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Famous Units Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Cavafy, Constantine P
...in mind --
that in the great addition (their addition that I abhor)
that has so many numbers, I am not one
of the many units there. In the final sum
I have not been calculated. And this joy suffices me....Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...From the Waterlow Unit and the Whittington’s A&E.

Some say they know their way by the pubs

But I find psychiatric units more useful.

At a reading like this you never know just who

Might have a do and need some Haldol fast.

(Especially if the poet hovering round sanity’s border

Should chance upon the critic who thinks his Word

Is law and order - the first’s a devotee of a Krishna cult

For rich retirees; the second wrote a good book once

On early Hughes, bu...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...in.



22



We moved to the new estate, Airey semis

With their pebble-dash prefabricated slats,

Built-in kitchen units and made-to-measure gardens.

Every Saturday I went back to the streets,

Dinner at Auntie Nellie’s, Yorkies, mash and gravy,

Then the matin?e at the Princess with Margaret,

The queen of my ten-year old heart.





23



Everybody was on the move, half the neighbours

To the new estates or death, newcomers with

Rough tongues from over the br...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...r savan’s studies long, 
Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils, To fashion his Eidólon. 
 Of every human life, 
(The units gather’d, posted—not a thought, emotion, deed, left out;)
The whole, or large or small, summ’d, added up, In its Eidólon. 
 The old, old urge; 
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo! newer, higher pinnacles; 
From Science and the Modern still impell’d, The old, old urge, Eidólons. 
 The present, now and here,
America’s busy, teeming, intricate whi...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,
And happy units of a numerous herd
Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,
Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose;
And where they fly for dinner no one knows—
The dew-drops feed them not—they love the shine
Of noon, whose suns may b...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...er chain.



We moved to the new estate, Airey semis

With their pebble-dash prefabricated slats,

Built-in kitchen units and made-to-measure gardens.

Every Saturday I went back to the streets,

Dinner at Auntie Nellie’s, Yorkies, mash and gravy,

Then the matinee at the Princess with Margaret,

The queen of my ten-year old heart.



Everybody was on the move, half the neighbours

To the new estates or death, newcomers with

Rough tongues from over the bridge slu...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...d me for a teamster.
He said, “Go to work, you Tuscan bastard,
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses.”

The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.

I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.

Lincoln said, “Get into the game; your nation takes you.”
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.
...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...oe
Attempted of the Hounds

'Tis Terror as consummate
As Legions of Alarm
Did leap, full flanked, upon the Host --
'Tis Units -- make the Swarm --

A Small Leech -- on the Vitals --
The sliver, in the Lung --
The Bung out -- of an Artery --
Are scarce accounted -- Harms --

Yet might -- by relation
To that Repealless thing --
A Being -- impotent to end --
When once it has begun --...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...corresponding
to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds
or katydid-legs above each eye numbering all units
in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth
to droop or rise in unison like porcupine-quills.
He lets himself be flattened out by gravity,
as seaweed is tamed and weakened by the sun,
compelled when extended, to lie stationary.
Sleep is the result of his delusion that one must do as well
 as one can for oneself,
sleep--epitome of...Read more of this...

by Tate, James
...After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another beginning. 
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say, 
though it might have been otherwise. 
What a story!
After t...Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another beginning. 
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say, 
though it might have been otherwise. 
What a story!
After t...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...of the great R.E., 
Their Colonels are Methodist, married or mad, and some of them all the three; 
In all these units the road to fame is taught by the Army schools, 
But a man has got to be born to the game when he tackles the Army mules. 

For if you go where the depots are as the dawn is breaking grey, 
By the waning light of the morning star as the dust cloud clears away, 
You'll see a vision among the dust like a man and a mule combined -- 
It's the kind of t...Read more of this...

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