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Famous Splinters Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Schwartz, Delmore
...rate, at last,
From windows gray and wet:
 for now the sunlight
Thrashes its wet shellac on brickwalk and gutter,
White splinters streak midmorning and doorstep,
Winter passes as the lighted streetcar
Moves at midnight, one scene of the past,
Droll and unreal, stiff, stilted and hooded....Read more of this...



by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...new torturing deaths invent.



XVIII.
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies, 
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast, 
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree, 
The swooning mother saved from death, to be 
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave, 
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.



XIX.
Their cause was right, their met...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...den and terrible to rise and wane;
Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide
That casts upon the heart, as it recedes,
Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...r. 
Pocketa-pocketa. 

Once upon a time Ms. Dog was sixty-six. 
She had white hair and wrinkles deep as splinters. 
her portrait was nailed up like Christ 
and she said of it: 
That's when I was forty-two, 
down in Rockport with a hat on for the sun, 
and Barbara drew a line drawing. 
We were, at that moment, drinking vodka 
and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air, 
although it was July, and she gave me her sweater 
to bundle up in. The ne...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ed
The crib he slept in-and as sure's you're born
They found he'd gnawed the four posts of his bed,
All four of them to splinters. What did that prove?
Not that he hadn't gnawed the hitching posts
He said he had, besides. Because a horse
Gnaws in the stable ain't no proof to me
He don't gnaw trees and posts and fences too.
But everybody took it for a proof.
I was a strapping girl of twenty then.
The smarty someone who spoiled everything
Was Arthur Amy....Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...ours, and that is morn. 
See how I come, unchanged, unworn!
Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
How fresh the splinters keep and fine,---
Only a touch and we combine!

II.

Too long, this time of year, the days!
But nights, at least the nights are short.
As night shows where ger one moon is,
A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss,
So life's night gives my lady birth
And my eyes hold her! What is worth
The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?

III.

O loa...Read more of this...

by Raine, Kathleen
...If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Fear, fear,
Fear of the jaws of the rock,
Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear
Flesh from the bone, and the moist
Blood, running unfelt
From the wound, and the hand
Suddenly moist and red.

If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find?
Grief, grief,
Grief for the life unlived,
For the loves unloved,
For the child never to be born,
Th'unbidden anguish, when the fair moon
Rises over still summer seas, an...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...What ghosts haunt

These streets of perpetual night?

Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums

For nouveam riche merchant bankers

Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos

Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton:

Hot tubs, saunas, swim spas, en suite 

Satellite TV, conference rooms, disco dinners.

I knew Len, the tubby taxi man

With his retirement dreams of visiting

The world’s great galleries:

‘Titian,...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Langston
...Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fa...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...new that something must occur;
For they were just like flint and steel
To strike the spark of woe and weal;
Or like two splinters broken fine,
In perfect fitness to combine;
And so I ept them well apart,
For she was precious to my heart.
One time we all three met at church
I tried to give the lad the lurch,
But heard him say: "How like a rose!
is it your daughter , I suppose?"
"Why no," said I; "My wife to be,
And sic months gone wi' child is she."
He looked astonishe...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...t mind
finding itself unspeakable
What is the last thought?
Now I will let you know?
or, Now I know?
(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue
mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid) 

Shattered head on the breast
of a wooded hill
Laid down there endlessly so
tendrils soaked into matted compose
became a root
torqued over the faint springhead
groin whence illegible
matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt
volumes of sporic changes
hair long blown into far follicles
blas...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...n nothing will remain of the iron age
And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem
Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass
In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the 
 mountain......Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...vibrates on the tremulous earth;
While, bursting in the air, the murderous bomb
Glares o'er her mansion. Where the splinters fall,
Like scatter'd comets, its destructive path
Is mark'd by wreaths of flame!--Then, overwhelm'd
Beneath accumulated horror, sinks
The desolate mourner; yet, in Death itself,
True to maternal tenderness, she tries
To save the unconscious infant from the storm
In which she perishes; and to protect
This last dear object of her ruin'd hopes
From pr...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...horse goes by at a dash.
From other shops, the noise of striking blows:
Pounds, thumps, and whacks;
Wooden sounds: splinters -- cracks.
Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers.
"Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack
That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your 
back
And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole.
I've just been taking a stroll.
The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...d, at nothing, childlike, being dead.
 And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
 Leisurely gestured, - 'Fool!'
 And the falling splinters tittered.


'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.
 And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;
 Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
 And the Gas hissed....Read more of this...

by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...ues. 

Once again, one struggle good, 
One vain effort;—he must dwell 
Near the shifted post, that stood 
Where the splinters of the wood, 
Lying in the torn tracks, tell 
How he struck and fell. 

Crest where cold drops beaded cling, 
Small ear drooping, nostril full, 
Glazing to a scarlet ring, 
Flanks and haunches quivering, 
Sinews stiffening, void and null, 
Dumb eyes sorrowful. 

Satin coat that seems to shine 
Duller now, black braided tress 
That a softer ...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...sky looks wooden, grained with cloud.
It's like a stage-set; it is all so flat!
Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!
What is that?"
 It is the monument.
"It's piled-up boxes,
outlined with shoddy fret-work, half-fallen off,
cracked and unpainted. It looks old."
--The strong sunlight, the wind from the sea,
all the conditions of its existence,
may have flaked off the paint, if ever it was painted,
and made it homelier than it was.
"Why did you bri...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...s, 
And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream, I dreamed 
Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, 
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, 
And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. 
Part sat like rocks: part reeled but kept their seats: 
Part rolled on the earth and rose again and drew: 
Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down 
From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down 
From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail, 
The large blows rained, as here...Read more of this...

by Dickey, James
...on our minds the red mark out 
In the harbor slowly failing us then the house groaned the rope 
Sprang out of the water splinters flew we leapt from our chairs 
And grabbed the rope hauled did nothing the house coming subtly 
Apart all around us underfoot boards beginning to sparkle like sand 
Pulling out the tarred poles we slept propped-up on leaning to sea 
As in land-wind crabs scuttling from under the floor as we took runs about 
Two more porch-pillars and looked out and...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...ndah room
in an iron bed close to the wall
where the winter over the railing 
swelled the blind on its timber boom

and splinters picked lint off warm linen
and the stars were out over the hill;
then one wall of the room was forest
and all things in there were to come.

Breathings climbed up on the verandah
when dark cattle rubbed at the corner 
and sometimes dim towering rain stood
for forest, and the dry cave hunched woollen.

Inside the forest was lamplit
along tra...Read more of this...

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