Famous Tableau Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tableau poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tableau poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tableau poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...In due time
a hundred years passed
and a prince got through.
The briars parted as if for Moses
and the prince found the tableau intact.
He kissed Briar Rose
and she woke up crying:
Daddy! Daddy!
Presto! She's out of prison!
She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear --
the fear of sleep.
Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.
If if is to c...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...a sheer black scrim
billowed over some minor constellation
under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws
preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers' windows. For sale,
glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,
the birds lined up like the endless flowers
and cheap gems, the makeshift tables
of secondhand magazines
and shoes the hawkers eye
while they shelter in the doorw...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...r, would not be swept away
By man free and woman natural,
But would feel darkness envelop his soul
Before this black tableau full of loathing.
O malformed monsters crying for clothing!
O ludicrous heads! Torsos needing disguise!
O poor writhing bodies of every wrong size,
Children that the god of the Useful swaths
In the language of bronze and brass!
And women, alas! You shadow your heredity,
You gnaw nourishment from debauchery,
A virgin holds maternal lechery
An...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...his pillow till to soothing sleep he sank.
So up and down the river seeded sourdoughs would allow,
They made a touching tableau, Captain Silas and his cow.
Now as the Captain puffed his pipe and Kathleen chewed her cud,
There came to him a poetess, a Miss Belinda Budd.
"An epic I would write," said she, "about this mighty stream,
And from your gallant bark 'twould be romantic as a dream."
Somewhat amazed the Captain gazed at her and shook his head;
"I'm sorry, Miss, but we d...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...e fragrant crinoline draped
Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen
From a station where trains never run
And set up in a tableau in the parsonage at Haworth
The three sisters with Chekovian overtones
Stood round the table where their mirrored forms
Await the blast of the last judgement’s call to make them
Take that final walk across the heather mantled moor.
Down vain corridors I searched for some leaf token
Of a life unlived, a faded mignonette or four leaved clover
Do...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...d us tock
tock like Go tablets
Everyone has learned
to move carefully
'Dancing' 'laughing' 'bad taste'
is a memory
a tableau behind trees of law
In the midst of love for you
my wife's suffering
anger in every direction
and the children wise
as tough shrubs
but they are not tough
--so I fear
how anything can grow from this
all the wise blood
poured from little cuts
down into the sink
this hour it is not
your body I want
but your quiet company...Read more of this...
by
Ondaatje, Michael
...late a note of it
And say it is good or bad. You must
Wait till it's over. "The end crowns all,"
Meaning also that the "tableau"
Is wrong. For although memories, of a season, for example,
Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure
That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting;
It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal,
Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt,
Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this
Is to become the tossing reeds of...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...I sit in the dusk. I am all alone.
Enter a child and an ice-cream cone.
A parent is easily beguiled
By sight of this coniferous child.
The friendly embers warmer gleam,
The cone begins to drip ice cream.
Cones are composed of many a vitamin.
My lap is not the place to bitamin.
Although my raiment is not chinchilla,
I flinch to see it become vanilla.
C...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...-
None but the Nut -- October fit --
Because, through dropping it,
The Seasons flit -- I'm taught --
Without the Snow's Tableau
Winter, were lie -- to me --
Because I see -- New Englandly --
The Queen, discerns like me --
Provincially --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...fifty generations, founder’d off the Northeast
coast, and going down—Of the steamship Arctic going down,
Of the veil’d tableau—Women gather’d together on deck, pale, heroic,
waiting the
moment that draws so close—O the moment!
A huge sob—A few bubbles—the white foam spirting up—And then the women
gone,
Sinking there, while the passionless wet flows on—And I now pondering, Are those
women
indeed gone?
Are Souls drown’d and destroy’d so?
Is only matter triumphant?...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
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