Famous Specks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Zenas Witt

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.
And I couldn't remember the books I read,
Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.
And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,
And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,
And when I stood up to recite I'd forget
Everything that I had studied.
Well,...Read more of this...

A Terre

by Wilfred Owen
 (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)


Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me -- brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

I tried to peg out soldierly -- no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my...Read more of this...

The Errand

by Anne Sexton
 I've been going right on, page by page,
since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage,
two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out,
double-crossing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.

But then I've told my readers what I think
and scrubbed out the remainder with my shrink,
have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
have pasted...Read more of this...

Tim Turpin

by Thomas Hood
 Tim Turpin he was gravel-blind,
And ne'er had seen the skies :
For Nature, when his head was made,
Forgot to dot his eyes. 

So, like a Christmas pedagogue,
Poor Tim was forced to do -
Look out for pupils; for he had
A vacancy for two.

There's some have specs to help their sight
Of objects dim and small : 
But Tim had specks within his...Read more of this...

On Her 'Rooftop-Terrace'

by Majeed Amjad
Here she comes, onto her “rooftop-terrace,” smiling

With a muted message in her fleeting glance !

 

This hazy air tinged with dusky reflections,

This desolate path … deserted lane … quiet evening,

The low wall of a house at the street corner,

Upon which is gently laid

A diffuse and silent spell !

 

This rooftop-terrace … familiar

With the sound of someone’s soft step,

This secluded place...Read more of this...

A Poem

by Majeed Amjad
Sons, my native land has sons
born on soil
barren and rocky and lone
for ages lone
across the gaping wilderness tear
ruthless winds and torrents of pain
sweep in epochs. sweep them out.

Sons of mountains
radiant petals of jasmine gay
specks of time-less age-less rocks
elegant, fair and tender moulds
lumps of leathern coarsened hearts
damned by sun and wind and time
dashed from tops. they seek a home
lost in dust...Read more of this...

Death Of A Naturalist

by Seamus Heaney
 All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade...Read more of this...

One Viceroy Resigns

by Rudyard Kipling
 So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You...Read more of this...

Florida

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters, 
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, 
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. 
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every...Read more of this...

Meditation under Stars

by George Meredith
 What links are ours with orbs that are
So resolutely far:
The solitary asks, and they
Give radiance as from a shield:
Still at the death of day,
The seen, the unrevealed.
Implacable they shine
To us who would of Life obtain
An answer for the life we strain
To nourish with one sign.
Nor can imagination throw
The penetrative shaft: we pass
The breath of thought, who would divine
If haply...Read more of this...

There was a Child went Forth

by Walt Whitman
 THERE was a child went forth every day; 
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became; 
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many
 years, or
 stretching cycles of years. 

The early lilacs became part of this child, 
And grass, and white and red...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

Angels Of The Love Affair

by Anne Sexton
 "Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that...Read more of this...

The Wizard Way

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]


Velvet soft the night-star glowed 
Over the untrodden road, 
Through the giant glades of yew 
Where its ray fell light as dew 
Lighting up the shimmering veil 
Maiden pure and aery frail 
That the spiders wove to hide 
Blushes of the sylvan bride 
Earth, that trembled with delight 
At the male caress of Night. 

Velvet...Read more of this...

To interrupt His Yellow Plan

by Emily Dickinson
 To interrupt His Yellow Plan
The Sun does not allow
Caprices of the Atmosphere --
And even when the Snow

Heaves Balls of Specks, like Vicious Boy
Directly in His Eye --
Does not so much as turn His Head
Busy with Majesty --

'Tis His to stimulate the Earth --
And magnetize the Sea --
And bind Astronomy, in place,
Yet Any passing by

Would deem Ourselves -- the busier
As...Read more of this...

Senlin: His Cloudy Destiny

by Conrad Aiken
 1

Senlin sat before us and we heard him. 
He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him. 
Was he small, with reddish hair, 
Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare 
And a twinkling flame reflected in blue eyes? 
'I am alone': said Senlin; 'in a forest of leaves 
The single leaf that creeps and falls. 
The...Read more of this...

Winged Man

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits, 
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates, 
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar, 
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar. 

There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise, 
The man who chained the Minotaur,...Read more of this...

Wild With All Regrets

by Wilfred Owen
 (Another version of "A Terre".)

 To Siegfried Sassoon


My arms have mutinied against me -- brutes!
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But...Read more of this...

The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time

by Richard Aldington
 Zeus, 
Brazen-thunder-hurler, 
Cloud-whirler, son-of-Kronos, 
Send vengeance on these Oreads 
Who strew 
White frozen flecks of mist and cloud 
Over the brown trees and the tufted grass 
Of the meadows, where the stream 
Runs black through shining banks 
Of bluish white. 

Zeus, 
Are the halls of heaven broken up 
That you flake down upon me 
Feather-strips of marble? 

Dis and...Read more of this...

On A Gentlewomans Blistred Lipp

by William Strode
 Hide not that sprouting lipp, nor kill
The juicy bloome with bashfull skill:
Know it is an amorous dewe
That swells to court thy corall hewe,
And what a blemish you esteeme
To other eyes a pearle may seeme
Whose watery growth is not above
The thrifty seize that pearles doe love,
And doth so well become that part
That chance may seeme a secret art.
Doth any judge...Read more of this...

The Thread of Truth

by Arthur Hugh Clough
 Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there
In small bright specks upon the visible side
Of our strange being's parti-coloured web.
How rich the universe! 'Tis a vein of ore
Emerging now and then on Earth's rude breast,
But flowing full below. Like islands set
At distant intervals on Ocean's face,
We see it on our course; but in the depths
The mystic colonnade unbroken...Read more of this...

The Trail O' Love

by Badger Clark
  My love was swift and slender
    As an antelope at play,
  And her eyes were gray and tender
    As the east at break o' day,
  And I sure was shaky hearted
    And her flower face was pale
  On that silver night we parted,
   ...Read more of this...

The Mylora Elopement

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep, 
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep, 
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun 
Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, "cocky" on Mylora Run. 
Jimmy loved the super's daughter, Miss Amelia Jane McGrath. 
Long and earnestly he sought her, but he feared...Read more of this...

The Prophet

by Alexander Pushkin
 Longing for spiritual springs,
I dragged myself through desert sands ...
An angel with three pairs of wings
Arrived to me at cross of lands;
With fingers so light and slim
He touched my eyes as in a dream:
And opened my prophetic eyes 
Like eyes of eagle in surprise.
He touched my ears in movement, single,
And they were filled with noise and jingle:
I heard a...Read more of this...

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