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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...winds of truth,
And be a swift familiar of the sun
Where aye before God's face his trumpets run?
Or have we but the talons and the maw,
And for the abject likeness of our heart
Shall some less lordly bird be set apart? --
Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat?
Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?
IX
Ah no!
We have not fallen so.
We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!
'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tro...Read more of this...
by
Moody, William Vaughn
...myish lashtender combs creep
Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.
They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May
Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray
Of greenery: it is old earth’s groping towards the steep
Heaven whom she childs us by.
(Variant from line 7.) b.
They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there hurled],
With talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin. ...Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Mars, and Loue,
Of those three gods, whose armes the fairest were.
Ioues golden shield did sable eagles beare,
Whose talons held young Ganimed aboue:
But in vert field Mars bare a golden speare,
Which through a bleeding heart his point did shoue:
Each had his creast; Mars carried Venus gloue,
Ioue on his helmet the thunderbolt did reare.
Cupid then smiles, for on his crest there lies
Stellas faire haire; her face he makes his shield,
Where roses gules are borne in s...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...powerful, one man watched him,
the kinsman of Hygelac, seeing how the evil harmer
wished to proceed with his fearful talons.
Nor did that monster think to delay,
but he swiftly snatched up the very first moment
a sleeping warrior and he eviscerated him at once,
biting into his bone-locks, drinking blood from veins,
swallowing him up in gluttonous gobbets—immediately
he had chewed up the unliving entirely, feet and hands. (ll. 736b-45a)
Nearer forth he stepped insi...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...st becomes a memory
My friend the Captain—to my other friend’s
Incredulous regret that such as he
Should ever get the talons of his talk
So fixed in my unfledged credulity—
Kept up the peroration of his life,
Not yielding at a threshold, nor, I think,
Too often on the stairs. He made me laugh
Sometimes, and then again he made me weep
Almost; for I had insufficiency
Enough in me to make me know the truth
Within the jest, and I could feel it there
As well as if it wer...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ey make
That their accord themselves should never break.
From Arctic seas to cities Transalpine,
Their hideous talons, curved for sure rapine,
Scrape o'er and o'er the mournful continent,
Their plans succeed, and each is well content.
Thus under Satan's all paternal care
They brothers are, this royal bandit pair.
Oh, noxious conquerors! with transient rule
Chimera heads—ambition can but fool.
Their misty minds but harbor rottenness
Loathsome a...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...icans
Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.
Five bells.
Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder
Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain
The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face,
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air
(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass),
A voice that spoke beside me in the bush,
Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind,
Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man,
And blowing flutes, and how Tahitia...Read more of this...
by
Slessor, Kenneth
...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; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrib...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
....
The sun on two canals and one river
Makes three stripes of silver
Or copper and gold
Or shattered sunflower leaves.
Talons of an iceberg
Scraped out this valley.
Claws of an avalanche loosed here....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...hereon he sat
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake his little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away his talons' mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.
Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should - by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded dea...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...d his jaws beneath,
Drawn inventories of his teeth,
Or have you weigh'd, in even balance,
His strength and magnitude of talons?
His roar would change your boasts to fear,
As easily, as sour small beer;
And make your feet from dreadful fray,
By native instinct run away.
Britain, depend on't, will take on her
T' assert her dignity and honor,
And ere she'd lose your share of pelf,
Destroy your country, and herself.
For has not North declared they fight
To gain substantial rev'nu...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...h but paid
no mind, napping after lunch
yet fifteen hundred miles north
I heard and dropped a dish.
Your pain sunk talons in my skull
and crouched there cawing, heavy
as a great vessel filled with water,
oil or blood, till suddenly next day
the weight lifted and I knew your mind
had guttered out like the Chanukah
candles that burn so fast, weeping
veils of wax down the chanukiya.
Those candles were laid out,
friends invited, ingredients bought
for latkes and ...Read more of this...
by
Piercy, Marge
...ins have earned the far-fet spoil." With that
Both table and provision vanished quite,
With sound of harpies' wings and talons heard;
Only the importune Tempter still remained,
And with these words his temptation pursued:—
"By hunger, that each other creature tames,
Thou art not to be harmed, therefore not moved;
Thy temperance, invincible besides,
For no allurement yields to appetite;
And all thy heart is set on high designs,
High actions. But wherewith to be achieved?
Gre...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...garbowl.
It is all right for a trout to be trapped in a pool that dries
up in the late summer or to be caught in the talons of a bird
or the claws of an animal.
Yes, it is even all right for a trout to be killed by pollution,
to die in a river of suffocating human excrement.
There are trout that die of old age and their white beards
flow to the sea.
All these things are in the natural order of death, but for
a trout to die from a drink of port wine, that is anoth...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ry rigging by the waiting spider made
Which spun the lithe elastic till the fly was shrouded tight.
Down came the hairy talons and horrible poison blade
And none of the garden noticed that fizzing, hopeless fight.
Say in what Cottage Hospital whose pale green walls resound
With the tap upon polished parquet of inflexible nurses' feet
Shall I myself by lying when they range the screens around?
And say shall I groan in dying, as I twist the sweaty sheet?
Or gasp for breath unc...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...
Inside the car a young lady wears a corsage of bullet-sized rodents.
Her date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the
molded steering wheel.
They park and walk into the lush starlit gardens behind the disco
just as the band is striking up.
Their keen eyes and ears twitch. The other couples
look beautiful tonight. They stroll around listening
to the brilliant conversation. The passionate speeches.
Clouds drift across the silverware. There is red larkspur,
...Read more of this...
by
Berman, David
...Sire,
Who did those charming Looks inspire,
That you'd prepar'd me to admire.
Upon your self the Blame be laid;
My Talons you've to Blood betray'd,
And ly'd in every Word you said.
Faces or Books, beyond their Worth extoll'd,
Are censur'd most, and thus to pieces pulled....Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...64 The glitt'ring eminence exempt from foes;
165 See when the vulgar 'scape, despis'd or aw'd,
166 Rebellion's vengeful talons seize on Laud.
167 From meaner minds, tho' smaller fines content
168 The plunder'd palace or sequester'd rent;
169 Mark'd out by dangerous parts he meets the shock,
170 And fatal Learning leads him to the block:
171 Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep,
172 But hear his death, ye blockheads, hear and sleep.
...
253 Enlarge my life with multitud...Read more of this...
by
Johnson, Samuel
...t, of a friend.
Already envy
From out his rocky ambush
Upon thee turns
The force of his lynx-like eyes,
Stretches his talons,
On thee falls,
In thy shoulders
Cunningly plants them.
Strong are his skinny arms,
As panther-claws;
He shaketh thee,
And rends thy frame.
Death 'tis to part,
'Tis threefold death
To part, not hoping
Ever to meet again.
Thou wouldst rejoice to leave
This hated land behind,
Wert thou not chain'd to me
With friendships flowery chains.
Burst them! I...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...t his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our crumbling walls,
his blooded talons sheathed in fur.
Some secret lure of time it seems
has called him from his country wastes
to hunt a newer wasteland here.
And where the candlabra swung
bright with the dancers’ thousand eyes,
now his black, hooded pupils stare,
And where the silk-shoed lovers ran
with dust of diamonds in their hair,
he opens now his silent wing,
And, like a stroke of ...Read more of this...
by
Lee, Laurie
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