Famous Sleek Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Childs Christmas In Wales

...reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-fo...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan


A Song To David

...
The shoals upon the surface leap, 
 And love the glancing sun. 

 XXV 
Of beasts—the beaver plods his task, 
While the sleek tigers roll and bask, 
 Nor yet the shades arouse: 
Her cave the mining coney scoops;
Where o'er the mead the mountain stoops, 
 The kids exult and browse. 

 XXVI 
Of gems—their virtue and their price, 
Which hid in earth from man's device, 
 Their darts of lustre sheathe; 
The jasper of the master's stamp, 
The topaz blazing like a lamp, 
 Among the ...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Adolescence II

...ns against the door.
"Can you feel it yet?" they whisper.
I don't know what to say, again. They chuckle,

Patting their sleek bodies with their hands.
"Well, maybe next time." And they rise,
Glittering like pools of ink under moonlight,

And vanish. I clutch at the ragged holes
They leave behind, here at the edge of darkness.
Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue....Read more of this...
by Dove, Rita

Charmides

...wn to the mossy well.

Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat,
The grasshopper chirped idly from the tree,
In sleek and oily coat the water-rat
Breasting the little ripples manfully
Made for the wild-duck's nest, from bough to bough
Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the
slough.

On the faint wind floated the silky seeds
As the bright scythe swept through the waving grass,
The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds
And flecked with silver who...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Endymion: Book II

...s could fathom, or contentment reach:
And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,
Or ripe October's faded marigolds,
Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds--
Not hiding up an Apollonian curve
Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve
Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light;
But rather, giving them to the filled sight
Officiously. Sideway his face repos'd
On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd,
By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth
To slumbery pout; just as the ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Endymion: Book IV

...tiger and the leopard pants,
 With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads--with song and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
 Nor care for wind and tide.

"Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three d...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Heritage

...al eye should see;
What's your nakedness to me?
Here no leprous flowers rear
Fierce corollas in the air;
Here no bodies sleek and wet,
Dripping mingled rain and sweat,
Tread the savage measures of 
Jungle boys and girls in love.
What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything?The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set­­
Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,
Even what shy bird with mute
Wonder at her travail there,
Meekly labored in its hair.
One three cent...Read more of this...
by Cullen, Countee

Inferno (English)

...g rose, and stretched, and purred and leapt 
 So closely round my feet, that scarce I kept 
 The course I would. 
 That sleek and lovely thing, 
 The broadening light, the breath of morn and spring, 
 The sun, that with his stars in Aries lay, 
 As when Divine Love on Creation's day 
 First gave these fair things motion, all at one 
 Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none 
 When down the slope there came with lifted head 
 And back-blown mane and caverned mouth and ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Love Sonnet XI

...Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunti...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...rd disguised. 
He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, 
But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed 
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, 
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod. 
His gentle dumb expression turned at length 
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad 
Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue 
Organick, or impulse of vocal air, 
His fraudulent temptation thus began. 
Wonder not, sovran Mistress, if perhaps 
Thou canst, who art sole wonder! much...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Poem On His Birthday

...e in their turnturtle dust,
 The rippled seals streak down
To kill and their own tide daubing blood
 Slides good in the sleek mouth.

 In a cavernous, swung
Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells.
 Thirty-five bells sing struck
On skull and scar where his loves lie wrecked,
 Steered by the falling stars.
And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage
 Terror will rage apart
Before chains break to a hammer flame
 And love unbolts the dark

 And freely he goes lost
In the unknown, famo...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

The Eve Of Revolution

...d melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;
The hands are mighty, were the head not blind.
Priest is the staff of king,
And chains and clouds one thing,
And fettered flesh with devastated mind.
Open thy soul t...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

The Flight Of The Duchess

...Duke would scarcely vouchsafe
A word in reply; and in vain she felt
With twitching fingers at her belt
For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,
Ready to ptlt what he gave in her pouch safe,---
Till, either to quicken his apprehension,
Or possibly with an after-intention,
She was come, she said, to pay her duty
To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.
No sooner had she named his lady,
Than a shine lit up the face so shady,
And its smirk returned with a novel meaning---
For it ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Last Tournament

...ting, in he past, and sank 
Down on a drift of foliage random-blown; 
But could not rest for musing how to smoothe 
And sleek his marriage over to the Queen. 
Perchance in lone Tintagil far from all 
The tonguesters of the court she had not heard. 
But then what folly had sent him overseas 
After she left him lonely here? a name? 
Was it the name of one in Brittany, 
Isolt, the daughter of the King? `Isolt 
Of the white hands' they called her: the sweet name 
Allured him firs...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Lovers of the Poor

...!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. T...Read more of this...
by Brooks, Gwendolyn

The Princess (part 2)

...d 'Now,' she cried, 
'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall! 
Our statues!--not of those that men desire, 
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode, 
Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she 
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 
The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 
The Carian Artemisia strong in war, 
The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, 
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows 
Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Talking Oak

...od old Summers, year by year 
Made ripe in Sumner-chace: 

"Old Summers, when the monk was fat, 
And, issuing shorn and sleek, 
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat 
The girls upon the cheek, 

"Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence, 
And number'd bead, and shrift, 
Bluff Harry broke into the spence 
And turn'd the cowls adrift: 

"And I have seen some score of those 
Fresh faces that would thrive 
When his man-minded offset rose 
To chase the deer at five; 

"And all that from...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Wife of Baths Tale

...;
For whoso woulde singe the catte's skin
Then will the catte well dwell in her inn;* *house
And if the catte's skin be sleek and gay,
She will not dwell in house half a day,
But forth she will, ere any day be daw'd,
To shew her skin, and go a caterwaw'd.* *caterwauling
This is to say, if I be gay, sir shrew,
I will run out, my borel* for to shew. *apparel, fine clothes
Sir olde fool, what helpeth thee to spyen?
Though thou pray Argus with his hundred eyen
To be my wardecorps...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

Travelling Again

...s it again. It seems the hills and rivers have been waiting, The flowers and willows all are selfless now. The field is sleek and vivid, thin mist shines, On soft sand, the sunlight's colour shows it's late. All the traveller's sorrow fades away, What better place to rest than this?...Read more of this...
by Fu, Du

Whispers of Immortality

...couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm....Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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