Famous Webs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Death Wants More Death

by Charles Bukowski
 death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father's garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they thought were escape-
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his...Read more of this...

Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha

by Robert Browning
 An imaginary composer.]

I.

Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---

II.

I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up...Read more of this...

Hypochondriac

by Chris Tusa
 Maybe it’s Emphysema, a shiny black jewel of phlegm 
humming like a clump of bees in my chest. 
Perhaps a tumor crawling in the crook of my armpit, 
a blood clot opening like a tiny red flower in my brain.

Maybe it’s too early to show up on an X-ray, 
a kind of cancerous seed planted deep 
in my intestine,...Read more of this...

Smoke and Steel

by Carl Sandburg
 SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.

If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the...Read more of this...

In The Small Hours

by Wole Soyinka
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The...Read more of this...

Grandad And A Pramload Of Clocks

by John Lindley
 Wheeling them in,
the yard gate at half-mast 
with its ticking hinge,
the tin bucket with a hairnet of webs,
the privy door ajar,
the path gloved with moss
ploughed by metal 
through a scalped tyre -
in the shadows of the hood,
in the ripped silk
of the rocking, buckled pram,
none of the dead clocks moving.

And carrying them in
to a kitchen table,
a near-lifetime’s Woodies
coating each cough,
he...Read more of this...

The Wedding Ring Dance

by Anne Sexton
 I dance in circles holding
the moth of the marriage,
thin, sticky, fluttering
its skirts, its webs.
The moth oozing a tear,
or is it a drop of urine?
The moth, grinning like a pear,
or is it teeth
clamping the iron maiden shut?

The moth,
who is my mother,
who is my father,
who was my lover,
floats airily out of my hands
and I dance slower,
pulling off the fat diamond engagement...Read more of this...

Appeal

by Edith Nesbit
 Daphnis dearest, wherefore weave me
Webs of lies lest truth should grieve me?
I could pardon much, believe me:
Dower me, Daphnis, or bereave me,
Kiss me, kill me, love me, leave me,-
Damn me, dear, but don't deceive me!...Read more of this...

the bouncing spider

by Rg Gregory
 schnyder schnyder
the bouncing spider
had a song 
wound up inside her

she'd had it taped
on a silken spool
this was the song
she sang as a rule

o little fly
come be my friend
i have fly's gold
for you to spend

i'll wrap you in silks
to make you pretty
if you refuse
then more's the pity

the silk-voice warbled
through the wood
the best bird-song
didn't seem so good

but no flies came
they were...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 06: Over the darkened city the city of towers

by Conrad Aiken
 Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city's feet;
On one side sleep...Read more of this...

Tattoo

by Wallace Stevens
 The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there--
Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.

There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow....Read more of this...

Remorse

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon  
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even: 
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon  
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. 
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!' 5 
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: 
Thy...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...

In a Minor Key

by Amy Levy
 (AN ECHO FROM A LARGER LYRE.)


That was love that I had before
Years ago, when my heart was young;
Ev'ry smile was a gem you wore;
Ev'ry word was a sweet song sung.

You came--all my pulses burn'd and beat.
(O sweet wild throbs of an early day!)
You went--with the last dear sound of your feet
The light wax'd dim and the place grew grey.

And...Read more of this...

The Singing-Woman From The Woods Edge

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...

Just Before April Came

by Carl Sandburg
 THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.

Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.
A...Read more of this...

On Fields Oer Which the Reapers Hand has Passed

by Henry David Thoreau
 On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has pass'd
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as October airs,
There after harvest could I glean my life
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will
In subtler webs than finest summer haze....Read more of this...

Roast Leviathan

by Louis Untermeyer
"Old Jews!" Well, David, aren't we?
What news is that to make you see so red,
To swear and almost tear your beard in half?
Jeered at? Well, let them laugh.
You can laugh longer when you're dead.
What? Are you still too blind to see?
Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right,
The little goyim, with their angry stones.
You should be buried in the desert...Read more of this...

To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus

by Sarojini Naidu
 LORD BUDDHA, on thy Lotus-throne, 
With praying eyes and hands elate, 
What mystic rapture dost thou own, 
Immutable and ultimate? 
What peace, unravished of our ken, 
Annihilate from the world of men? 

The wind of change for ever blows 
Across the tumult of our way, 
To-morrow's unborn griefs depose 
The sorrows of our yesterday. 
Dream yields to dream, strife...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

Solitude

by Mihai Eminescu
With the curtains drawn together, 
At my table of rough wood,  
And the firelight flickering softly, 
Do I fall to thoughtful mood. 

Flocks and flocks of sweet illusions, 
Memories the mind recalls, 
And they softly creep like crickets 
Through time's grey and crumbled walls; 

Or they drop with gentle patter 
On the pavement of the soul, 
As does wax...Read more of this...

The Singing-Woman from the Woods Edge

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...

The Speed Of Light

by W S Merwin
 So gradual in those summers was the going
 of the age it seemed that the long days setting out
when the stars faded over the mountains were not
 leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
glittered in the webs it appeared then that the clear morning
 opening into the sky was something of ours
to have...Read more of this...

Leda And The Swan

by William Butler Yeats
 A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder...Read more of this...

In The Small Hours

by
 Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, 
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins 
Of marooned mariners, captives 
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on. 

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And...Read more of this...

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