Famous Tick Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tick poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tick poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tick poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Marriott Edgar
Joe Ramshottom rented a bit of a farm
From its owner, Squire Goslett his name;
And the Gosletts came over with William the First,
And found Ramsbottoms here when they came.
One day Joe were ploughing his three-acre field
When the front of his plough hit a rock,
And on closer inspection o' t' damage he found
As the coulter had snapped wi' the shock.
He'd...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring,
After each other drifting, past my window drifting!
And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting
The years till a terror came in my heart at times,
With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last
My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay
Hearing the tick of the clock, and the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
He gave the solid rail a hateful kick.
From far away there came an answering tick
And then another tick. He knew the code:
His hate had roused an engine up the road.
He wished when he had had the track alone
He had attacked it with a club or stone
And bent some rail wide open like switch
So as to wreck the engine in...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
You ask me for a sonnet. Ah, my Dear,
Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon?
Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June
And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere?
For your sake, I would go and seek the year,
Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune,
Blown sands of drifted hours, which the moon
Streaks with a ghostly finger, and...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
A grey gull hovered overhead,
Then wisely flew away.
'In half a jiffy you'll be dead,'
I thought I heard it say;
As there upon the railway line,
Checking an urge to cough,
I laboured to de-fuse the mine
That had not yet gone off.
I tapped around the time-clock rim,
Then something worried me.
I heard the singing of a hymn:
Nearer my...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, -- so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense,
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above...Read more of this...
by
Arna Bontemps
Then the golden hour
Will tick its last
And the flame will go down in the flower.
A briefer length of moon
Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.
Then we may think of this, yet
There will be something forgotten
And something we should forget.
It will be like all things we know: .
A stone will fail; a rose is sure...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Tick-tocking in my ear
My dollar clock I hear.
'Arise,' it seems to say:
'Behold another day
To grasp the golden key
Of Opportunity;
To turn the magic lock--
Tick-tock!
'Another day to gain
Some goal you sought in vain;
to sing a sweeter song,
Perchance to right a wrong;
To win a height unscaled
Where yesterday you failed;
To brave a battle shock--
Tick-tock!'
You measure out my breath,
Each beat one nearer...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I know some lonely Houses off the Road
A Robber'd like the look of --
Wooden barred,
And Windows hanging low,
Inviting to --
A Portico,
Where two could creep --
One -- hand the Tools --
The other peep --
To make sure All's Asleep --
Old fashioned eyes --
Not easy to surprise!
How orderly the Kitchen'd look, by night,
With just a Clock --
But they could gag the Tick...Read more of this...
by
Alden Nowlan
Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.
Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
Corinna, Pride of Drury-Lane,
For whom no Shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a batter'd, strolling Toast;
No drunken Rake to pick her up,
No Cellar where on Tick to sup;
Returning at the Midnight Hour;
Four Stories climbing to her Bow'r;
Then, seated on a three-legg'd Chair,
Takes off her artificial Hair:
Now, picking out a Crystal Eye,
She wipes it clean, and...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up
with what's left of heaven, nearby a patch
of daffodils rooted down
where dirt and stones comprise a kind
of night, unmetaphysical, cool as a skeptic's
final sentence. What this scene needs
is a nude absentmindedly sunning herself
on a large rock, thinks the man fed up
with nature, or perhaps a lost tiger,
the maximum amount of wildness...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one,...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I sit in the twilight dim
At the close of an idle day,
And I list to the soft sweet hymn,
That rises far away,
And dies on the evening air.
Oh, all day long,
They sing their song,
Who toil in the valley there.
But never a song sing I,
Sitting with folded hands,
The hours pass me by -
Dropping their...Read more of this...
by
Mark Van Doren
Love me little, love me long,
Then we neither can be wrong:
You in giving, I in taking;
There is nor a heart breaking
But remembers one touch,
Or maybe seven, of too much.
Love me more than halfway, though.
Let me think, then let me know.
And I promise you the same:
A little wild, a little tame;
Lest it ever seem long:
Tick, tock, ding, dong....Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.'
'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an old lady of France,Who taught little ducklings to dance;When she said, "Tick-a-tack!" they only said, "Quack!"Which grieved that old lady of France. ...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,
A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,
No rings through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,
Mill a litter of breasts like...Read more of this...
by
T Wignesan
Chin cupped
on the ancient bone of his
elbow
he spread five fingers
to the world:
and like a cat on zither strings
the hoarse voice of his fathers
issues from his forgotten children:
now he picks one tick
from the back of that suckling cow:
his failing fingers
find not the strength
to crush
Not a single eyelash twitters
pass him by
pass him
'Wake not a man asleep
And tell him he has
Nothing to eat.'...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I bought a cuckoo clock
And glad was I
To hear its tick and tock,
Its dulcet cry.
But Jones, whose wife is young
And pretty too,
Winced when that bird gave tongue:
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
I have a lady friend
Whom I would wed,
For dalliance should end
In bridal bed.
Until the thought occurred:
Can she be true?
And then I heard that bird:
Cuckoo!...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered
over with silver, brocaded
In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes,
it lies there,
Warm from a woman's soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it,
caressing.
Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her
lingers and drugs me!
A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
1. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and...Read more of this...
by
Ted Kooser
Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles....Read more of this...
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