Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Threshed Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Walcott, Derek
...ize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilizations dawn
>From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carc...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...torchlight 
made his pallet on the threshing floor 
where all day he had worked, and now he slept 
among the bushels of threshed wheat.

The old man owned wheatfields and barley, 
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded. 
No filth soured the sweetness of his well. 
No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge.

His beard was silver as a brook in April. 
He bound sheaves without the strain of hate 
or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said, 
Let ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...e drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please...Read more of this...

by Housman, A E
...ould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare;
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...g nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the stragglins train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 
From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...her soul;
 Clanging like a smithy-shop after every roll;
 Just a funnel and a mast lurching through the spray --
 So we threshed the Bolivar out across the Bay!

'Felt her hog and felt her sag, betted when she'd break;
 Wondered every time she raced if she'd stand the shock;
Heard the seas like drunken men pounding at her strake;
 Hoped the Lord 'ud keep his thumb on the plummer-block.
 Banged against the iron decks, bilges choked with coal;
 Flayed and frozen foot and ha...Read more of this...

by di Prima, Diane
...the weighing is done in autumn
and the sifting
what is to be threshed
is threshed in autumn
what is to be gathered is taken

the wind does not die in autumn
the moon
shifts endlessly thru flying clouds
in autumn the sea is high

& a golden light plays everywhere
making it harder
to go one's way.
all leavetaking is in autumn
where there is leavetaking
it is always autumn
& the sun is a crystal ball
on a golden stan...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...loose, and burning." 

I beat my brass and shouted fire 
At doors of parson, lawyer, squire, 
at all three doors I threshed and slammed 
And yelled aloud that they were damned. 
I clodded squire's glass with turves 
Because he spring-gunned his preserves. 
Through parson's glass my nozzle swishes 
Because he stood for loaves and fishes, 
but parson's glass I spared a tittle. 
He give me a orange once when little, 
And he who gives a child a treat 
Makes joy-b...Read more of this...

by Hicok, Bob
...alling down 
for twigs that happens 
to benefit birds. I don't know. 
I'm staring at a tree, 
at yellow leaves 
threshed by wind and want you 
reading this to be staring 
at the same tree. I could 
cut it down and laminate it 
or ask you to live with me 
on the stairs with the window 
keeping an eye on the maple 
but I think your real life 
would miss you. The story 
here is that all morning
I've thought of the statement 
that art is about loneliness
while wat...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...The banked oars fell an hundred strong,
 And backed and threshed and ground,
But bitter was the rowers' song
 As they brought the war-boat round.


They had no heart for the rally and roar
 That makes the whale-bath smoke --
When the great blades cleave and hold and leave
 As one on the racing stroke.


They sang:--What reckoning do you keep,
 And steer by what star,
If we come unscathed from the Southern...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...s and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ed Thing, as children after play,
And they said: "The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away.
We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own."
The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and low: --
"I'm all o'er-sib ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Threshed poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things