Famous Winking Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A City Remembered

...tom guests – the smells of fish and chips,
Laborious smoke, stale beer and autumn gusts,
The whispering shadows and the winking hips,
The crack of frosty whips, brief summer"s dust.
And in that city through a forked November
Love, like a Catherine-wheel, delighted me
And when it sputtered out, hung charred and sombre,
The city flavoured my delicious misery.
And so I guess that any landscape"s beauty
Is fathered by associative joys
Held in a shared, historic memory,
For beauty...Read more of this...
by Scannell, Vernon


Aubade

...en's gate sings, 
 And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
His steeds to water at those springs 
 On chaliced flowers that lies; 
And winking Mary-buds begin 
 To ope their golden eyes: 
With everything that pretty bin, 
 My lady sweet, arise! 
 Arise, arise!...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

Because My Faltering Feet

...rk
Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:
Give me the Word and I'll attempt it well.

Say it's the little winking of an eye
Which in that issue is uncurtained quite;
A little sleep that helpsa moment by
Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.
Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men;
Swear that's true now, and I'll believe it then....Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire

Bishop Blougrams Apology

...ong my million imbeciles 
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense 
Eye me and know me, whether I believe 
In the last winking Virgin, as I vow, 
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her 
And am a knave,--approve in neither case, 
Withhold their voices though I look their way: 
Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end 
(The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?) 
While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang 
His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones, 
He looks throu...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Cleared

...and snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!

Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,
Like ph]oenixes from Ph]oenix Park (and what lay there) they rise!
Go shout it to the emerald seas -- give word to Erin now,
Her honourable gentlemen are cleared -- and this is how: --

They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,
They only helped the murderer with counsel's best advice,
But -- sure it keeps their honour white -- t...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


Envy And Avarice

...ever on the watch 
 Some glance to catch 
 Suspiciously directed to its locks; 
 And Envy, too, no doubt with silent winking 
 At her green, greedy orbs, no single minute 
 Withdrawn from it, was hard a-thinking 
 Of all the shining dollars in it. 
 
 The only words that Avarice could utter, 
 Her constant doom, in a low, frightened mutter, 
 "There's not enough, enough, yet in my store!" 
 While Envy, as she scanned the glittering sight, 
 Groaned as she gnashed ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Fishermen

...strike of bass and snarling reel
Uncoiled my shouts not quit
Till he jerked blinking up on all-fours,
Swaying with the winking leaves.
Strong awake, he shook his cane pole like a spoon
And dipped among the wagging perch
Till, tired, he drew his silver rubber blade
And poked the winding fins that tugged our string,
Or sprayed the dimpling minnows with his plastic gun,
Or, rainstruck, squirmed to my armpit in the poncho.

Then years uncurled him, thinned him hard.
Now, far he ...Read more of this...
by Emanuel, James A

from crossing the line

...ke with the same fingers


(2) aden

tourists dream of bombs 
that will not kill them

into the rock
the sand-claws
the winking eye
and harsh shell
of aden

waiting for the pinch

jagged sun
lumps of heat
bumping on the stunned ship
knuckledustered rock
clenched over steamer point

waiting for the sun to stagger
loaded down the hill
before we bunch ashore

calm
eyes within their windows
we walk
(a town must live
must have its acre of normality
let hate sport
its bright shirt ...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Hark! Hark! The Lark

...t heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chalic'd flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise!...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

Late Light

...ite aluminum siding, 
and those houses and all 
they contain live that day 
in the sight of heaven. 

II 

In the blue, winking light 
of the International Institute 
of Social Revolution 
I fell asleep one afternoon 
over a book of memoirs 
of a Spanish priest who'd 
served his own private faith 
in a long forgotten war. 
An Anarchist and a Catholic, 
his remembrances moved 
inexplicably from Castilian 
to Catalan, a language I 
couldn't follow. That dust, 
fine and gray, pe...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

...le patting feet
And bore him in triumph over three grey flagstones and a quarter.
The moon dodged in and out of clouds, winking.
It was all very unpleasant for Mr. Spruggins,
And when the wind flung him hard against his own front door
It was a relief,
Although the breath was quite knocked out of him.
The gas-lamp in front of the house flared up,
And the keyhole was as big as a barn door;
The gas-lamp flickered away to a sputtering blue star,
And the keyhole went out with it.
...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Ode to a Nightingale

...t mirth! 
O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15 
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stain¨¨d mouth; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 
Where palsy shakes a few,...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Sex Goddess

...being repressed
then manifest
in late night 900 number ads
where 3 bodacious bimbettes
heave cleavage into the camera's winking lens and sigh:


"Big Girls oooh, Bad Girls oooh, Blonde Girls oooh,
you know what to do, call 1-900-UNMITIGATED BIMBO ooooh."


Yeah
I got fed up with the oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh
I got fed up with it all
so I put on my combat boots
and hit the road with my bag full of SEX TOYS
that were a vital part of my SEX GODDESS image
even though I would never...Read more of this...
by Estep, Maggie

Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat

...Third;
He establishes control by a regular patrol
And he'd know at once if anything occurred.
He will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking
And it's certain that he doesn't approve
Of hilarity and riot, so the folk are very quiet
When Skimble is about and on the move.
You can play no pranks with Skimbleshanks!
He's a Cat that cannot be ignored;
So nothing goes wrong on the Northern Mail
When Skimbleshanks is aboard.

Oh, it's very pleasant when you have ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Ballad of Fishers Boarding-House

...men called
 her Salem Hardieker's.

But seamen learnt -- what landsmen know --
 That neither gifts nor gain
Can hold a winking Light o' Love
 Or Fancy's flight restrain,
When Anne of Austria rolled her eyes
 On Hans the blue-eyed Dane.

Since Life is strife, and strife means knife,
 From Howrah to the Bay,
And he may die before the dawn
 Who liquored out the day,
In Fultah Fisher's boarding-house
 We woo while yet we may.

But cold was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,
 Bull-throated...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Bee Meeting

...knotted under the armpits.
Their smiles and their voces are changing. I am led through a beanfield.

Strips of tinfoil winking like people,
Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,
Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.
Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?
No, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.

Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
And a black veil that molds to...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

...pear
Had been, a deep, black hole gaped miserably. His dear
Treasures were puffs of ashes; only the stones were there,
Winking in the brightness.

The clock upon the stair
Struck five, and in the kitchen someone shook a grate.
The Boy began to dress, for it was getting late....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Stupid Jerk Im Obsessed With

...that I can see
the stupid jerk I'm obsessed with's face
defining itself in the peeling plaster of the wall
grinning and winking
and I start to yell,
Get the hell out of there
You're just a figment of my imagination
Just get a life and get out of my plaster
and pass me the next painful situation please
but he just keeps on
grinning and winking
he's the stupid jerk I'm obsessed with
and he's mine
in my plaster
And frankly, I couldn't be happier....Read more of this...
by Estep, Maggie

To Ireland In The Coming Times

...ne.!
While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye;
And we, our singing and our love,
What measurer Time has lit above,
And all benighted things that go
About my table to and fro,
Are passing on to where may be,
In truth's consuming ecstasy,
No place for love and dream at all;
For God goes by with white footfall.
I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know ho...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Tunbridge Wells

...your bright eyes, they would supply the morn,
And make a day before the day be born."
With mouth screwed up, conceited winking eyes,
And breasts thrust forward, "Lord, sir!" she replies.
"It is your goodness, and not my deserts,
Which makes you show this learning, wit, and parts."
He, puzzled, butes his nail, both to display
The sparkling ring, and think what next to say,
And thus breaks forth afresh: "Madam, egad!
Your luck at cards last night was very bad:
At cribbage fift...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

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