never be
The thing of horror I see
Under the rifle fire,
Trussed on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
Of night and of death I dream;
Night that will bring me peace,
Coolness and starry gleam,
Stillness and death's release:
Ages and ages have passed, --
Lo! it is night at last.
Night! ...Read more of this...
by
Abercrombie, Lascelles
...made
And with such colour played. —
And only yesterday it was I saw
Veil'd in streamers of grey wavering smoke
My shapely Malvern Hills.
That was the last hail-storm to trouble spring:
He came in gloomy haste,
Pusht in front of the white clouds quietly basking,
In such a hurry he tript against the hills
And stumbling forward spilt over his shoulders
All his black baggage held,
Streaking downpour of hail.
Then fled dismayed, and the sun in golden glee
And the ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan!
Head from the mother’s bowels drawn!
Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean’d, and to lean on.
Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes—masculine trades, sights and sounds;
Long var...Read more of this...
by
McHugh, Heather
...dscapes I had known too well-
the picnic table and the hoe, the tricycle, the stubborn
shrub-the homegrown syllables
of shapely living-all
lay sanded and camelled by foreign snow......Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...oad, wing?
A frog's hand on a lily pad?
Bees in a cobweb?—no such thing!
A girl's head was the thing he had,
Small, shapely, richly crowned with hair,
Drowsy, with eyes half closed, as they
Looked through you and beyond you, clear
To something farther than Cathay:
Saw you, yet counted you not worth
The seeing, thinking all the while
How, flower-like, beauty comes to birth;
And thinking this, began to smile.
Medusa! For she could not see
The world she turned t...Read more of this...
by
Morris, William
...hings had been maimed;
There stood great Jove, lacking his head of might;
Here was the archer, swift Apollo, lamed;
The shapely limbs of Venus hid from sight
By weeds and shards; Diana's ankles light
Bound with the cable of some coasting ship;
And rusty nails through Helen's maddening lip.
Therefrom unto the chambers did he pass,
And found them fair still, midst of their decay,
Though in them now no sign of man there was,
And everything but stone had passed away
That mad...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...them a fair burgess,
To sitten in a guild-hall, on the dais.
Evereach, for the wisdom that he can*, *knew
Was shapely* for to be an alderman. *fitted
For chattels hadde they enough and rent,
And eke their wives would it well assent:
And elles certain they had been to blame.
It is full fair to be y-clep'd madame,
And for to go to vigils all before,
And have a mantle royally y-bore.
A COOK they hadde with them for the nones*, *occasion
To boil the chi...Read more of this...
by
Abercrombie, Lascelles
...de
And with such colour played. —
And only yesterday it was I saw
Veil'd in streamers of grey wavering smoke
My shapely Malvern Hills.
That was the last hail-storm to trouble spring:
He came in gloomy haste,
Pusht in front of the white clouds quietly basking,
In such a hurry he tript against the hills
And stumbling forward spilt over his shoulders
All his black baggage held,
Streaking downpour of hail.
Then fled dismayed, and the sun in golden glee
An...Read more of this...
by
Cavafy, Constantine P
...erse is now recited by young men.
His visions come before their lively eyes.
Their healthy sensual minds,
their shapely taut bodies
stir to his perception of the beautiful.
Trans. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard...Read more of this...
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