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Famous Tidy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...A a Pidy, Widy, Tidy, Pidy, Nice insidy, Apple-pie! ...Read more of this...
by Lear, Edward



...A Lady red -- amid the Hill
Her annual secret keeps!
A Lady white, within the Field
In placid Lily sleeps!

The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms --
Sweep vale -- and hill -- and tree!
Prithee, My pretty Housewives!
Who may expected be?

The Neighbors do not yet suspect!
The Woods exchange a smile!
Orchard, and Buttercup, and Bird --
In such a little while!

And yet, how still the Landscape stands!
How nonchalant the Hedge!
As if the "Resurrection"
Were nothing very str...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...See her come bearing down, a tidy craft!
Gaily her topsails bulge, her sidelights burn!
There's jigging in her rigging fore and aft,
And beauty's self, not name, limned on her stern.

See at her head the Jolly Roger flutters!
"God, is she fully manned? If she's one short..."
Cadet, bargee, longshoreman, shellback mutters;
Drowned is reason that should me comfort.

Bu...Read more of this...
by Amis, Kingsley
...Cinderella in the street
In a ragged gown,
Sloven slippers on her feet,
Shames our tidy town;
Harsh her locks of ashen grey,
Vapour vague her stare,
By the curb this bitter day
Selling papers there.

Cinderella once was sweet,
Fine and lily fair,
Silver slippers on her feet,
Ribands in her hair;
Solid men besought her hand,
Tart was she as quince,
Living in a fairy land,
Waiting for a Prince.

Days went by and years went by,
Wistfu...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...aside.
Drill your apt and docile measures
Sternly as you drill your pride.

Show your quick, alarming skill in
Tidy mockeries of art;
Never, never dip your quill in
Ink that rushes from your heart.

When your pain must come to paper,
See it dust, before the day;
Let your night-light curl and caper,
Let it lick the words away.

Never print, poor child, a lay on
Love and tears and anguishing,
Lest a cooled, benignant Phaon
Murmur, "Silly little thing!"...Read more of this...
by Parker, Dorothy



...ardrobe.

An unwrinkling of smiles, the hard handshake

Of work-roughened hands.



One night he smashed up the tidy flat.

The TV screen was powder

The clock ticked on the neat lawn

‘Murder in Seacroft Hospital’

Emblazoned on the kitchen wall.



I went with you and your sister in her car to Roundhay Wing.

Your sister had to leave for work or sleep

You had to back to meet the children from school.

For Ward 42 it wasn’t an especially difficult ad...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...r>

Now I am a man no more no more
And a black reward for a roaring life,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers),
Tidy and cursed in my dove cooed room
I lie down thin and hear the good bells jaw--
For, oh, my soul found a sunday wife
In the coal black sky and she bore angels!
Harpies around me out of her womb!
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!...Read more of this...
by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...pleased her: 
One bleached from lying in a sunny place, 
One marked in circles by a vase of water, 
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, 
 And coloured, by her daughter - 
So they had waited, till, in widowhood 
She found them, looking for something else, and stood 

Relearning how each frank submissive chord 
 Had ushered in 
Word after sprawling hyphenated word, 
And the unfailing sense of being young 
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein 
 That hidden fresh...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip
...
Never such innocence 
Never before or since 
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy 
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a littlewhile longer:
Never such innocence again.

1964...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip
...hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kelsal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone....Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...I love the cheery bustle
Of children round the house,
The tidy maids a-hustle,
The chatter of my spouse;
The laughter and the singing,
The joy on every face:
With frequent laughter ringing,
O, Home's a happy place!

Aye, Home's a bit of heaven;
I love it every day;
My line-up of eleven
Combine to make it gay;
Yet when in June they're leaving
For Sandport by the sea,
By rights I should be grieving,
But gosh! I just ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...d and a little perplexed; 

And weak with the effort of endless evacuation 
Of the long monotonous Now, the repetitive, tidy 
Officialdom of each siding, of each little station 
Labelled Monday, Tuesday - and goodness ! what happened to - Friday ? 

And the maddening way the other passengers alter: 
The schoolgirl who goes to the Ladies' comes back to her seat 
A lollipop blonde who leads you on to assault her, 
And you've just got her skirts round her waist and her pants rou...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...itual eyelids:Mysterious fish scales,Dark curtains on rose visions…For looking so far, they never see!    Piety for the tidy heads of hair–Mystical haloes–Gently combed like lakesWhich the storm’s black fan,Black and enormous, never thrashes;Piety for the spirits, illustrious,Carved of diamonds,High, clear, ecstaticLightning rods on pious domes;Piety for the lips like celestial settingsWhere the invisible pearls of the Host gleam;–Lips that never existed,Never seized anything...Read more of this...
by Agustini, Delmira
...to reconstruct. 

And their profits from the business have been twenty-five per cent, 
Which, I reckon, is a pretty tidy whack, 
And I think it's only proper, now the thing has come a cropper, 
That they ought to pay a little of it back. 

I have read about "reserve funds", "banking freeholds", and the like, 
Till I thought the bank had thousands of assets, 
And it strikes me very funny that they take a fellow's money 
When they haven't got enough to pay their debts.<...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...So you're writing for a paper? Well, it's nothing very new 
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; 
You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, 
But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. 
Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, 
I myself -- you mayn't believe it -- helped to run a paper once 
With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown, 
And I'll tell you all about it if you'll take...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...Up attic, Lucas Harrison, God rest
his frugal bones, once kept a tidy account
by knifecut of some long-gone harvest.
The wood was new. The pitch ran down to blunt 
the year: 1811, the score: 10, he carved
into the center rafter to represent
his loves, beatings, losses, hours, or maybe
the butternuts that taxed his back and starved
the red squirrels higher up each scabbed tree.
1812 ran better. If it was bu...Read more of this...
by Kumin, Maxine
...of themselves 
Certain soon to ruin their masters 

II. The women’s role 

As they sing, the maids dash forward 
To tidy up the killing fields 
Well-powdered girls, quickly to their knees 

Their hands -- reaching for the fresh air -- 
Are blue like never before 
What a glorious day! 

Look at their hands, the dead 
Look at their liquid eyes 

This is the toilet of transience 
The final toilet of life 
Stones sink and disappear 
In the vast, primal waters 
The final toile...Read more of this...
by Eluard, Paul
...Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
Round of its own accord.

There's no career in the venture
Of riding against the lizard,
Himself withered these latter-days
To leaf-size from lack of action:
History's beaten the hazard.

The last crone got burnt up
M...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...ool-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school, 
And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot ***** boy and girl, 
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. 

His own parents, 
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and
 birth’d
 him, 
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him. 

The ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...e presence of the rest; 
There's a chum that you can go to when you feel inclined to whine, 
He'll declare your coat is tidy, and he'll say: `Just look at mine!' 
Though you may be patched all over he will say it doesn't show, 
And he'll swear it can't be noticed when your pants begin to go. 

Brother mine, and of misfortune! times are hard, but do not fret, 
Keep your courage up and struggle, and we'll laugh at these things yet, 
Though there is no corn in Egypt, surely ...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

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