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Famous Trowel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played....Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles



...s, flow'ry wreathes, 
 Of never-wasting bloom; 
In strong relief his goodly base 
All instruments of labor grace, 
 The trowel, spade, and loom. 

 XXXIV 
Next Theta stands to the Supreme— 
Who form'd, in number, sign, and scheme, 
 Th'illustrious lights that are: 
And one address'd his saffrom robe, 
And one, clad in a silver globe, 
 Held rule with ev'ry star. 

 XXXV 
Iota's tun'd to choral hymns 
Of those that fly, while he that swims 
 In thankful safety lurks; 
And foot...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher
...
 Now there wasn't a trick in brick or stone 
 Which this young man hadn't seen or known;
 Nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul
 But this young man could use 'em all!

 Then up and spoke the plumbyers bold,
 Which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold:
 "Since you with us have made so free,
 Will you kindly say what your name might be? "

 The young man kindly answered them:
 "It might be Lot or Methusalem,
 Or it might be Moses (a man I hate),
 Whereas it is Phara...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...runs a drug store.

I don’t care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.
...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...and lo! Manhattan arming.

3
To the drum-taps prompt, 
The young men falling in and arming; 
The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s hammer, tost
 aside
 with
 precipitation;) 
The lawyer leaving his office, and arming—the judge leaving the court; 
The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly
 down on
 the
 horses’ backs;
The salesman leaving the store—the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving; 
Squads ga...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shri...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...se with an introspective eye. 
'Is it my childhood there,' he asks, 
'Sealed in a hearse and hurrying by?' 
He taps his trowel against a stone; 
The trowel sings with a silver tone.

'Nevertheless I know this well. 
Bury it deep and toll a bell, 
Bury it under land or sea, 
You cannot bury it save in me.'

It is as if his soul had become a city, 
With noisily peopled streets, and through these streets 
Senlin himself comes driving a small white hearse . . . 
'Senlin!' we cry....Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...s.

3

I walk to my work, says Senlin, along a street 
Superbly hung in space. 
I lift these mortal stones, and with my trowel 
I tap them into place. 
But is god, perhaps, a giant who ties his tie 
Grimacing before a colossal glass of sky?

These stones are heavy, these stones decay, 
These stones are wet with rain, 
I build them into a wall today, 
Tomorrow they fall again.

Does god arise from a chaos of starless sleep, 
Rise from the dark and stretch his arms and yawn; 
A...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...wo at each end, carefully bearing on their
 shoulders a
 heavy stick for a cross-beam, 
The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands, rapidly laying the long
 side-wall, two
 hundred feet from front to rear, 
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the
 bricks, 
The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock
 of
 the
 trowel-handle, 
The piles of materials, the mortar on the m...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...leepy mariner I do affright.


"But all day long upon this gold I lie
Within this place, where never mason's hand
Smote trowel on the marble noisily;
Drowsy I lie, no folk at my command,
Who once was called the Lady of the Land;
Who might have bought a kingdom with a kiss,
Yea, half the world with such a sight as this."


And therewithal, with rosy fingers light,
Backward her heavy-hanging hair she threw,
To give her naked beauty more to sight;
But when, forgetting all the th...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...st the rubble.
His eye matches exactly the bubble
in my spirit-level.
I set aside hammer and chisel
and take him on the trowel.

The entire population of Ireland
springs from a pair left to stand
overnight in a pond
in the gardens of Trinity College,
two bottle of wine left there to chill
after the Act of Union.

There is, surely, in this story
a moral. A moral for our times.
What if I put him to my head
and squeezed it out of him,
like the juice of freshly squeezed limes,
or...Read more of this...
by Muldoon, Paul

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things