Famous Telegraph Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Observation Car

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, 
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, 
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket 
And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting. 

The present and past were enough. I did not mind...Read more of this...

The Pennsylvania Disaster

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1889, and in the month of June,
Ten thousand people met with a fearful doom,
By the bursting of a dam in Pennsylvania State,
And were burned, and drowned by the flood-- oh! pity their fate! 

The embankment of the dam was considered rather weak,
And by the swelled body of water the embankment did break,
And burst o'er...Read more of this...

Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem

by Annie Dillard
 New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.

For many hours the train flies along the banks
of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.

Bridges leap over the train...Read more of this...

Gus: The Theatre Cat

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats--
But no...Read more of this...

Philadelphia

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Brother Square-Toes"--Rewards and Fairies.
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
 You mustn't take my stories for a guide.
There's little left, indeed, of the city you will read of,
 And all the folk I write about have died.
Now few will understand if you mention Talleyrand,
 Or remember what his cunning and his skill did;
And the cabmen at the wharf...Read more of this...

Come-by-Chance

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary -- 
For the plot was void of interest; 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact -- 
There I learnt the true location, distance, size and population 
Of each township, town, and village in the radius of the Act. 
And I learnt that Puckawidgee stands beside the Murrumbidgee, 
And the...Read more of this...

Years of the Modern

by Walt Whitman
 YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform’d! 
Your horizon rises—I see it parting away for more august dramas; 
I see not America only—I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations
 preparing; 
I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the solidarity
 of
 races; 
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage;
(Have...Read more of this...

Mornings Like This

by Barry Tebb
 Mornings like this I awaken and wonder

How I have moved so far, how I have moved so little

And yet in essence stayed the same

Always passionate for the unattainable

For Joan Baez to make me her analyst,

To tour Ireland with Eddie and Finbar Furey

To be made a Chevalier des Palmes for translating Milosz.

I remember one road, many roads I did not...Read more of this...

Sappers

by Rudyard Kipling
 When the Waters were dried an' the Earth did appear,
 ("It's all one," says the Sapper),
The Lord He created the Engineer,
 Her Majesty's Royal Engineer,
 With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

When the Flood come along for an extra monsoon,
'Twas Noah constructed the first pontoon
 To the plans of Her Majesty's, etc.

But after fatigue in the wet an'...Read more of this...

Mother and Poet

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I.

Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a...Read more of this...

Who Runs America?

by Allen Ginsberg
Oil brown smog over Denver 
Oil red dung colored smoke 
level to level across the horizon 

blue tainted sky above 
Oil car smog gasoline 
hazing red Denver's day 

December bare trees 

sticking up from housetop streets 

Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over 

radar wheels, black smoke 

drifts from tailfins 

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains 
Oil from Texas,...Read more of this...

The Line-Gang

by Robert Frost
 Here come the line-gang pioneering by,
They throw a forest down less cut than broken.
They plant dead trees for living, and the dead
They string together with a living thread.
They string an instrument against the sky
Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken
Will run as hushed as when they were a thought
But in no hush they string it: they go past
With shouts...Read more of this...

The Telegraph Operator

by Robert William Service
 I will not wash my face;
I will not brush my hair;
I "pig" around the place--
There's nobody to care.
Nothing but rock and tree;
Nothing but wood and stone,
Oh, God, it's hell to be
Alone, alone, alone!

Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws
Corral me in a ring.
I feel as if I was
The only living thing
On all this blighted earth;
And so I frowst and shrink,
And crouching by...Read more of this...

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