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Famous Wash Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...y brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were t...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan



...ou get?" 
"Six hundred dollars." 
"I don't like people who rob other people, Connie." 
"That's why you're a fucking dishwasher. You're honest. But he's such an ass,
George. And he can afford the money, and I've earned it... him and his mother and his
love, his mother-love, his clean l;ittle wash bowls and toilets and disposal bags and
breath chasers and after shave lotions and his little hard-ons and his precious
love-making. All for himself, you understand, all for himself! ...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...dinner. 
His clothes were always odiously in order, 
Yet I should not have thought of him as clean— 
Not even if he had washed himself to death
Proving it. There was nothing right about him. 
Then he would search, never quite satisfied, 
Though always in a measure confident, 
My eyes to find a welcome waiting in them, 
Unwilling, as I see him now, to know
That it would never be there. Looking back, 
I am not sure that he would not have died 
For me, if I were drowning or on f...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed
Her maiden limbs, and having prayed
That He, who on the cross did groan,
Might wash away her sins unknown,
She forthwith led fair Geraldine
To meet her sire, Sir Leoline.
The lovely maid and the lady tall
Are pacing both into the hall,
And pacing on through page and groom,
Enter the Baron's presence-room.

The Baron rose, and while he prest
His gentle daughter to his breast,
With cheerful wonder in his eyes
The lady Geraldin...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless

For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust
Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe
For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,

What Easter Da...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar



...the room 
and left me in the big black 
and sent away my kitty 
to be fried in the camps 
and took away my blanket 
to wash the me out of it 
I lay in the soiled cold and prayed. 
It was a little jail in which 
I was never slapped with kisses. 
I was the engine that couldn't. 
Cold wigs blew on the trees outside 
and car lights flew like roosters 
on the ceiling. 
Cradle, you are a grave place. 

Interrogator: 
What color is the devil? 

Anne: 
Black and blue. 

Interrogator...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...Grieve not, for I am near thee;
Sigh not, for I can hear thee;
Wash from thy heart all memory of past wrong;
Doubt not that doubts besmear thee;
Speak not, for I do fear thee;
Let thine eyes whisper love’s conciling song....Read more of this...
by Rihani, Ameen
...exico, or along Cuba or Hayti—others Hudson’s
 Bay or
 Baffin’s Bay; 
Others pass the Straits of Dover—others enter the Wash—others the Firth of Solway—others
 round
 Cape Clear—others the Land’s End; 
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld; 
Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook; 
Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar, or the Dardanelles;
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs; 
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena;...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...now so as to
Be out by closing time. You can't live there.
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how:
Secrets of wash and finish that took a lifetime
To learn and are reduced to the status of
Black-and-white illustrations in a book where colorplates
Are rare. That is, all time
Reduces to no special time. No one
Alludes to the change; to do so might
Involve calling attention to oneself
Which would augment the dread of not getting out
Before having seen the whole collect...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John
...orns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
``Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
``And, with water to wash the hands of her liege
``In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
`` Let her preside at the disemboweling.''
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
And if day by day and week by week
You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,
And clipped he...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...chored with a chain; 
And in my madness to myself I said, 
`I will embark and I will lose myself, 
And in the great sea wash away my sin.' 
I burst the chain, I sprang into the boat. 
Seven days I drove along the dreary deep, 
And with me drove the moon and all the stars; 
And the wind fell, and on the seventh night 
I heard the shingle grinding in the surge, 
And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up, 
Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek, 
A castle like a rock upon ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ow, I shall the Soudan quite.* *requite, match
For though his wife be christen'd ne'er so white,
She shall have need to wash away the red,
Though she a fount of water with her led."

O Soudaness*, root of iniquity, *Sultaness
Virago thou, Semiramis the second!
O serpent under femininity,
Like to the serpent deep in hell y-bound!
O feigned woman, all that may confound
Virtue and innocence, through thy malice,
Is bred in thee, as nest of every vice!

O Satan envious! since thil...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ences exhale,
To draw fresh Colours from the vernal Flow'rs,
To steal from Rainbows ere they drop in Show'rs
A brighter Wash; to curl their waving Hairs,
Assist their Blushes, and inspire their Airs;
Nay oft, in Dreams, Invention we bestow,
To change a Flounce, or add a Furbelo. 

This Day, black Omens threat the brightest Fair
That e'er deserv'd a watchful Spirit's Care;
Some dire Disaster, or by Force, or Slight,
But what, or where, the Fates have wrapt in Night.
Whether th...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...ites; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. 

LXI.
For let Philosopher and Doctor preach
Of what they will, and what they will not -- each
Is but one Link in an eternal Chain
That none can slip, nor break, nor over-reach. 

LXII.
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to it for help -- for It
Rolls impotently on as ...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar
...matter that our lives are different?
Burdened with the loves of our different children?
When I think of your young face washed by the wind
and your voice that chuckles in the slap of the sea?
The lights are out on La Toc promontory,
except for the hospital. Across at Vigie
the marina arcs keep vigil. I have kept my own
promise, to leave you the one thing I own,
you whom I loved first: my poetry.
We here for one night. Tomorrow, the Flight will be gone.


8 Fight with the Crew...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...oose Sleet descends,
And floods the Country round: the Rivers swell,
Impatient for the Day. -- Those sullen Seas, 
That wash th'ungenial Pole, will rest no more,
Beneath the Shackles of the mighty North;
But, rousing all their Waves, resistless heave, --
And hark! -- the length'ning Roar, continuous, runs
Athwart the rifted Main; at once, it bursts,
And piles a thousand Mountains to the Clouds!
Ill fares the Bark, the Wretches' last Resort,
That, lost amid the floating Fragme...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James
...hich shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter 
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu
 Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon S...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
 and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before 
 and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky 
cloudy o...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...take part of love for this?

Let me drink of such a poison,
That I would be deaf and dumb,
And my unglorious glory
Wash away to the final crumb.



x x x

The blue lacquer dims of heaven,
And the song is better heard.
It's the little trumpet made of dirt,
There's no reason for her to complain.
Why does she forgive me,
And whoever told her of my sins?
Or is that this voice that now repeats
The last poems that you wrote for me?



x x x

Instead of w...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna
...c all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded & swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
ans bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Gre...Read more of this...
by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things