Famous Talons Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Five Bells

by Kenneth Slessor
 Time that is moved by little fidget wheels 
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. 
Between the double and the single bell 
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells 
From the dark warship riding there below, 
I have lived many lives, and this one life 
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells....Read more of this...

Ash-Boughs

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 a.

Not of all my eyes see, wandering on the world, 
Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep 
Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky. 
Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled 
Fast ?r they in clammyish lashtender combs creep
Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high....Read more of this...

Dalliance of the Eagles The

by Walt Whitman
 SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) 
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, 
The rushing amorous contact high in space together, 
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, 
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, 
Till o’er the river...Read more of this...

Meeting

by Peter Huchel
 For Michael Hamburger

Barn owl
daughter of snow,
subject to the night wind,

yet taking root
with her talons
in the rotten scab of walls,

beak face
with round eyes,
heart-rigid mask
of feathers a white fire
that touches neither time nor space.

Coldly the wind blows
against the old homestead,
in the yard pale folk,
sledges, baggage, lamps covered with snow,

in the pots death,
in the pitchers poison,
the last will nailed to a post.

The...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

Joliet

by Carl Sandburg
 ON the one hand the steel works.
On the other hand the penitentiary.
Sante Fé trains and Alton trains
Between smokestacks on the west
And gray walls on the east.
And Lockport down the river.

Part of the valley is God’s.
And part is man’s.
The river course laid out
A thousand years ago.
The canals ten years back.

The sun on two canals and one river
Makes three stripes of...Read more of this...

The Owl Describing her Young Ones

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Why was that baleful Creature made, 
Which seeks our Quiet to invade, 
And screams ill Omens through the Shade? 

'Twas, sure, for every Mortals good, 
When, by wrong painting of her Brood, 
She doom'd them for the Eagle's Food: 

Who proffer'd Safety to her Tribe, 
Wou'd she but shew them or describe, 
And serving him, his Favour bribe. 

When...Read more of this...

Last Words To A Dumb Friend

by Thomas Hardy
 Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our ***** ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall--
Foot suspended in its fall--
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all...Read more of this...

Sonnet LIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LIII. Ben sapev' io che natural consiglio. FLEEING FROM LOVE, HE FALLS INTO THE HANDS OF HIS MINISTERS.  Full well I know that natural wisdom nought,Love, 'gainst thy power, in any age prevail'd,For snares oft set, fond oaths that ever fail'd,Sore proofs of thy sharp talons long had taught;But lately,...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIII: Phoebus Was Judge

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Phoebus was judge between Jove, Mars, and Love, 
Of those three gods, whose arms the fairest were: 
Jove's golden shield did eagle sables bear, 
Whose talons held young Ganymede above: 

But in vert field Mars bare a golden spear, 
Which through a bleeding heart his point did shove: 
Each had his crest; Mars carried Venus' glove, 
Jove in his...Read more of this...

Hurt Hawks

by Robinson Jeffers
 I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat, 

No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.

He stands under the oak-bush and waits 
The lame feet of salvation;...Read more of this...

The Moon

by David Berman
 A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others.

In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every...Read more of this...

My Mothers Body

by Marge Piercy
 1. 

The dark socket of the year 
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down 
and threatens never to rise, 
when despair descends softly as the snow 
covering all paths and choking roads: 

then hawkfaced pain seized you 
threw you so you fell with a sharp 
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. 
My father heard the...Read more of this...

Three Odes To My Friend

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THESE are the most singular of all the Poems 
of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to 
leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, 
addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, 
and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite 
young. Despite, however,...Read more of this...

Arms And The Boy

by Wilfred Owen
 Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXII. Vinse Annibal, e non seppe usar poi. TO STEFANO COLONNA, COUNSELLING HIM TO FOLLOW UP HIS VICTORY OVER THE ORSINI.  Hannibal conquer'd oft, but never knewThe fruits and gain of victory to get,Wherefore, dear lord, be wise, take care that yetA like misfortune happen not to you.Still in their...Read more of this...

The Cottage Hospital

by John Betjeman
 At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects, and children played in the street.

Out...Read more of this...

Napoleon "the Little."

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ah! tu finiras bien par hurler!") 
 
 {Bk. III. ii., Jersey, August, 1852.} 


 How well I knew this stealthy wolf would howl, 
 When in the eagle talons ta'en in air! 
 Aglow, I snatched thee from thy prey—thou fowl— 
 I held thee, abject conqueror, just where 
 All see the stigma of a fitting name...Read more of this...

Grumpy Grandpa

by Robert William Service
 Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails,
As if they had been dipped in gore,
I'd like to set you lugging pails
And make you scrub the kitchen floor.
I'm old and crotchety of course,
And on this point my patience fails;
I'd sue my old girl for divorce
If she showed up with painted nails.

Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails,
Like to a Jezebel are you;
Do you expect to...Read more of this...

Town Owl

by Laurie Lee
 On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade on a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our...Read more of this...

To Mrs Reynolds Cat

by John Keats
 Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears - but pr’ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender...Read more of this...

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