Famous Speck Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Cloud in Trousers

...se every word 
gives a new birthday to the soul, 
gives a name-day to the body, 
I adjure you: 
the minutest living speck 
is worth more than what I¡¯ll do or did! 

Listen! 
It is today¡¯s brazen-lipped Zarathustra 
who preaches, 
dashing about and groaning! 
We, 
our face like a crumpled sheet, 
our lips pendulant like a chandelier; 
we, 
the convicts of the City Leprous, 
where gold and filth spawned leper¡¯s sores, 
we are purer than the azure of Venice, ...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir


A Song To David

...from dismay, 
 And bless the sight from dearth. 

 LXII 
The pheasant shows his pompous neck; 
The ermine, jealous of a speck, 
 With fear eldues offence: 
The sable, with his glossy pride, 
For ADORATION is describ'd, 
 Where frosts the waves condense. 

 LXIII 
The cheerful holly, pensive yew, 
And holy thorn, their trim renew; 
 The squirrel hoards his nuts; 
All creatures batten o'er their stores, 
And careful nature all her doors 
 For ADORATION shuts. 

 LXIV 
For ADORA...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude

...ll,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
Images all the woven boughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck 
Of azure sky darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star,
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

Hither...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Avons Harvest

...ravagances 
That I should reckon slight compared with his 
Offence of being. Distance would have made him 
A moving fly-speck on the map of life,— 
But he would not be distant, though his flesh
And bone might have been climbing Fujiyama 
Or Chimborazo—with me there in London, 
Or sitting here. My doom it was to see him, 
Be where I might. That was ten years ago; 
And having waited season after season
His always imminent evil recrudescence, 
And all for nothing, I was waiting ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

By The Fire-Side

...thread of water single and slim,
Through the ravage some torrent brings!

IX.

Does it feed the little lake below?
That speck of white just on its marge
Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,
How sharp the silver spear-heads charge
When Alp meets heaven in snow!

X.

On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By boulder-stones where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.

XI.

Oh the sen...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


Death Wants More Death

...e spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a dirty speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above his head
and looking
looking for the enemy 
and somewhat valiant,
dying without apparent pain
simply crawling backward
piece by piece
leaving no...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Having it Out with Melancholy

...ssive pain in sleep's 
frail wicker coracle.



5ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT


Once, in my early thirties, I saw 
that I was a speck of light in the great 
river of light that undulates through time.


I was floating with the whole 
human family. We were all colors -- those 
who are living now, those who have died, 
those who are not yet born. For a few


moments I floated, completely calm, 
and I no longer hated having to exist.


Like a crow who smells hot blood 
you came flying t...Read more of this...
by Kenyon, Jane

Humanitad

...ings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
The sappy billets on the waning fire,
And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare
His children at their play, and yet...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur (excerpt)

...d clomb
Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year....Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

In The Willow Shade

...wane and is not vain,
Love only outlives death.

A singing lark rose toward the sky,
Circling he sang amain;
He sang, a speck scarce visible sky-high,
And then he sank again.

A second like a sunlit spark
Flashed singing up his track;
But never overtook that foremost lark,
And songless fluttered back.

A hovering melody of birds
Haunted the air above;
They clearly sang contentment without words,
And youth and joy and love.

O silvery weeping willow tree
With all leaves shiver...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina

Mazeppa

...t,
And onward, onward, onward, seems,
Like precipices in our dreams, 
To stretch beyond the sight;
And here and there a speck of white,
Or scattered spot of dusky green, 
In masses broke into the light, 
As rose the moon upon my right:
But nought distinctly seen
In the dim waste would indicate
The omen of a cottage gate;
No twinkling taper from afar
Stood like a hospitable star;'
Not even an ignis-fatuus rose
To make him merry with my woes:
That very cheat had cheered me then...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat

...ittle den
With your name written up on the door.
And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet
And there's not a speck of dust on the floor.
There is every sort of light-you can make it dark or bright;
There's a handle that you turn to make a breeze.
There's a funny little basin you're supposed to wash your face in
And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze.
Then the guard looks in politely and will ask you very brightly
"Do you like your morning tea weak or strong?"...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Alien Boy

..., as they flew, dimming the angry main
With shadows horrible ! Still, the small boat
Struggled amid the waves, a sombre speck
Upon the wide domain of howling Death!
Saint HUBERT sigh'd ! while HENRY'S speaking eye
Alternately the stormy scene survey'd
And his low hovel's safety. So past on
The hour of midnight,--and, since first they knew
The solitary scene, no midnight hour
E'er seem'd so long and weary.
While they stood,
Their hands fast link'd together, and their eyes
Fix'...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry

...old it for a song
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along;
That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes, and not a speck in sight,
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right?
Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze?
But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof--he knew the way to lose.

'Twas in the fall of nineteen four--leap-year I've heard them say--
When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay.
And lo! as if to make amend...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The General Prologue

...was set full much her lest*. *pleasure
Her over-lippe wiped she so clean,
That in her cup there was no farthing* seen *speck
Of grease, when she drunken had her draught;
Full seemely after her meat she raught*: *reached out her hand
And *sickerly she was of great disport*, *surely she was of a lively
And full pleasant, and amiable of port, disposition*
And *pained her to counterfeite cheer *took pains to assume
Of court,* and be estately of mannere, a courtly disposition*
An...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Giaour

...ed o’er the living stream:
I gazed, till vanishing from view,
Like lessening pebble it withdrew;
Still less and less, a speck of white
That gemmed the tide, then mocked the sight;
And all its hidden secrets sleep,
Known but to Genii of the deep,
Which, trembling in their coral caves,
They dare not whisper to the waves.


As rising on its purple wing
The insect-queen of eastern spring,
O’er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near,
And leads him on from flowe...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

...e!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.

At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

The Scapegoat

...ld!" 
Alas! the whole clan, they raced and they ran, 
And Abraham proved him an "even time" man, 
But the goat -- now a speck they could scarce keep their eyes on -- 
Stretched out in his stride in a style most surprisin' 
And vanished ere long o'er the distant horizon. 

Away in the camp the bill-sticker's tramp 
Is heard as he wanders with paste, brush, and notices, 
And paling and wall he plasters them all, 
"I wonder how's things gettin' on with the goat," he says, 
The p...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The Star-Apple Kingdom

...aves of the album nor the lime groves; 
blew Nanny floating back in white from a feather 
to a chimerical, chemical pin speck that shrank 
the drinking Herefords to brown porcelain cows 
on a mantelpiece, Trelawny trembling with dusk, 
the scorched pastures of the old benign Custos; blew 
far the decent servants and the lifelong cook, 
and shriveled to a shard that ancient pastoral 
of dusk in a gilt-edged frame now catching the evening sun 
in Jamaica, making both epochs one...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

The Vision of Judgment

...e flashing of its hinges 
Flung over space an universal hue 
Of many-colour'd flame, until its tinges 
Reach'd even our speck of earth, and made a new 
Aurora borealis spread its fringes 
O'er the North Pole; the same seen, when ice-bound, 
By Captain Parry's crew, in 'Melville's Sound.' 

XXVIII 

And from the gate thrown open issued beaming 
A beautiful and mighty Thing of Light, 
Radiant with glory, like a banner streaming 
Victorious from some world-o'erthrowing fight: 
M...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

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