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).

See also:

Memories Of The Fifties

by Barry Tebb
 Eggshell and Wedgwood Blue were just two

Of the range on the colour cards Dulux

Tailored to our taste in the fifties,

Brentford nylons, Formica table tops and

Fablon shelf-covering in original oak or

Spruce under neon tubes and Dayglo shades.



Wartime brown and green went out, along with

The Yorkist Range, the wire-mesh food safe

In the cellar, the scrubbed board bath lid

And marbled glass bowl...Read more of this...

Restless Leg Syndrome

by James Tate
 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,...Read more of this...

Old Timers

by Carl Sandburg
 I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.

On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.

On the march of Miltiades’ phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle.

Red-headed Cæsar picked 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...Read more of this...

The Army Mules

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh the airman's game is a showman's game, for we all of us watch him go 
With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below, 
Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk, 
You'll hear him mutter, "What ho, she bumps," when the Archies get to work. 
But not of him...Read more of this...

Insects

by John Clare
 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,...Read more of this...

An Evening Of Poetry

by Barry Tebb
 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet...Read more of this...

Peter

by Marianne Moore
 Strong and slippery,
built for the midnight grass-party
confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away--
the detached first claw on the foreleg 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...Read more of this...

One Anguish -- in a Crowd --

by Emily Dickinson
 One Anguish -- in a Crowd --
A Minor thing -- it sounds --
And yet, unto the single Doe
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...Read more of this...

Eidólons

by Walt Whitman
 I MET a Seer, 
Passing the hues and objects of the world, 
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons. 
 Put in thy chants, said he, 
No more the puzzling hour, nor day—nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all, That of
 Eidólons. 
 Ever the...Read more of this...

Restless Leg Syndrome

by Edward Taylor
 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,...Read more of this...

Addition

by Constantine P Cavafy
 I do not question whether I am happy or unhappy.
Yet there is one thing that I keep gladly 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...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Units poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace