Famous Streak Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Ballad Of Gum-Boot Ben

by Robert William Service
 He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
 He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him.
 He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold
 To question his veracity, this is the tale he told.

"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust;
I am not...Read more of this...

Letter to My Lover After Seven Years

by Erica Jong
 You gave me the child
that seamed my belly
& stitched up my life.

You gave me: one book of love poems,
five years of peace
& two of pain.

You gave me darkness, light, laughter
& the certain knowledge
that we someday die.

You gave me seven years
during which the cells of my body
died & were reborn.

Now we have died
into the limbo of lost loves,
that wreckage of...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry

by Robert William Service
 Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank;
That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all;
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
To see it yield...Read more of this...

Bacon

by Badger Clark
  You're salty and greasy and smoky as sin
    But of all grub we love you the best.
  You stuck to us closer than nighest of kin
    And helped us win out in the West,
  You froze with us up on the Laramie trail;
    You sweat with us...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts LXX: Take Back Your Coins

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Take back your coins, King's Councillor. I am of those women you
sent to the forest shrine to decoy the young ascetic who had never
seen a women. I failed in your bidding.
Dimly day was breaking when the hermit boy came to bathe in
the stream, his tawny locks crowded on his shoulders, like a
cluster of morning clouds, and his limbs shining...Read more of this...

Marthys younkit

by Eugene Field
 The mountain brook sung lonesomelike, and loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play;
The wild-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hear
The music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin' to an' fro
Among the rocks an' holler stumps in the...Read more of this...

Aix In Provence

by Robert Browning
 Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company
To suit it; when he struck at length
My honour, 'twas with all his strength.

II.

And doubtlessly ere he could draw
All points to one, he must have schemed!
That miserable morning saw
Few half so happy as I seemed,
While being...Read more of this...

Poem On His Birthday

by Dylan Thomas
 In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
 Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
 And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
 He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they...Read more of this...

An Exiles Farewell

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 The ocean heaves around us still
With long and measured swell,
The autumn gales our canvas fill,
Our ship rides smooth and well.
The broad Atlantic's bed of foam
Still breaks against our prow;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!

Against the bulwarks on the poop
I lean, and watch the sun
Behind the red horizon stoop —
His race is nearly run.
Those...Read more of this...

Exposure

by Wilfred Owen
 I

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
 But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men...Read more of this...

Shadows Before

by Henry Lawson
 "Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign 
On fair islands that we would command; 
But clouds that are darker and denser than these 
Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas 
And rest on our Southern Land. 

Low in dust is our Goddess of Liberty hurled 
At our feet, and the time is at hand,...Read more of this...

Spring in Town

by William Cullen Bryant
 The country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses--showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back.

Within the city's bounds the time of flowers
Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day,
Such as full often, for...Read more of this...

Dumb Swede

by Robert William Service
 With barbwire hooch they filled him full,
Till he was drunker than all hell,
And then they peddled him the bull
About a claim they had to sell.
A thousand bucks they made him pay,
Knowing that he had nothing more,
And when he begged it back next day,
And wept! - they kicked him from the door.

They reckoned they were mighty slick,
Them two tinhorns from...Read more of this...

The Complaint Of Ceres

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Does pleasant spring return once more?
Does earth her happy youth regain?
Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er;
Soft brooklets burst their icy chain:
Upon the blue translucent river
Laughs down an all-unclouded day,
The winged west winds gently quiver,
The buds are bursting from the spray;
While birds are blithe on every tree;
The Oread from the mountain-shore
Sighs, "Lo! thy flowers come back to thee--
Thy child,...Read more of this...

Death Of A Cockroach

by Robert William Service
 I opened wide the bath-room door,
And all at once switched on the light,
When moving swift across the floor
I saw a streak of ebon bright:
Then quick, with slipper in my hand,
Before it could escape,--I slammed.
I missed it once, I missed it twice,
But got it ere it gained its lair.
I fear my words were far from nice,
Though d----s with me are...Read more of this...

Upper Lambourne

by John Betjeman
 Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
Up the ivy climbs the sun,
With a twenty-thousand pattering,
Has a valley breeze begun,
Feathery ash, neglected elder,
Shift the shade and make it run -

Shift the shade toward the nettles,
And the nettles set it free,
To streak the stained Carrara headstone,
Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,
He who trained a hundred winners,
Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,
Leathery...Read more of this...

Brave Coward

by Robert William Service
 Elisabeth imagines I've
 A yellow streak
She deems I have no dash and drive,
 Jest dogoned weak.
'A man should be a man,' says Liz
 'Trade blow for blow.'
Poor kid! What my position is
 She jest don't know.

She jest don't know my old man killed,
 Yea, slew and slew.
As steamy blood he sweetly spilled,
 So could I too.
And though no wrath...Read more of this...

Preference

by Charlotte Bronte
 NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion ?
This, thy tenderness for me ?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me !
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I...Read more of this...

Yellow

by Robert William Service
 One pearly day of early May
I strolled upon the sand,
And saw, say half-a-mile away
A man with gun in hand;
A dog was cowering to his will,
As slow he sought to creep
Upon a dozen ducks so still
They seemed to be asleep,

When like a streak the dog dashed out,
The ducks flashed up in flight;
The fellow gave a savage shout
And cursed with all...Read more of this...

The Yukon

by Joaquin Miller
 THE moon resumed all heaven now, 
She shepherded the stars below 
Along her wide, white steeps of snow, 
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how. 

She bared her full white breast, she dared 
The sun e'er show his face again. 
She seemed to know no change, she kept 
Carousal constantly, nor slept, 
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared...Read more of this...

Carry On

by Robert William Service
 It's easy to fight when everything's right,
 And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
 And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
 When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
 Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:

Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't...Read more of this...

This Morning

by Charles Simic
 Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.
I'm just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. "Come to me my...Read more of this...

Divided

by Jean Ingelow
.

An empty sky, a world of heather,
  Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them wading together,
  Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
  Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
  Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
Flusheth the rise with her purple...Read more of this...

A Pastoral Dialogue Between Two Shepherdesses

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 [Silvia] Pretty Nymph! within this Shade, 
Whilst the Flocks to rest are laid,
Whilst the World dissolves in Heat,
Take this cool, and flow'ry Seat: 
And with pleasing Talk awhile
Let us two the Time beguile; 
Tho' thou here no Shepherd see, 
To encline his humble Knee, 
Or with melancholy Lays 
Sing thy dangerous Beauty's Praise. 


[Dorinda] Nymph! with thee I here...Read more of this...

The Ships of Saint John

by Bliss Carman
 Where are the ships I used to know,
That came to port on the Fundy tide
Half a century ago,
In beauty and stately pride?
In they would come past the beacon light,
With the sun on gleaming sail and spar,
Folding their wings like birds in flight
From countries strange and far.
Schooner and brig and barkentine,
I watched them slow as the sails were furled,
And wondered...Read more of this...

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