Famous Tile Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Mungojerrie And Rumpelteazer

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple 
 of cats.
As knockabout clown, quick-change comedians, tight-rope 
 walkers and acrobats
They had extensive reputation. They made their home in 
 Victoria Grove--
That was merely their centre of operation, for they were 
 incurably given to rove.
They were very well know in Cornwall Gardens, in Launceston 
 Place and in Kensington...Read more of this...

Prospect

by Sylvia Plath
 Among orange-tile rooftops
 and chimney pots
the fen fog slips,
 gray as rats,

while on spotted branch
 of the sycamore
two black rooks hunch
 and darkly glare,

watching for night,
 with absinthe eye
cocked on the lone, late,
 passer-by....Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

The Snow-Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant...Read more of this...

The Widow at Windsor

by Rudyard Kipling
 'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
 With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam -- she 'as millions at 'ome,
 An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
 (Ow, poor beggars in red!)
There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses,
 There's 'er mark on the medical stores --
An' 'er troopers you'll find with...Read more of this...

A Fountain a Bottle a Donkeys Ears and Some Books

by Robert Frost
 Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the...Read more of this...

The Snow-Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come...Read more of this...

The Jacket

by Rudyard Kipling
 Through the Plagues of Egyp' we was chasin' Arabi,
 Gettin' down an' shovin' in the sun;
An' you might 'ave called us dirty, an' you might ha' called us dry,
 An' you might 'ave 'eard us talkin' at the gun.
But the Captain 'ad 'is jacket, an' the jacket it was new --
 ('Orse Gunners, listen to my song!)
An' the wettin'...Read more of this...

The Manor Farm

by Edward Thomas
 THE rock-like mud unfroze a little, and rills 
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road 
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. 
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun; 
Nor did I value that thin gliding beam 
More than a pretty February thing 
Till I came down to the old manor farm, 
And...Read more of this...

WARS and RUMORS OF WARS

by Emanuel Xavier
 “Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars;
see that ye not be troubles;
all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet”
-Matthew 24:6

1.
I escape the horrors of war 
with a towel and a room
Offering myself 
to Palestinian and Jewish boys
as a ‘piece’ to the Middle East
when I should be concerned with the untimely deaths
of dark-skinned...Read more of this...

Salmon

by Jorie Graham
 I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
archaic,
not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper
into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,
and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,
and a blue river traveling
in opposite directions.
They would not stop, resolution of will
and helplessness, as the...Read more of this...

Egypt Tobago

by Derek Walcott
 There is a shattered palm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helm-
et of a dead warrior.

Numb Antony, in the torpor
stretching her inert
sex near him like a sleeping cat,
knows his heart is the real desert.

Over the dunes
of her heaving,
to his heart's drumming
fades the mirage of the legions,

across love-tousled sheets,
the triremes fading.
Ar the carved door of her temple
a fly wrings its...Read more of this...

An excerpt from Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus

by Denise Levertov
 iiGloria

Praise the wet snow
falling early.
Praise the shadow
my neighor's chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us 
light and the chimney's shadow. 
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown, 
that which imagined us, which stays 
our hand, 
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow...Read more of this...

Spirit Dity Of No Fax Line Dial Tone

by Bob Hicok
 The telephone company calls and asks what the fuss is. 
Betty from the telephone company, who's not concerned 
with the particulars of my life. For instance 
if I believe in the transubstantiation of Christ 
or am gladdened at 7:02 in the morning to repeat 
an eighth time why a man wearing a hula skirt of tools 
slung low on...Read more of this...

A Mediocre Man

by Robert William Service
 I'm just a mediocre man
 Of no high-brow pretence;
A comfortable life I plan
 With care and commonsense.
I do the things most people do,
 I echo what they say;
And through my morning paper view
 The problems of the day.

No doubt you think I'm colourless,
 Profoundly commonplace;
And yet I fancy, more or less,
 I represent the race.
My name may stand for...Read more of this...

The Land

by Rudyard Kipling
 When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius-a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin'' in to hay?"

And the aged Hobden answered: "I remember as a lad
My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad.
An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll...Read more of this...

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