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Famous Timber Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Note 7. When the corn is in a doubtful state, by being too green or wet, the stack-builder, by means of old timber, etc., makes a large apartment in his stack, with an opening in the side which is fairest exposed to the wind: this he calls a “fause-house.”—R. B. [back]
Note 8. Burning the nuts is a favorite charm. They name the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they lay them in the fire; and according as they burn quietly together, or...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...ng `dead or dead to me!' 

Down to the pool and narrow wharf he went,
Seeking a tavern which of old he knew,
A front of timber-crost antiquity,
So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old,
He thought it must have gone; but he was gone
Who kept it; and his widow, Miriam Lane,
With daily-dwindling profits held the house;
A haunt of brawling seamen once, but now
Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering men.
There Enoch rested silently many days. 

But Miriam Lane was good and garru...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...en
Girded it round about with a belt of luxuriant blossoms,
Filling the air with fragrance. The house itself was of timbers
Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully fitted together.
Large and low was the roof; and on slender columns supported,
Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and spacious veranda,
Haunt of the humming-bird and the bee, extended around it.
At each end of the house, amid the flowers of the garden,
Stationed the dove-cots were, as love's perpe...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...h,
One thing only must I do:
Quench my pride and cool my blood,
Lest I perish in the flood.
Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I thought was wet
Burning like the dryest flax,
Melting like the merest wax,
Lest the grave restore its dead.
Not yet has my heart or head
In the least way realized
They and I are civilized....Read more of this...
by Cullen, Countee



...ipage renew. 
Meantime through all the yards their orders run 
To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun. 
The timber rots, and useless axe doth rust, 
Th' unpracticed saw lies buried in its dust, 
The busy hammer sleeps, the ropes untwine, 
The stores and wages all are mine and thine. 
Along the coast and harbours they make care 
That money lack, nor forts be in repair. 
Long thus they could against the House conspire, 
Load them with envy, and with sitting ...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...thought his Fame shou'd ever last, 
When in some Royal Ship he stood the planted Mast; 
And shou'd again his Length of Timber rear, 
And new engrafted Branches wear 
Of fibrous Cordage and impending Shrouds, 
Still trimm'd with human Care, and water'd by the Clouds. 
But oh, you Trees! who solitary stood; 
Or you, whose Numbers form'd a Wood; 
You, who on Mountains chose to rise, 
And drew them nearer to the Skies; 
Or you, whom Valleys late did hold 
In flexible and lig...Read more of this...
by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...t all in vain: which when he saw, he ceased 
Contending, and removed his tents far off; 
Then, from the mountain hewing timber tall, 
Began to build a vessel of huge bulk; 
Measured by cubit, length, and breadth, and highth; 
Smeared round with pitch; and in the side a door 
Contrived; and of provisions laid in large, 
For man and beast: when lo, a wonder strange! 
Of every beast, and bird, and insect small, 
Came sevens, and pairs; and entered in as taught 
Their order: last...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...n the end there is no folly but this,
To counsel love out of our little learning.
For still he knows where rotten timber is,
And where the boughs for the long winter burning;
And when life needs no more of us at all,
Love's word will be the last that we recall....Read more of this...
by Drinkwater, John
...agara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
 steamers, 
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
 raftsmen
 with long-reaching sweep-oars, 
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook their supper at
 evening.

O something pernicious and dread! 
Something far away from a puny and pious life! 
Something unproved! Something in a trance! 
Something escaped from the anchorage, and driving free. 

O to wo...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...koo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound 
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound....Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...r> 

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs! 
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! 
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! 
You doors and ascending steps! you arches! 
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has been near you, ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...el, 
That should laugh at all disaster, 
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle! 
Covering many a rood of ground, 
Lay the timber piled around; 
Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak, 
And scattered here and there, with these, 
The knarred and crooked cedar knees; 
Brought from regions far away, 
From Pascagoula's sunny bay, 
And the banks of the roaring Roanoke! 
Ah! what a wondrous thing it is 
To note how many wheels of toil 
One thought, one word, can set in motion! 
There 's...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...with a book on solar wind
or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees, 

to be walking meditatively
among green timber, through the grassy forest
towards a calm sea
and looking across to more of that great island
and the further tropics....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les
...my hand at any door to knock.  I lay, where with his drowsy mates, the cock  From the cross timber of an out-house hung;  How dismal tolled, that night, the city clock!  At morn my sick heart hunger scarcely stung,  Nor to the beggar's language could I frame my tongue.   So passed another day, and so the third:  Then did I try, in vain, the crowd's resort,  I...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...name should matter between us----" 
"I shall suspect----" 
"Be good. The voices say: 
Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber 
That you shall find lies in the cellar charred 
Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it 
For a door-sill or other corner piece 
In a new cottage on the ancient spot. 
The life is not yet all gone out of it. 
And come and make your summer dwelling here, 
And perhaps she will come, still unafraid, 
And sit before you in the open door 
With ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...mortal feet, say the village folks.
Two hundred loads of elm and Scottish fir;
Planking from Dantzig.
My! What timber goes into a ship!
Tap! Tap!
Two years they have seasoned her ribs on the ways,
Tapping, tapping.
You can hear, though there's nothing where you gaze.
Through the fog down the reaches of the river,
The tapping goes on like heart-beats in a fever.
The church-bells chime
Hours and hours,
Dropping days in showers.
Bang! Rap! Tap!
Go the ha...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...to roam; 
In the place where she was homeless 
All men are at home. 
The crazy stable close at hand, 
With shaking timber and shifting sand, 
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand 
Than the square stones of Rome. 

For men are homesick in their homes, 
And strangers under the sun, 
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land 
Whenever the day is done. 
Here we have battle and blazing eyes, 
And chance and honour and high surprise, 
But our homes are under mi...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...the church,
And said, "I n'ot;* I saw him not here wirch** *know not **work
Since Saturday; I trow that he be went
For timber, where our abbot hath him sent.
And dwellen at the Grange a day or two:
For he is wont for timber for to go,
Or else he is at his own house certain.
Where that he be, I cannot *soothly sayn.*" *say certainly*
This Absolon full jolly was and light,
And thought, "Now is the time to wake all night,
For sickerly* I saw him not stirring *certai...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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