Famous Workshop Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Carol of Harvest for 1867

...hty camps. 

No holiday soldiers!—youthful, yet veterans; 
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march, 
Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field. 

9
A pause—the armies wait; 
A million flush’d, embattled conquerors wait; 
The world, too, waits—then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn,
They melt—they disappear. 

Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands! 
Not there your victory, on those red...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time

...r a childhood I never had,
until Dugan pointed out
that metaphor has been dead for a hundred years.
A woman, new to the workshop, leans
behind his back and whispers, I like it,
but the silence is seamless, as deep
as outer space. That night in 1969
I could turn my head from the television and see
 the moon
filling the one pane over the bed completely
as we waited for Neil Armstrong
to leave his footprints all over it....Read more of this...
by Flynn, Nick

An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar

...ffects the very brutes 
And birds--how say I? flowers of the field-- 
As a wise workman recognizes tools 
In a master's workshop, loving what they make. 
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: 
Only impatient, let him do his best, 
At ignorance and carelessness and sin-- 
An indignation which is promptly curbed: 
As when in certain travels I have feigned 
To be an ignoramus in our art 
According to some preconceived design, 
And happed to hear the land's practitioners, 
Steep...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Beautiful Newport on the Braes o the Silvery Tay

...dens of Newport on the braes o' the Tay.
And as we view the gardens our hearts will feel gay
After being pent up in the workshop all the day. 

Then there's a beautiful spot near an old mill,
Suitable for an artist to paint of great skill,
And the trees are arched o'erhead, lovely to be seen,
Which screens ye from the sunshine's glittering sheen. 

Therefore, holiday makers, I'd have ye resort
To Newport on the braes o' the Tay for sport,
And inhale the pure air with its swee...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Dream Song 52: Silent Song

...Bright-eyed & bushy tailed woke not Henry up.
Bright though upon his workshop shone a vise
central, moved in
while he was doing time down hospital
and growing wise.
He gave it the worst look he had left.

Alone. They all abandoned Henry-”wonder! all,
when most he-”under the sun.
That was all right.
He can't work well with it here, or think.
A bilocation, yellow like catastrophe.
The name of this was freedom.

Will Henry again...Read more of this...
by Berryman, John


Hans Sachs Poetical Mission

...
between 4000 and 5000 lyric poems. He flourished throughout almost 
the whole of the 16th century.]

EARLY within his workshop here,
On Sundays stands our master dear;
His dirty apron he puts away,
And wears a cleanly doublet to-day;
Lets wax'd thread, hammer, and pincers rest,
And lays his awl within his chest;
The seventh day he takes repose
From many pulls and many blows.

Soon as the spring-sun meets his view,
Repose begets him labour anew;
He feels that he holds within...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

How long shall we be slaves to reason and to every

...rld, or whether we dwell here but a day?
Go, bring some wine in a bowl before we are transformed
into pitchers in the workshop of some potter....Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar

John Ericsson Day Memorial 1918

...finger, finds a release clutch, touches a button no man knew before.

The soldier with a smoking gun and a gas mask—the workshop man under the smokestacks and the blueprints—these two are brothers of the handshake never forgotten—for these two we give the salt tears of our eyes, the salute of red roses, the flame-won scarlet of poppies.

For the soldier who gives all, for the workshop man who gives all, for these the red bar is on the flag—the red bar is the heart’s-blood of ...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

MFingal - Canto III

...
Each leather-apron'd dunce, grown wise,
Presents his forward face t' advise,
And tatter'd legislators meet,
From every workshop through the street.
His goose the tailor finds new use in,
To patch and turn the Constitution;
The blacksmith comes with sledge and grate
To iron-bind the wheels of state;
The quack forbears his patients' souse,
To purge the Council and the House;
The tinker quits his moulds and doxies,
To cast assembly-men and proxies.
From dunghills deep of blacke...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Mollymook

...ale Harcombe 
First published in ‘My cat cannot have friends in Australia,’ the anthology of the 2004 Wollongong poetry workshop....Read more of this...
by Harcombe, Dale

Self-Made Man

....
But when they claim it as a right,
And send their Union leaders round,
Why then, by God, I'm out to fight,
Or burn my workshop to the ground.

I've risen from the ranks myself;
By brawn and brain I've made my way.
Had I bet, beered and blown my pelf,
I would have been as poor as they.
Had I wed young to thrift's unheed,
I might have been a toiler now,
With rent to pay and kids to feed,
And bloody sweat upon my brow.

Ah there's the point! "I might have been."
I might have b...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Song of the Open Road

...detain’d! 
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! 
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d! 
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge
 expound
 the
 law. 

Mon enfant! I give you my hand! 
I give you my love, more precious than money, 
I give you myself, before preaching or law; 
Will you give me yourself? w...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

...The end of the affair is always death. 
She's my workshop. Slippery eye, 
out of the tribe of myself my breath 
finds you gone. I horrify 
those who stand by. I am fed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Finger to finger, now she's mine. 
She's not too far. She's my encounter. 
I beat her like a bell. I recline 
in the bower where you used to mount her. 
You borrowed me on the flowered spread. 
At night, ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Lonely God

...conquered, thou, Eternity, shalt lie 
Under My hand as little as a fly. 

I am the Master: I the mighty God 
And you My workshop. Your pavilions trod 
By Me and Mine shall never cease to be, 
For you are but the magnitude of Me, 
The width of My extension, the surround 
Of My dense splendour. Rolling, rolling round, 
To steeped infinity, and out beyond 
My own strong comprehension, you are bond 
And servile to My doings. Let you swing 
More wide and ever wide, you do but flin...Read more of this...
by Stephens, James

This is to Love

...our cipher!
The heart said, “I was in the factory whilst the home of water and clay was abaking.
“I was flying from the workshop whilst the workshop was being created.
“When I could no more resist, they dragged me; how shall I
tell the manner of that dragging?” “Mystical Poems of Rumi 1?, A.J. Arberry
The University of Chicago Press, 1968  Li...Read more of this...
by Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad

Yesterday, I visited the workshop of a potter; there I

...Yesterday, I visited the workshop of a potter; there I
saw two thousand pitchers, some speaking, others silent.
Each one of these seemed to say to me: Where is the
potter? Where is the buyer of pitchers? Where the
seller?...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar

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