Famous Waxed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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understanding lemons

by Rg Gregory
 lemons don’t let you admire yourself too much
they stick from their tree like awkward thoughts
demanding a truth be told even if the tongue
would prefer a far more sickly explanation

lemons are perfect though for the need to jump
straight out of bed on the eagerest of mornings
into the task that must have no nonsense about it
they have no truck with laziness...Read more of this...

The Revenge Of Hamish

by Sidney Lanier
 It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe;
In the print of her velvet flank on the...Read more of this...

Toads Revisited

by Philip Larkin
 Walking around in the park
Should feel better than work:
The lake, the sunshine,
The grass to lie on,

Blurred playground noises
Beyond black-stockinged nurses -
Not a bad place to be.
Yet it doesn't suit me.

Being one of the men
You meet of an afternoon:
Palsied old step-takers,
Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,

Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets -

All dodging the toad...Read more of this...

Modern Love XLVII: We Saw the Swallows

by George Meredith
 We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, 
And in the osier-isle we heard them noise. 
We had not to look back on summer joys, 
Or forward to a summer of bright dye: 
But in the largeness of the evening earth 
Our spirits grew as we went side by side. 
The hour became her husband and my bride. 
Love...Read more of this...

In Vision I Roamed

by Thomas Hardy
 IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
As though with an awed sense of such ostent;
And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,
To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,
Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:
Then, any spot on our own Earth...Read more of this...

The Last Oracle

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 eipate toi basilei, xamai pese daidalos aula. 
ouketi PHoibos exei kaluban, ou mantida daphnen, 
ou pagan laleousan . apesbeto kai lalon udor. 

Years have risen and fallen in darkness or in twilight, 
Ages waxed and waned that knew not thee nor thine, 
While the world sought light by night and sought not thy light, 
Since the sad last pilgrim...Read more of this...

Memory

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   How I loved you in your sleep,
   With the starlight on your hair!

   The touch of your lips was sweet,
     Aziza whom I adore,
   I lay at your slender feet,
     And against their soft palms pressed,
   I fitted my face to...Read more of this...

The Nymph Complaining For The Death Of Her Faun

by Andrew Marvell
 The wanton Troopers riding by
Have shot my Faun and it will dye.
Ungentle men! They cannot thrive
To kill thee. Thou neer didst alive
Them any harm: alas nor cou'd
Thy death yet do them any good.
I'me sure I never wisht them ill;
Nor do I for all this; nor will:
But, if my simple Pray'rs may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor

by Robert William Service
 Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall:
"We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew's Ball.
Yon squakin' saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes.
I'm sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes."
"Alas! it's true," said Tam MacCall. "The young folk of to-day
Are fox-trot mad and dinna ken a reel from Strathspey.
Now, what we want's a...Read more of this...

Portraits From Memory

by Barry Tebb
 I

Through my bedroom window

The coal carts jolted over the cobbles

A slow heavy rhythm full,

Light and fast returning empty.



The coal office manager was a dwarf

With sixty year old skin

On a ten year old’s body and

Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face.



The enormous shire horses neighed

In warning if you went near,

Their polished brasses gleaming,

Their worn blinkers waxed;

When they brought in lorries

A two...Read more of this...

Poem 90

by Edmund Spenser
 IN youth before I waxed old.
The blynd boy Venus baby,
For want of cunning made me bold,
In bitter byue to grope for honny.
But when he saw me stung and cry,
He tooke his wings and away did fly.
As Diane hunted on a day,
She chaunst to come where Cupid lay,
his quiuer by his head:
One of his shafts she stole away,
And one of...Read more of this...

Accidents

by Russell Edson
 The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like 
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
 Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good 
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
 It wasn't, says the customer, it was always overly waxed. 
I tried putting a wick in it to burn...Read more of this...

The Lion For Real

by Allen Ginsberg
 "Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."


I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 02: The Screen Maiden

by Conrad Aiken
 You read—what is it, then that you are reading?
What music moves so silently in your mind?
Your bright hand turns the page.
I watch you from my window, unsuspected:
You move in an alien land, a silent age . . .

. . . The poet—what was his name—? Tokkei—Tokkei—
The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like...Read more of this...

Writing To Onegin

by Ruth Padel
 (After Pushkin) 
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long 
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk 
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour. 
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this
Unlived - this world...Read more of this...

Statuary

by Nick Flynn
 Bees may be trusted, always, 
 to discover the best, nay, the only 

human, solution. Let me cite 

 an instance; an event, that, 

though occurring in nature, is still 
 in itself wholly abnormal. I refer 

to the manner in which the bees 

 will dispose of a mouse 
 or a slug 

 that may happen to...Read more of this...

The Flower of Mending

by Vachel Lindsay
 (To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.)


When Dragon-fly would fix his wings,
When Snail would patch his house,
When moths have marred the overcoat
Of tender Mister Mouse,

The pretty creatures go with haste
To the sunlit blue-grass hills
Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax
And webs to help their ills.

The hour the coats are waxed and webbed
They fall into a dream,
And...Read more of this...

Leipzig

by Thomas Hardy
 "OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--

--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine

"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...

The Destruction Of Sennacherib

by George (Lord) Byron
 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest...Read more of this...

Metamorphosis

by Charles Bukowski
 a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed
cleaned the toilet
the bathtub
scrubbed the bathroom floor
and cut my toenails and 
my hair.
then
all on the same day
the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet
and the toilet
and the gas man fixed the heater
and the phone man fixed the phone.
noe I sit in all this perfection.
it is quiet.
I...Read more of this...

understanding lemons

by Rg Gregory
 lemons don’t let you admire yourself too much
they stick from their tree like awkward thoughts
demanding a truth be told even if the tongue
would prefer a far more sickly explanation

lemons are perfect though for the need to jump
straight out of bed on the eagerest of mornings
into the task that must have no nonsense about it
they have no truck with laziness...Read more of this...

Winter Promises

by Marge Piercy
 Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks, 
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, 
purple neon flawless glistening 
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast 
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk, 
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew 
will never wilt, roses weighing down 
a bush never touched by black spot, 
brave little fruit trees shouldering up 
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit: 

I...Read more of this...

The Last Judgment

by Amy Levy
 With beating heart and lagging feet,
Lord, I approach the Judgment-seat.
All bring hither the fruits of toil,
Measures of wheat and measures of oil;

Gold and jewels and precious wine;
No hands bare like these hands of mine.
The treasure I have nor weighs nor gleams:
Lord, I can bring you only dreams.

In days of spring, when my blood ran high,
I lay in the grass...Read more of this...

Incompatabilities

by Barry Tebb
 For Brenda Williams



La lune diminue; divin septembre.

Divine September the moon wanes.

 Pierre Jean Jouve



Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce:

This is one September I shall not forget.



The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked

And the floors waxed, but I never shone.

The stripes of the red and black blazer

Were prison-grey. You could never see things that way:

Your home...Read more of this...

Menelaus and Helen

by Rupert Brooke
 I

Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

High sat white Helen, lonely...Read more of this...

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