Famous Slim Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Tourist

by Robert William Service
 To Italy a random tour
I took to crown my education,
Returning relatively poor
In purse yet rich in conversation.
Old Rome put up a jolly show,
But I am not a classic purist,
Preferring to Mike Angelo
The slim stems of a lady tourist.

Venice, they say, was built on piles;
I used to muse, how did they do it?
I tramped the narrow streets for miles,
Religiously I...Read more of this...

The Road and the End

by Carl Sandburg
 I SHALL foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel...Read more of this...

Starlight

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Stars await, serene and white,
     The unarisen moon;
   Oh, come and stay with me to-night,
     Beside the salt Lagoon!

   My hut is small, but as you lie,
     You see the lighted shore,
   And hear the rippling water sigh
...Read more of this...

Farewell To Verse

by Robert William Service
 In youth when oft my muse was dumb,
 My fancy nighly dead,
To make my inspiration come
 I stood upon my head;
And thus I let the blood down flow
 Into my cerebellum,
And published every Spring or so
 Slim tomes in vellum.

Alas! I am rheumatic now,
 Grey is my crown;
I can no more with brooding brow
 Stand upside-down.
I fear I might...Read more of this...

From his slim Palace in the Dust

by Emily Dickinson
 From his slim Palace in the Dust
He relegates the Realm,
More loyal for the exody
That has befallen him....Read more of this...

Garden-Spot

by Dorothy Parker
 God's acre was her garden-spot, she said;
She sat there often, of the Summer days,
Little and slim and sweet, among the dead,
Her hair a fable in the leveled rays.

She turned the fading wreath, the rusted cross,
And knelt to coax about the wiry stem.
I see her gentle fingers on the moss
Now it is anguish to remember them.

And once I saw her...Read more of this...

Mystery

by D. H. Lawrence
 Now I am all
One bowl of kisses,
Such as the tall
Slim votaresses
Of Egypt filled
For a God's excesses.

I lift to you
My bowl of kisses,
And through the temple's
Blue recesses
Cry out to you
In wild caresses.

And to my lips'
Bright crimson rim
The passion slips,
And down my slim
White body drips
The shining hymn.

And still before
The altar I
Exult the bowl
Brimful, and cry
To you to stoop
And drink, Most High.

Oh...Read more of this...

The Bench-Legged Fyce

by Eugene Field
 Speakin' of dorgs, my bench-legged fyce
Hed most o' the virtues, an' nary a vice.
Some folks called him Sooner, a name that arose
From his predisposition to chronic repose;
But, rouse his ambition, he couldn't be beat -
Yer bet yer he got thar on all his four feet!

Mos' dorgs hez some forte - like huntin' an' such,
But the sports o' the field...Read more of this...

A Portrait in Georgia

by Jean Toomer
 Hair-braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes-fagots,
Lips-old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath-the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame....Read more of this...

The Harlots House

by Oscar Wilde
 We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled...Read more of this...

Sunshine

by Robert William Service
 I

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.
Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:
"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."

I have not slept for many, many days.
I close my eyes with weariness -- that's all.
I still have...Read more of this...

Cat

by J R R Tolkien
 The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
leaps...Read more of this...

Two Neighbors

by Carl Sandburg
 FACES of two eternities keep looking at me.
One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff
wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow
and remember only the voices and songs,
the stories, newspapers and fights of today.
One is Louis Cornaro and a slim trick
of slow, short meals across slow, short years,
letting Death open the door only in slow, short inches.
I have a neighbor who...Read more of this...

Yasmini

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   At night, when Passion's ebbing tide
     Left bare the Sands of Truth,
   Yasmini, resting by my side,
     Spoke softly of her youth.

   "And one" she said "was tall and slim,
     Two crimson rose leaves made his mouth,
   And I...Read more of this...

A Girls Garden

by Robert Frost
 A NEIGHBOR of mine in the village
 Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
 A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
 To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
 And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
 He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off...Read more of this...

Sonnet 104 - A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece

by John Berryman
 A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece,
Diminutive, but room enough . . like clay
To finger eager on some torrid day . .
Who'd throw her black hair back, and hang, and tease.
Never, not once in all one's horny lease
To'have had a demi-lay, a pretty, gay,
Snug, slim and supple-breasted girl for play . .
She bats her big, warm eyes, and...Read more of this...

Love in Twilight

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 There is darkness behind the light -- and the pale light drips 
Cold on vague shapes and figures, that, half-seen loom 
Like the carven prows of proud, far-triumphing ships -- 
And the firelight wavers and changes about the room, 

As the three logs crackle and burn with a small still sound; 
Half-blotting with dark the deeper dark of her...Read more of this...

Dream Girl

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your...Read more of this...

Sampan Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   You will be mine; those lightly dancing feet,
     Falling as softly on the careless street
   As the wind-loosened petals of a flower,
     Will bring you here, at the Appointed Hour.

   And all the Temple's little links and laws
     Will not for...Read more of this...

The Potatoes Dance

by Vachel Lindsay
 (A Poem Game.)


I

"Down cellar," said the cricket,
"Down cellar," said the cricket,
"Down cellar," said the cricket,
"I saw a ball last night,
In honor of a lady,
In honor of a lady,
In honor of a lady,
Whose wings were pearly-white.
The breath of bitter weather,
The breath of bitter weather,
The breath of bitter weather,
Had smashed the cellar pane.
We entertained a drift of leaves,
We entertained a drift...Read more of this...

Disabled

by Wilfred Owen
 He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

The Shearers Dream

by Henry Lawson
 O I dreamt I shore in a shearing shed and it was a dream of joy
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime the prettiest ever seen
They had flaxen hair they had coal black hair and every shade between

There was short plump girls there was tall...Read more of this...

My Masterpiece

by Robert William Service
 It's slim and trim and bound in blue;
Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold;
Its words are simple, stalwart too;
Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold.
Its pages scintillate with wit;
Its pathos clutches at my throat:
Oh, how I love each line of it!
That Little Book I Never Wrote.

In dreams I see it praised and prized
By all, from plowman unto peer;
It's...Read more of this...

The Revenge Of Hamish

by Sidney Lanier
 It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe;
In the print of her velvet flank on the...Read more of this...

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