Famous Sharply Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Scottish Engineer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 With eyes that searched in the dark, 
Peering along the line, 
Stood the grim Scotsman, Hector Clark, 
Driver of "Forty-nine". 
And the veldt-fire flamed on the hills ahead, 
Like a blood-red beacon sign. 

There was word of a fight to the north, 
And a column too hardly pressed, 
So they started the Highlanders forth. 
Heedless of food or rest....Read more of this...

The Fear

by Robert Frost
 A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
A horse's hoof pawed once the hollow floor,
And the back of the gig they stood beside
Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel,
The woman spoke out sharply, "Whoa, stand...Read more of this...

The Haystack in the Floods

by William Morris
 Had she come all the way for this,
To part at last without a kiss?
Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain
That her own eyes might see him slain
Beside the haystack in the floods?

Along the dripping leafless woods,
The stirrup touching either shoe,
She rode astride as troopers do;
With kirtle kilted to her knee,
To which the mud splash'd wretchedly;
And the wet dripp'd...Read more of this...

Peace after a Storm

by William Cowper
 When darkness long has veil'd my mind,
And smiling day once more appears,
Then, my Redeemer, then I find
The folly of my doubts and fears.

Straight I upbraid my wandering heart,
And blush that I should ever be
Thus prone to act so base a part,
Or harbour one hard thought of Thee!

Oh! let me then at length be taught
What I am still so slow...Read more of this...

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

by Wallace Stevens
I 
Among twenty snowy mountains, 
The only moving thing 
Was the eye of the blackbird. 

II 
I was of three minds, 
Like a tree 
In which there are three blackbirds. 

III 
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. 
It was a small part of the pantomime. 

IV 
A man and a woman 
Are one. 
A man and a woman and...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

Love Song

by Dorothy Parker
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled—
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world,—
And I wish I’d never met him.

My love, he’s mad, and my...Read more of this...

A Bucolic Betwixt Two;lacon And Thyrsis

by Robert Herrick
 LACON. For a kiss or two, confess,
What doth cause this pensiveness,
Thou most lovely neat-herdess?
Why so lonely on the hill?
Why thy pipe by thee so still,
That erewhile was heard so shrill?
Tell me, do thy kine now fail
To fulfil the milking-pail?
Say, what is't that thou dost ail?

THYR. None of these; but out, alas!
A mischance is come to pass,
And I'll tell thee...Read more of this...

Why I Went To The Foot

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Was ever a maiden so worried?
I’ll admit I am partial to Jim,
For Jimmie has promised to wed me
When I’m old enough to wed him.

But then I love teacher, too, dearly,
She’s always so lovely to me,
And she’s pretty and kind and sweet-tempered,
And gentle as gentle can be.

I wouldn’t for worlds hurt Jim’s feelings,
For he never would like me again—
But there...Read more of this...

The Fruit Shop

by Amy Lowell
 Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into
As she picked her dainty passage through
The dusty street. "Ah, Mademoiselle,
A dirty pathway, we need rain,
My poor fruits suffer, and the shell
Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain
Here in the sun it has shrunk again.
The baker down...Read more of this...

Silence

by Robert William Service
 When I was cub reporter I
Would interview the Great,
And sometimes they would make reply,
And sometimes hesitate;
But often they would sharply say,
With bushy eyebrows bent:
"Young man, your answer for to-day
 Is - No Comment."

Nigh sixty years have called the tune,
And silver is my pate;
No longer do I importune
Important men of state;
But time has made me wise, and so
When button-holed I...Read more of this...

Felo de Se

by Amy Levy
 With Apologies to Mr. Swinburne.


For repose I have sighed and have struggled ; have sigh'd and have struggled in vain;
I am held in the Circle of Being and caught in the Circle of Pain.
I was wan and weary with life ; my sick soul yearned for death;
I was weary of women and war and the sea and the wind's...Read more of this...

Sudden Things

by Donald Hall
 A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The house was huge, full of children and old people. The lion was loose. Either because of the wind, or by malevolent human energy, which is...Read more of this...

The Highwayman

by Alfred Noyes
 PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
 And the highwayman came riding--
 Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inndoor.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

An Improvisation For Angular Momentum

by A R Ammons
 Walking is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out,
motions profound,
alive, musical!

Perhaps the death mother like the birth mother
does not desert us but comes...Read more of this...

The Sick Stockrider

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. 
Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide 
Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, 
All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. 
The dawn at "Moorabinda" was a mist rack dull and dense, 
The sun-rise was a...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

The Boy On The Barricade

by Victor Hugo
 ("Sur une barricade.") 
 
 {June, 1871.} 


 Like Casabianca on the devastated deck, 
 In years yet younger, but the selfsame core. 
 Beside the battered barricado's restless wreck, 
 A lad stood splashed with gouts of guilty gore, 
 But gemmed with purest blood of patriot more. 
 
 Upon his fragile form the troopers' bloody grip...Read more of this...

from crossing the line

by Rg Gregory
 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as...Read more of this...

Barclay Of Ury

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Up the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.

Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.

Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets...Read more of this...

The Fire At Rosss Farm

by Henry Lawson
 The squatter saw his pastures wide 
Decrease, as one by one 
The farmers moving to the west 
Selected on his run; 
Selectors took the water up 
And all the black soil round; 
The best grass-land the squatter had 
Was spoilt by Ross's Ground. 

Now many schemes to shift old Ross 
Had racked the squatter's brains, 
But Sandy had the...Read more of this...

A Voice from the Town

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I thought, in the days of the droving, 
Of steps I might hope to retrace, 
To be done with the bush and the roving 
And settle once more in my place. 
With a heart that was well nigh to breaking, 
In the long, lonely rides on the plain, 
I thought of the pleasure of taking 
The hand of a...Read more of this...

Piano Practice

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 The summer hums. The afternoon fatigues;
she breathed her crisp white dress distractedly
and put into it that sharply etched etude
her impatience for a reality

that could come: tomorrow, this evening--,
that perhaps was there, was just kept hidden;
and at the window, tall and having everything,
she suddenly could feel the pampered park.

With that she broke off; gazed outside, locked
her hands together; wished for...Read more of this...

Modern Love XLV: It Is the Season

by George Meredith
 It is the season of the sweet wild rose, 
My Lady's emblem in the heart of me! 
So golden-crownèd shines she gloriously, 
And with that softest dream of blood she glows: 
Mild as an evening heaven round Hesper bright! 
I pluck the flower, and smell it, and revive 
The time when in her eyes I stood alive. 
I seem...Read more of this...

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