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Famous Wick Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...e “cock?”
 Tam Samson’s dead!


When Winter muffles up his cloak,
He was the king o’ a’ the core,
To guard, or draw, or wick a bore,
Or up the rink like Jehu roar,
 In time o’ need;
But now he lags on Death’s “hog-score”—
 Tam Samson’s dead!


Now safe the stately sawmont sail,
And trouts bedropp’d wi’ crimson hail,
And eels, weel-ken’d for souple tail,
 And geds for greed,
Since, dark in Death’s fish-creel, we wail
 Tam Samson’s dead!


Rejoice, ye birring paitricks a’;
Ye c...Read more of this...



by Edson, Russell
...e 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 out the wax, thus to find my 
way to music. But lighting it I put my whole head on fire. It 
even spread to my groin and underarms and to a nearby 
forest. I felt like a saint. Someone thought I was a genius.
 That's comforting, says the barber, still, I can't send you 
home with only one ear. I'll have to remove th...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...om-tom's rub-a-dub,
And the throb of Andalusian guitar.
From the Horn to Honolulu, from the Cape to Kalamazoo,
From Wick to Wicklow, Samarkand to Spain,
You've roughed it with my kilt-bag like a comrade tried and true. . . .
Old pal! We'll never hit the trail again.

Oh I know you're cheap and vulgar, you're an instrumental crime.
In drawing-rooms you haven't got a show.
You're a musical abortion, you're the voice of grit and grime,
You're the ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...succour to thy tent,
Me for to hide from tempest full of dread;
Beseeching you, that ye you not absent,
Though I be wick'. O help yet at this need!
All* have I been a beast in wit and deed,                      *although
Yet, Lady! thou me close in with thy grace;
*Thine enemy and mine,* -- Lady, take heed! --               *the devil*
Unto my death in point is me to chase.

                               G.

Gracious Maid and Mother! which that never
...Read more of this...

by Lee, Laurie
...as water by the lake a girl 
Swims her green hand among the gathered swans. 

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick, 
Dropping small flames to light the candled grass; 
Now, as my low blood scales its second chance, 
If ever world were blessed, now it is....Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...By a departing light
We see acuter, quite,
Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight
And decks the rays....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...reet,
Mother, there's always lots to eat. . . ."

II

For days the igloo has been dark;
But now the rag wick sends a spark
That glitters in the icy air,
And wakes frost sapphires everywhere;
Bright, bitter flames, that adder-like
Dart here and there, yet fear to strike
The gruesome gloom wherein they lie,
My comrades, oh, so keen to die!
And I, the last -- well, here I wait
The clock to strike the hour of eight. . . .

"Boy, it is bitter to be ...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...ich put the candle out?
A jealous zephyr, not a doubt.
   Ah! friend, you little knew
How long at that celestial wick
The angels labored diligent;
   Extinguished, now, for you!

It might have been the lighthouse spark
Some sailor, rowing in the dark,
   Had importuned to see!
It might have been the waning lamp
That lit the drummer from the camp
   To purer reveille!...Read more of this...

by Gorman, Amanda
...
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.       

Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being to...Read more of this...

by Lear, Edward
...L  was a fine new Lamp;But when the wick was lit, Papa he said, "This Light ain't good!I cannot read a bit!" ...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...h as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
All the green leaved little weddings' wives
In the coal black bush and let them grieve.

When I was a gusty man and a half
And the black beast of the beetles' pews
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of bitches),
Not a boy and a bit in the wick-
Dipping moon and drunk as a new dropped calf,
I whistled ...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!

An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...an,
Blare out the _mode Palestrina._

XXIX.

While in the roof, if I'm right there,
... Lo you, the wick in the socket!
Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!
Down it dips, gone like a rocket.
What, you want, do you, to come unawares,
Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,
And find a poor devil has ended his cares
At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?
Do I carry the moon in my pocket?

* 1 A fugue is a short melody....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...tall
Wax candles were placed, each in a small,
And slim, and burnished candlestick
Of pewter. The old man lit each wick,
And the room leapt more obviously
Upon my mind, and I could see
What the flickering fire had hid from me.
Above the chimney's yawning throat,
Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote,
Was a mantelshelf of polished oak
Blackened with the pungent smoke
Of firelit nights; a Cromwell clock
Of tarnished brass stood like a rock
In the midst of a heaving, t...Read more of this...

by Joyce, James
...is man-o'-war
 On the harbour bar.

Where from? roars Poolbeg. Cookingha'pence, he bawls
 Donnez-moi scampitle, wick an wipin'fampiny
Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface
Thok's min gammelhole Norveegickers moniker
Og as ay are at gammelhore Norveegickers cod.
 (Chorus) A Norwegian camel old cod.
 He is, begod.


Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil, ye! up with the rann,
 the rhyming rann!

It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according t...Read more of this...

by Kinnell, Galway
...lump of hair which by now
may be so wet with its waters, like the waters
the fishes multiplied in at Galilee, that
each wick draws a portion all the way out
to its tip and fattens a droplet on the bush
of half notes now glittering in that dark.
At last she lifts off the bow and sits back.
Her face shines with the unselfconsciousness of a cat
screaming at night and the teary radiance of one
who gives everything no matter what has been given....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...suppler in the joint,
Neither the spring nor the south wind
But the hour when you shall pass away
And leave no smoking wick behind,
For all life longs for the Last Day
And there's no man but cocks his ear
To know when Michael's trumpet cries
'That flesh and bone may disappear,
And souls as if they were but sighs,
And there be nothing but God left;
But, I aone being blessed keep
Like some old rabbit to my cleft
And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'
He dipped his ladle in the ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ll in patience
Our prison*, for it may none other be. *imprisonment
Fortune hath giv'n us this adversity'.
Some wick'* aspect or disposition *wicked
Of Saturn, by some constellation,
Hath giv'n us this, although we had it sworn,
So stood the heaven when that we were born,
We must endure; this is the short and plain.

This Palamon answer'd, and said again:
"Cousin, forsooth of this opinion
Thou hast a vain imagination.
This prison caused me not for to cry;
...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...mnestra, Penelop', Alcest',
Your wifehood he commendeth with the best.
But certainly no worde writeth he
Of *thilke wick'* example of Canace, *that wicked*
That loved her own brother sinfully;
(Of all such cursed stories I say, Fy),
Or else of Tyrius Apollonius,
How that the cursed king Antiochus
Bereft his daughter of her maidenhead;
That is so horrible a tale to read,
When he her threw upon the pavement.
And therefore he, *of full avisement*, *deliberately, advisedl...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...of light 
being small, 
so small we cannot bear it, 
we heave out with Idea 
and lose the Center: 
all wax without the wick, 
and we see names that once meant 
wisdom, 
like signs into ghost towns, 
and only the graves are real....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things