Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Tip Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...s this darkness reveals that which darkness alone 
loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings— 
not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion 
of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves 
its own caretaker. 
And here are the orchids! 
 Never having seen 
such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: 
This is an odd January, died—in Villon's time. 
Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet 
grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom. 

And this, a ce...Read more of this...



by Aiken, Conrad
...words, the cadence, and the rhyme?
Chang Hsu, calligrapher of great renown,
needed to put but his three cupfuls down
to tip his brush with lightning. On the scroll,
wreaths of cloud rolled left and right, the sky
opened upon Forever. Which is which?
The poem? Or the peachtree in the ditch?
Or is all one? Yes, all is text, the immortal text,
Sheepfold Hill the poem, the poem Sheepfold Hill,
and we, Li Po, the man who sings, sings as he climbs,
transposing rhymes to roc...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...ir place,
Came for additions; yet their purposed trim
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kinds of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will:

'That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both en...Read more of this...

by Amjad, Majeed
...of Music,

And traipsing through the land of glad tidings,

Mirthfully smothering the tinkling of their anklets,

Tip toe up, haltingly, secretively,

To the gates of her lips,

Why her gaze sparkles and smiles ?

 

Leaping over islands of silence

And wastelands of sealed lip pining,

When the silhouettes of desire

Come waltzing in

To nestle in an intimate moment’s nest,

Why her gaze sparkles and smiles ?

 

Her soul, that Sprite-Princess,

...Read more of this...

by Lewis, C S
...ss that moves us more than fear, 
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear, 
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart 
That finger-tip at which we start 
As if some thought too swift and shy 
For reason's grasp had just gone by?...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...
In the midnight car

We kissed and you

Drew my hand

To the bud

Of your breast

And touched

Your lip

With a finger-tip.





31



On the way home

You had to wee

And told me not

To watch but

Closed your eyes

As you hitched

Up your dress.



At the end of

Falmouth Terrace

Under your mother’s

Eye gravely you

Kissed me good-night.





32



On a Holy Day of Obligation

I went with Margaret up

The hill to Mount St. Mary’s,

The path was rough and ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ing toward the other goal
Of his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine,
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to bed;
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We, that are of purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months an...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...vales of Thessaly:
Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound
With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,
Now coming from beneath the forest trees,
A venerable priest full soberly,
Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye
Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,
And after him his sacred vestments swept.
From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,
Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;
And in his left he held...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...dress of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
t...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Which Merlin's hand, the Mage at Arthur's court, 
Knowing all arts, had touched, and everywhere 
At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening peak 
And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven. 
And ever and anon a knight would pass 
Outward, or inward to the hall: his arms 
Clashed; and the sound was good to Gareth's ear. 
And out of bower and casement shyly glanced 
Eyes of pure women, wholesome stars of love; 
And all about a healthful people stept 
As in the presen...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...a woman.

Chinese work! Japanese work!
Just look at the art
in this latest work of LI-LI-FU."

Screaming at the tip of his voice,
the Chinese magician
 LI.
His shriveled yellow spider of a hand
tossed long thin knives into the air:
one
 one more
 one
 one more
 five
 one more.
Tracing lightning-like circles in the air,
his knives flew up in a steady stream.
Gioconda looked,
 she kept looking,
 she'd still be looking
but, like a large-colored Chinese lanter...Read more of this...

by Wilbur, Richard
...a table.

Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom's 
Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls 
On the tip of the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry: 
The boys stamp, and the girls
Shriek, and the drum booms
And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye....Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...muse takes over

I am snatched from order and duty

Blowing routine into a riot of going

And coming, blind, backwards, tip

Over ****, sea waves crashing in suburbia,

Saturnalia in Sutton, headlines of mad poet

Striding naked over moors, roaring

"I am here I am waiting".

V

Jeremy Reed

Niagaras of letters on pink sheets

In sheaths of silver envelopes

Mutually exchanged. I open your missives

Like undressing a girl in my teens

Undoing the flap like a recalcitr...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...ky. the town was ten miles away,
downhill. I peeled my poor dollars from my poor
roll. and the boy needed a tip, of
course.

the way it was shaping up I could see that I was
hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even
Robert Creeley. certainly Creeley wouldn't have
had beerstains on his
shirt.

anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his
x-wives I was too drunk to
make it.

scared too. sure, I imagined him peering
through the window-
he didn't want to ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...derlined with blue,
And flashing where the round clouds, blown away, Let drop the 
yellow sunshine to gleam through
And tip the edges of the waves with shifts And spots of whitest 
fire, hard like gems
Cut from the midnight moon they were, and sharp As 
wind through leafless stems.
The Lady Eunice walked between the drifts
Of blooming cherry-trees, and watched the rifts
Of clouds drawn through the river's azure warp.

II
Her little feet tapped softly down the path.Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips; 
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled
 neck; 
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other; 
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;)
The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded by the Great
 Secretaries; 
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms; 
The crew of the fish-smack pack re...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...natives, under banana trees,
Smear with the juice of some deadly snake.
Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make
And tip with feathers, orange and green,
A quivering death, in harlequin sheen.
High up, a fan of glancing steel
Was formed of claymores in a wheel.
Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees
Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these
Elbowed stilettos come from Spain,
Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name.
There were Samurai swords from old Jap...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...let the rabbit run, the cock declaim. 

379 Trinket pasticcio, flaunting skyey sheets, 
380 With Crispin as the tiptoe cozener? 
381 No, no: veracious page on page, exact. 

V 

A Nice Shady Home 

382 Crispin as hermit, pure and capable, 
383 Dwelt in the land. Perhaps if discontent 
384 Had kept him still the pricking realist, 
385 Choosing his element from droll confect 
386 Of was and is and shall or ought to be, 
387 Beyond Bordeaux, beyond Ha...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...nnets ferociously planned
 A novel arrangement of bows:
While the Billiard-marker with quivering hand
 Was chalking the tip of his nose.

But the Butcher turned nervous, and dressed himself fine,
 With yellow kid gloves and a ruff--
Said he felt it exactly like going to dine,
 Which the Bellman declared was all "stuff."

"Introduce me, now there's a good fellow," he said,
 "If we happen to meet it together!"
And the Bellman, sagaciously nodding his head,
 Said "That m...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...e sails the dew did drip--
Till clomb above the eastern bar
The horn'ed Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

The souls did from their bodies fly,--
They fled to bliss or ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Tip poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things