Famous Stick By Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Jubilate Agno (excerpt)

by Christopher Smart
 For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. 
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk,...Read more of this...

Lip-Stick Liz

by Robert William Service
 Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the biz, That's the oldest known in history;
She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst'ry.
She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander,
And he used to beat her up because he couldn't understand her. 

Now Lip-Stick Liz she loved her man And she couldn't love no...Read more of this...

Tortoise Family Connections

by D. H. Lawrence
 On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?

His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.

A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her --
Tortoises always foresee obstacles.

It...Read more of this...

Those Dancing Days Are Gone

by William Butler Yeats
 Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are...Read more of this...

Maktoob

by Alan Seeger
 A shell surprised our post one day 
And killed a comrade at my side. 
My heart was sick to see the way 
He suffered as he died. 

I dug about the place he fell, 
And found, no bigger than my thumb, 
A fragment of the splintered shell 
In warm aluminum. 

I melted it, and made a mould, 
And poured...Read more of this...

After Us

by Connie Wanek
 I don't know if we're in the beginning
or in the final stage.
 -- Tomas Tranströmer

Rain is falling through the roof.
And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;

the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl...Read more of this...

An Attempt At Jealousy

by Craig Raine
 So how is life with your new bloke?
Simpler, I bet. Just one stroke
of his quivering oar and the skin
of the Thames goes into a spin,

eh? How is life with an oarsman? Better?
More in--out? Athletic? Wetter?
When you hear the moan of the rowlocks,
do you urge him on like a cox?

Tell me, is he bright enough to find
that memo-pad you call...Read more of this...

I In My Intricate Image

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She...Read more of this...

Camouflage

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds 
The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds, 
"I've got a letter here," he said, "that no one's understood, 
Addressed as follows: 'To the bird that's like a piece of wood.' 
"The soldier bird got very cross -- it wasn't meant for her; 
The spurwing plover...Read more of this...

A Call To Arms

by Barry Tebb
 It was like chucking-out time

In a rough Victorian pub

Cherubic Dylan was first to go

Lachrymose but with a show

Of strength, yelling "Buggerall,

Buggerall, this is my boat-house

In Laugherne, these are my books,

My prizes, I ride every wave-crest,

My loves are legion. What’s this

You’re saying about fashion?

Others follow where I lead,

Schoolchildren copy my verse,

No anthology omits me

Put me down! Put me down!

George Barker...Read more of this...

The Search

by Robert William Service
 Happiness, a-roving round
For a sweet abiding place,
In a stately palace found
Symmetry and gilded grace;
Courtliness and table cheer,
All that chimes with evening dress . . .
"I could never stick it here,"
Swift decided Happiness.

Happiness a-seeking still,
In a mansion of the town,
Comfort-crammed to overspill,
Sought in vain to settle down.
Every nook strained to express
Opulent prosperity . . .
But "Alas!" said Happiness,
"This is not...Read more of this...

The Strangest Creature On Earth

by Nazim Hikmet
 You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
 like a scorpion.
You're like a sparrow, my brother,
always in a sparrow's flutter.
You're like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
 like the mouth of an extinct volcano.

Not one,
 not five--
unfortunately, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
 when the cloaked drover raises his...Read more of this...

The Gamblers

by Vachel Lindsay
 Life's a jail where men have common lot. 
Gaunt the one who has, and who has not. 
All our treasures neither less nor more, 
Bread alone comes thro' the guarded door. 
Cards are foolish in this jail, I think, 
Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. 
She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid 
Will not scorn with me...Read more of this...

Freethinker

by Robert William Service
 Although the Preacher be a bore,
The Atheist is even more.

I ain't religious worth a damn;
My views are reckoned to be broad;
And yet I shut up like a clam
When folks get figgerin' on God;
I'd hate my kids to think like me,
And though they leave me in the lurch,
I'm always mighty glad to see
 My fam'ly trot to Church.

Although of books...Read more of this...

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

by Maggie Estep
 I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first,
I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and...Read more of this...

Among School Children

by William Butler Yeats
 I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way - the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

 II

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire....Read more of this...

The Crooked Stick

by Elinor Wylie
 First Traveller: What's that lying in the dust? 
Second Traveller: A crooked stick. 
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust to arithmetic? 
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle? 
First Traveller: No, a trick. 
Second Traveller:It's worthless, leave it where it lies. 
First Traveller: Wait; count ten; 
Rub a little dust upon your eyes; 
Now, look again. 
Second...Read more of this...

Babi Yar

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
 No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. 
I am afraid.
 Today I am as old in years 
as all the Jewish people. 
Now I seem to be
 a Jew. 
Here I plod through ancient Egypt. 
Here I perish crucified, on the cross, 
and to this day I bear the scars of nails. 
I seem...Read more of this...

S was Papas new Stick

by Edward Lear
S  was Papa's new Stick,Papa's new thumping Stick, To thump extremely wicked boys,Because it was so thick. ...Read more of this...

August 8th

by Anne Sexton
 And do not be indiscreet or unconventional. Play it safe.

Listen here. I've never played it safe
in spite of what the critics say.
Ask my imaginary brother, that waif,
that childhood best friend who comes to play
dress-up and stick-up and jacks and Pick-Up-Sticks,
bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics.

Or form a Piss Club where we all go
in the bushes and peek...Read more of this...

The Lion and Albert

by Marriott Edgar
 There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.

A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle,
The finest that Woolworth's could sell.

They didn't think much of the Ocean:
The waves, they were fiddlin' and...Read more of this...

A Stick Of Incense

by William Butler Yeats
 Whence did all that fury come?
From empty tomb or Virgin womb?
Saint Joseph thought the world would melt
But liked the way his finger smelt....Read more of this...

Grass

by Russell Edson
 The living room is overgrown with grass. It has 
come up around the furniture. It stretches through 
the dining room, past the swinging door into the 
kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the 
walls . . .

 There's treasure in grass, things dropped or put 
there; a stick of rust that was once a penknife, a 
grave...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...

Martin

by Joyce Kilmer
 When I am tired of earnest men,
Intense and keen and sharp and clever,
Pursuing fame with brush or pen
Or counting metal disks forever,
Then from the halls of Shadowland
Beyond the trackless purple sea
Old Martin's ghost comes back to stand
Beside my desk and talk to me.
Still on his delicate pale face
A quizzical thin smile is showing,
His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace,
His...Read more of this...

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