Famous Timed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Ramble in St. Jamess Park

...ience cease to please us,
Ere I desist with all my power
To plague this woman and undo her.
But my revenge will best be timed
When she is married that is limed.
In that most lamentable state
I'll make her feel my scorn and hate:
Pelt her with scandals, truth or lies,
And her poor cur with jealousied,
Till I have torn him from her breech,
While she whines like a dog-drawn *****;
Loathed and despised, kicked out o' th' Town
Into some dirty hole alone,
To chew the cud of misery
...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John


An Alphabet of Famous Goops

...nswered, 'Yes, I'll Try!' for MICAH Thought it Wrong to Cry.
39 Yet he was Always Asking Questions and Making quite Ill-timed Suggestions.

40 I Fancy NICODEMUS Knew as Much as I, or even You;
41 He was Too Careful, I am Sure, to Scratch or Soil the Furniture;
42 He never Squirmed, he never Squalled; he Never Came when he was Called!

43 Some think that OBADIAH'S Charm was that he Never Tried to Harm
44 Dumb Animals in any Way, though Some are Cruel when they Play.
45 But tho...Read more of this...
by Burgess, Gelett

Berket And The Stars

...s! Let's have one!"
And he made to snatch an orange from the vender's cart.

Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed 
to the full sweep of certain wave summits, 
that the rumor of the thing has come down through 
three generations—which is relatively forever!...Read more of this...
by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)

General Roberts in Afghanistan

...a rifle from one of his men and did retire,
And levelled the piece fearlessly and did fire;
And with a steady and well-timed shot
He shot the Afghan leader dead on the spot. 

Then the British with a wild cheer dashed, at them,
And on each side around they did them hem;
And at the bayonet charge they drove them down the hill,
And in hundreds they did them kill. 

Then in a confused mass they fled down the opposite side of the hill
In hundreds,driven by sheer force sore again...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon

...with the long-drawn Ojibwa,
Uncouth and mournful.

Soft with the silver drip of the regular paddles
Falling in rhythm, timed with the liquid, plangent
Sounds from the blades where the whirlpools break and are carried 
Down into darkness;

Each long cadence, flying like a dove from her shelter
Deep in the shadow, wheels for a throbbing moment,
Poises in utterance, returning in circles of silver
To nest in the silence.

All wild nature stirs with the infinite, tender
Plaint of...Read more of this...
by Scott, Duncan Campbell


Not Even My Pride Shall Suffer Much

...Not even my pride shall suffer much;
Not even my pride at all, maybe,
If this ill-timed, intemperate clutch
Be loosed by you and not by me,
Will suffer; I have been so true
A vestal to that only pride
Wet wood cannot extinguish, nor
Sand, nor its embers scattered, for,
See all these years, it has not died.

And if indeed, as I dare think,
You cannot push this patient flame,
By any breath your lungs could store,
Even for a moment to the fl...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

September

...g and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere.

We stand; leaves have not timed the summer.
No clock now needs
Tell we have only what we remember:
Minutes uproaring with our heads

Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's 
When the senseless mob rules;
And quietly the trees casting their crowns
Into the pools....Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire

Smoke and Steel

...tomatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel.
Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped:
Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky.

Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks with an evening paper for the woman and kids, you Steve with your head wondering where we all end up—
Finders...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

The Arrivals

.... What did I think
in that brain gridded for thought, its cups
loaded with languageless rennet? And at night,
when they timed me, four hours of screaming, not a
minute more, four, those quatrains of
icy yell, then the cold tap water
to get me over my shameless hunger,
what was it like to be there when that
hunger was driven into my structure at such
heat it alloyed that iron? Where have I
been while this person is leading my life
with her patience, will and order? In the gard...Read more of this...
by Olds, Sharon

The Children Dancing

..., escape, and meet; 
Come joyous-eyed and advancing 
Or floatingly retreat.
Now slow, now swifter treading 
Their paces timed and true, 
An instant poised, then threading 
A maze of printless clue, 
Their motions smoothly wedding 
To melody anew,
They sway in chime, and scatter 
In looping circles; they 
Are Music's airy matter, 
And their feet move, the way 
The raindrops shine and patter 
On tossing flowers in May.
As if those flowers were singing 
For joy of the clean air,...Read more of this...
by Binyon, Laurence

The Double Image

...if death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me
and said I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out
and still I couldn't answer.

4.

That winter she came
part way back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise of the X-ray,
the cells' arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...huntsmen and a noisy train
Of loyal-stomached flatterers and their squires
Clattered in retinue, and aped his pace,
And timed their talk by his, and worked their eyes
By intimation of his glance, with great
And drilled precision.
Then said the fool:
"'Twas a brave flight, my lord, that last one! brave.
Didst note the heron once did turn about,
And show a certain anger with his wing,
And make as if he almost dared, not quite,
To strike the falcon, ere the falcon him?
A foolish...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The King

...od-bye, Romance!" the Skipper said;
 "He vanished with the coal we burn;
Our dial marks full steam ahead,
 Our speed is timed to half a turn.
Sure as the ferried barge we ply
'Twixt port and port. Romance, good-bye!"

"Romance!" the season-tickets mourn,
 "He never ran to catch his train,
But passed with coach and guard and horn --
 And left the local -- late again!"
Confound Romance! . . . And all unseen
Romance brought up the nine-fifteen.

His hand was on the lever laid,
 ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Marble Faun

...might prompt thee—to shake down 
 The moss that hangs from ruined centuries, 
 And, with the vain noise of throe ill-timed words, 
 To mar the recollections of the dead?" 
 
 Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist 
 I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days, 
 And still behind me—hieroglyph obscure 
 Of antique alphabet—the lonely Faun 
 Held to his laughter, through the falling night. 
 
 I went my way; but yet—in saddened spirit 
 Pondering on all that had my...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

The Mother Mourns

...y domain. 

"He holds as inept his own soul-shell - 
 My deftest achievement - 
Contemns me for fitful inventions 
 Ill-timed and inane: 

"No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape, 
 My moon as the Night-queen, 
My stars as august and sublime ones 
 That influences rain: 

"Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching, 
 Immoral my story, 
My love-lights a lure, that my species 
 May gather and gain. 

"'Give me,' he has said, 'but the matter 
 And means the gods lot her, 
My brain cou...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer

...itself of hair and bone
That, sewn to me by nerve and brain,
Had stringed my flask of matter to his rib.

My fuses are timed to charge his heart,
He blew like powder to the light
And held a little sabbath with the sun,
But when the stars, assuming shape,
Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep
He drowned his father's magics in a dream.

All issue armoured, of the grave,
The redhaired cancer still alive,
The cataracted eyes that filmed their cloth;
Some dead undid their bushy ja...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

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