Famous Wheels Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Abandoned Factory Detroit

by Philip Levine
 The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, 
An iron authority against the snow, 
And this grey monument to common sense 
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands, 
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow 
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence. 

Beyond, through broken windows one can see 
Where the great presses paused between their...Read more of this...

Suitcase

by Charles Webb
 Its silver clasp looks like a man grasping
his hands above his head in victory;
the latches, like twin hatchbacks headed away.

There are no wheels, just four steel nipples for sliding.
A hexagonal seal announces the defunct
"U.S. Trunk Company." The frame is wood—

big, heavy, cheap—covered with imitation leather,
its blue just slightly darker than Mom's eyes.
"It's beautiful. Much too expensive," she told Dad,

and...Read more of this...

New Feet

by Carl Sandburg
 EMPTY battlefields keep their phantoms.
Grass crawls over old gun wheels
And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple
Into the summer’s southwest wind,
Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet,
Reaching a blossom in rust of shrapnel....Read more of this...

The Westerner

by Badger Clark
  My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,
    And each one sleeps alone.
  Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,
    For I choose to make my own.
  I lay proud claim to their blood and name,
    But I lean on no dead kin;
  My name...Read more of this...

Life passes on…

by Lam Quang My
I tire of stopping wings of summer
You the slow run down of autumn

No boats at anchor in the sea of eyes 
The shade of clouds floats melancholy
Does something wait for us
Upon the far horizon…

Winter sits upon the long-drawn barricade
The stones ache under circled wheels
Breeze borne images of mountain thorn and timeless place
Far off singing soothes nostalgic soul
Does someone wait for...Read more of this...

The Celebrated Woman - An Epistle By A Married Man

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Can I, my friend, with thee condole?--
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?--
Poor martyr,--most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;--
A faithless wife,--I grant the curse,--
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale...Read more of this...

A Tulip Garden

by Amy Lowell
 Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight. What bold grace
Sets off their tunics, white with crimson lace!
Here are platoons of gold-frocked cavalry,
With scarlet sabres tossing in the eye
Of purple batteries, every gun in place.
Forward they come, with flaunting colours spread,
With torches burning, stepping out in...Read more of this...

Johnny Boer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Men fight all shapes and sizes as the racing horses run, 
And no man knows his courage till he stands before a gun. 
At mixed-up fighting, hand to hand, and clawing men about 
They reckon Fuzzy-Wuzzy is the hottest fighter out. 
But Fuzzy gives himself away -- his style is out of date, 
He charges like a driven grouse...Read more of this...

In Abbot Zan's Room at Dayun Temple: Four Poems (3)

by Du Fu
 Lamplight shine without sleep Heart clear smell wonderful incense Night deep hall sudden lofty Wind move gold clank clank Sky black obstruct spring court Earth clear dwell secret fragrance Jade rope revolve cut sever Iron phoenix dark soar Sanskrit release sometimes out temple Bell remnant remain thunder bed Tomorrow at fertile field Bitter see dirt sand yellow...Read more of this...

Vehicles

by W S Merwin
 This is a place on the way after the distances
 can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner
of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along
 raveling courses to stop in a single moment
and lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs
 some in pairs that rolled as one over the same roads
to...Read more of this...

John Ericsson Day Memorial 1918

by Carl Sandburg
 INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer—they remember or forget—the man whose head kept singing to...Read more of this...

The Paper Windmill

by Amy Lowell
 The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane 
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of 
the square
glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and 
pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown 
water
of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string 
of galliots
piled with crimson cheeses. The little...Read more of this...

Overture To A Dance Of Locomotives

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Men with picked voices chant the names 
of cities in a huge gallery: promises 
that pull through descending stairways 
to a deep rumbling. 

 The rubbing feet 
of those coming to be carried quicken a 
grey pavement into soft light that rocks 
to and fro, under the domed ceiling, 
across and across from pale 
earthcolored walls of bare limestone....Read more of this...

The Exeter Road

by Amy Lowell
 Panels of claret and blue which shine
Under the moon like lees of wine.
A coronet done in a golden scroll,
And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll
Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track.
They daren't look back!
They are whipping and cursing the horses. Lord!
What brutes men are when they think they're scored.
Behind, my bay gelding gallops with me,
In a...Read more of this...

My Rival

by Rudyard Kipling
 I go to concert, party, ball --
 What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
 And strive to look at ease.
The incense that is mine by right
 They burn before her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
 And She is forty-nine.

I cannot check my girlish blush,
 My color comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
 And sometimes to...Read more of this...

The Great Figure

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city....Read more of this...

Absence

by Edwin Morgan
 My shadow --
I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark
and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold
in the early light in my room high over London.
What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire
so that I got up and looked out half-asleep
at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below?
Without fire
Only...Read more of this...

The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay

by Ellis Parker Butler
 You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day.
And then, of a sudden, it up and bust,
And all that was left was a mound of dust?
Holmes—O. W.—told it well
In a rhyme of his—what there was to tell—
But the one-hoss shay wasn’t “one, two, three”
With a vehicle...Read more of this...

I cannot dance upon my Toes

by Emily Dickinson
 I cannot dance upon my Toes --
No Man instructed me --
But oftentimes, among my mind,
A Glee possesseth me,

That had I Ballet knowledge --
Would put itself abroad
In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe --
Or lay a Prima, mad,

And though I had no Gown of Gauze --
No Ringlet, to my Hair,
Nor hopped to Audiences -- like Birds,
One Claw upon the Air,

Nor tossed...Read more of this...

Libido

by Rupert Brooke
 How should I know? The enormous wheels of will
Drove me cold-eyed on tired and sleepless feet.
Night was void arms and you a phantom still,
And day your far light swaying down the street.
As never fool for love, I starved for you;
My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see.
Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view,
And your remembered...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

Young and Old

by Charles Kingsley
 1 When all the world is young, lad,
2 And all the trees are green;
3 And every goose a swan, lad,
4 And every lass a queen;
5 Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
6 And round the world away!
7 Young blood must have its course, lad,
8 And every dog his day.

9 When all the world is old, lad,
10 And all the...Read more of this...

Les Grands Mutiles

by Robert William Service
 I saw three wounded of the war:
And the first had lost his eyes;
And the second went on wheels and had
No legs below the thighs;
And the face of the third was featureless,
And his mouth ran cornerwise.
So I made a rhyme about each one,
And this is how my fancies run....Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

The Winter Scene

by Bliss Carman
 I
The rutted roads are all like iron; skies
Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling
In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet;
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice
That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick,
Or in the twilight cracks with running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
And make an...Read more of this...

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