Famous Ties Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Hill Wife

by Robert Frost
 I. LONELINESS

 Her Word

One ought not to have to care
 So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
 To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
 With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
 Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the...Read more of this...

Omaha

by Carl Sandburg
 RED barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha—the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.

Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs—and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.

A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears...Read more of this...

O wheel of heaven! no ties of bread you feel,

by Omar Khayyam
O wheel of heaven! no ties of bread you feel,
No ties of salt, you flay me like an eel!
A woman's wheel spins clothes for man and wife,
It does more good than you, O heavenly wheel!...Read more of this...

To A Beautiful Quaker

by George (Lord) Byron
 Sweet girl! though only once we met,
That meeting I shall ne'er forget;
And though we ne'er may meet again,
Remembrance will thy form retain.
I would not say, "I love," but still
My senses struggle with my will:
In vain, to drive thee from my breast,
My thoughts are more and more represt;
In vain I check the rising sighs,
Another to the last replies:
Perhaps this is...Read more of this...

Bridge-Guard in the Karroo

by Rudyard Kipling
 1901 ". . . and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge." District Orders-Lines of Communication, South African War.
Sudden the desert changes,
 The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
 Stand up like the thrones of Kings --

Ramparts of slaughter and peril --
 Blazing, amazing, aglow --
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
 And the wine-dark flats...Read more of this...

Chemin De Fer

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Alone on the railroad track
 I walked with pounding heart.
The ties were too close together
 or maybe too far apart.

The scenery was impoverished:
 scrub-pine and oak; beyond
its mingled gray-green foliage
 I saw the little pond

where the dirty old hermit lives,
 lie like an old tear
holding onto its injuries
 lucidly year after year.

The hermit shot off his shot-gun
 and the...Read more of this...

Nevertheless

by Marianne Moore
 you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow 
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear - 

leaf...Read more of this...

The Soldier's Grave

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
[To the memory of Lieut. Wm. W. Wardell, of the First Massachusetts
Cavalry, killed May 28, 1864.]
Above his head the cypress waves
  Its dark green drooping leaves;
The sunlight through its branches wide
Where bright birds linger side by side
  A golden net-work weaves.
Within the church-yard's silent gloom
  He lies in quiet rest;
And never more to cold, pale brow,
Or proud...Read more of this...

Celebates

by Robert William Service
 They must not wed the Doctor said,
 For they were far from strong,
And children of their marriage bed
 Might not live overlong.
And yet each eve I saw them pass
 With rapt and eager air,
As fit a seeming lad and lass
 As ought to pair.

For twenty years I went away
 And scoured the China Sea,
Then homing came and found that...Read more of this...

Bereavement

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops to perfection's remembrance a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheeks are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from...Read more of this...

Compensation Pete

by Robert William Service
 He used to say: There ain't a doubt
Misfortune is a bitter pill,
But if you only pry it out
You'll find there's good in every ill.
There's comfort in the worst of woe,
There's consolation in defeat . . .
Oh what a solace-seeker! So
We called him Compensation Pete.

He lost his wealth - but was he pipped?
Why no - "That's fine," he used to...Read more of this...

Sonnet XV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XV. Discolorato hai, Morte, il più bel volto. HER PRESENCE IN VISIONS IS HIS ONLY CONSOLATION.  Death, thou of fairest face hast 'reft the hue,And quench'd in deep thick night the brightest eyes,[Pg 247]And loosed from all its tenderest, closest tiesA spirit to faith and ardent virtue true.Read more of this...

To a Lady on the Death of Her Husband

by Phillis Wheatley
Grim monarch! see, depriv'd of vital breath,
A young physician in the dust of death:
Dost thou go on incessant to destroy,
Our griefs to double, and lay waste our joy?
"Enough" thou never yet wast known to say,
Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway:
Nor youth, nor science, nor the ties of love,
Nor aught on earth thy flinty heart can move.
The friend, the...Read more of this...

No, my heart has never tired of you

by Emile Verhaeren
No, my heart has never tired of you.
In the time of June, long ago, you said to me: "If I knew, friend, if I knew that my presence one day might be a burden to you— with my poor heart and sorrowful thoughts, I would go away, no matter where."
And gently your forehead rose towards my kiss.
And you said to...Read more of this...

Because you came one day

by Emile Verhaeren
Because you came one day so simply along the paths of devotion and took my life into your beneficent hands, I love and praise and thank you with my senses, with my heart and brain, with my whole being stretched like a torch towards your unquenchable goodness and charity.
Since that day, I know what love, pure and bright as the...Read more of this...

The Rhyme of the Three Greybeards

by Henry Lawson
 He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat", 
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote", 
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote. 

And so his friends held meetings (Oh, narrow souls were theirs!) 
To advertise their little selves and Joseph's own affairs. 
They got up a collection for Joseph unawares. 

They...Read more of this...

To M. S. G

by George (Lord) Byron
 Whene'er I view those lips of thine,
Their hue invites my fervent kiss;
Yet, I forego that bliss divine,
Alas! it were---unhallow'd bliss.

Whene'er I dream of that pure breast,
How could I dwell upon its snows!
Yet, is the daring wish represt,
For that,---would banish its repose.

A glance from thy soul-searching eye
Can raise with hope, depress with fear;
Yet, I conceal my love,---and why?
I would not...Read more of this...

Southern Pacific

by Carl Sandburg
 HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.
Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.
Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir.

Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long.
Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid.
Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir.

Huntington,
Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long....Read more of this...

A Song Of Peach-blossom River

by Wang Wei
A fisherman is drifting, enjoying the spring mountains, 
And the peach-trees on both banks lead him to an ancient source. 
Watching the fresh-coloured trees, he never thinks of distance 
Till he comes to the end of the blue stream and suddenly- strange men! 
It's a cave-with a mouth so narrow that he has to crawl through; 
But then it opens...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXIX. Lieti flori e felici, e ben nate erbe. HE ENVIES EVERY SPOT THAT SHE FREQUENTS.  Gay, joyous blooms, and herbage glad with showers,O'er which my pensive fair is wont to stray!Thou plain, that listest her melodious lay,As her fair feet imprint thy waste of flowers!Ye shrubs so trim; ye...Read more of this...

Joy and Pleasure

by William Henry Davies
 Now, joy is born of parents poor, 
And pleasure of our richer kind; 
Though pleasure's free, she cannot sing 
As sweet a song as joy confined. 

Pleasure's a Moth, that sleeps by day 
And dances by false glare at night; 
But Joy's a Butterfly, that loves 
To spread its wings in Nature's light. 

Joy's like a Bee that gently...Read more of this...

The End Of March

by Elizabeth Bishop
 For John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read: Duxbury


It was cold and windy, scarcely the day 
to take a walk on that long beach 
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, 
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, 
seabirds in ones or twos. 
The rackety, icy, offshore wind 
numbed our faces on one side; 
disrupted the formation 
of a...Read more of this...

How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

by Fernando Pessoa
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

Upon our countenance of soul, and when,

If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,

Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?

The true mask feels no inside to the mask

But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.

Whatever consciousness begins the task

The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.

Like a child frighted by its mirrored...Read more of this...

When First I Met Thee

by Thomas Moore
 When first I met thee, warm and young, 
There shone such truth about thee, 
And on thy lip such promise hung, 
I did not dare to doubt thee. 
I saw thee change, yet still relied, 
Still clung with hope the fonder, 
And thought, though false to all beside, 
From me thou couldst not wander. 
But go, deceiver! go, 
The...Read more of this...

Absence

by Claude McKay
 Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool, 
Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool. 

Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb, 
Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim. 

But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties 
Now, through the menacing miles,...Read more of this...

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