10 Best Famous Gnaw At Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Gnaw At poems. This is a select list of the best famous Gnaw At poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Gnaw At poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of gnaw at poems.

• All Famous Gnaw At Poems

 Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes ... it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear our organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

 A middle-northern March, now as always— 
gusts from the South broken against cold winds— 
but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, 
it moves—not into April—into a second March, 

the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping 
upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree 
upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere. 

So we will put on our pink felt hat—new last year! 
—newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back 
the seasons—and let us walk to the orchid-house, 
see the flowers will take the prize tomorrow 
at the Palace. 
 Stop here, these are our oleanders. 
When they are in bloom— 
 You would waste words 
It is clearer to me than if the pink 
were on the branch. It would be a searching in 
a colored cloud to reveal that which now, huskless, 
shows the very reason for their being. 

And these the orange-trees, in blossom—no need 
to tell with this weight of perfume in the air. 
If it were not so dark in this shed one could better 
see the white. 
 It is that very perfume 
has drawn the darkness down among the leaves. 
Do I speak clearly enough? 
It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone 
loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings— 
not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion 
of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves 
its own caretaker. 
And here are the orchids! 
 Never having seen 
such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: 
This is an odd January, died—in Villon's time. 
Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet 
grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom. 

And this, a certain July from Iceland: 
a young woman of that place 
breathed it toward the South. It took root there. 
The color ran true but the plant is small. 

This falling spray of snow-flakes is 
a handful of dead Februaries 
prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez 
of Guatemala. 
 Here's that old friend who 
went by my side so many years: this full, fragile 
head of veined lavender. Oh that April 
that we first went with our stiff lusts 
leaving the city behind, out to the green hill— 
May, they said she was. A hand for all of us: 
this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem. 

June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August 
the over-heavy one. And here are— 
russet and shiny, all but March. And March? 
Ah, March— 
 Flowers are a tiresome pastime. 
One has a wish to shake them from their pots 
root and stem, for the sun to gnaw. 

Walk out again into the cold and saunter home 
to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. 
I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze 
instead which will at least warm our hands 
and stir up the talk. 
 I think we have kept fair time. 
Time is a green orchard.

 GUID-MORNIN’ to our Majesty!
 May Heaven augment your blisses
On ev’ry new birth-day ye see,
 A humble poet wishes.
My bardship here, at your Levee
 On sic a day as this is,
Is sure an uncouth sight to see,
 Amang thae birth-day dresses
 Sae fine this day.


I see ye’re complimented thrang,
 By mony a lord an’ lady;
“God save the King” ’s a cuckoo sang
 That’s unco easy said aye:
The poets, too, a venal gang,
 Wi’ rhymes weel-turn’d an’ ready,
Wad gar you trow ye ne’er do wrang,
 But aye unerring steady,
 On sic a day.


For me! before a monarch’s face
 Ev’n there I winna flatter;
For neither pension, post, nor place,
 Am I your humble debtor:
So, nae reflection on your Grace,
 Your Kingship to bespatter;
There’s mony waur been o’ the race,
 And aiblins ane been better
 Than you this day.

’Tis very true, my sovereign King,
 My skill may weel be doubted;
But facts are chiels that winna ding,
 An’ downa be disputed:
Your royal nest, beneath your wing,
 Is e’en right reft and clouted,
And now the third part o’ the string,
 An’ less, will gang aboot it
 Than did ae day. 1


Far be’t frae me that I aspire
 To blame your legislation,
Or say, ye wisdom want, or fire,
 To rule this mighty nation:
But faith! I muckle doubt, my sire,
 Ye’ve trusted ministration
To chaps wha in barn or byre
 Wad better fill’d their station
 Than courts yon day.


And now ye’ve gien auld Britain peace,
 Her broken shins to plaister,
Your sair taxation does her fleece,
 Till she has scarce a tester:
For me, thank God, my life’s a lease,
 Nae bargain wearin’ faster,
Or, faith! I fear, that, wi’ the geese,
 I shortly boost to pasture
 I’ the craft some day.


I’m no mistrusting Willie Pitt,
 When taxes he enlarges,
(An’ Will’s a true guid fallow’s get,
 A name not envy spairges),
That he intends to pay your debt,
 An’ lessen a’ your charges;
But, God-sake! let nae saving fit
 Abridge your bonie barges
 An’boats this day.


Adieu, my Liege; may freedom geck
 Beneath your high protection;
An’ may ye rax Corruption’s neck,
 And gie her for dissection!
But since I’m here, I’ll no neglect,
 In loyal, true affection,
To pay your Queen, wi’ due respect,
 May fealty an’ subjection
 This great birth-day.


Hail, Majesty most Excellent!
 While nobles strive to please ye,
Will ye accept a compliment,
 A simple poet gies ye?
Thae bonie bairntime, Heav’n has lent,
 Still higher may they heeze ye
In bliss, till fate some day is sent
 For ever to release ye
 Frae care that day.


For you, young Potentate o’Wales,
 I tell your highness fairly,
Down Pleasure’s stream, wi’ swelling sails,
 I’m tauld ye’re driving rarely;
But some day ye may gnaw your nails,
 An’ curse your folly sairly,
That e’er ye brak Diana’s pales,
 Or rattl’d dice wi’ Charlie
 By night or day.


Yet aft a ragged cowt’s been known,
 To mak a noble aiver;
So, ye may doucely fill the throne,
 For a’their clish-ma-claver:
There, him 2 at Agincourt wha shone,
 Few better were or braver:
And yet, wi’ funny, ***** Sir John, 3
 He was an unco shaver
 For mony a day.


For you, right rev’rend Osnaburg,
 Nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter,
Altho’ a ribbon at your lug
 Wad been a dress completer:
As ye disown yon paughty dog,
 That bears the keys of Peter,
Then swith! an’ get a wife to hug,
 Or trowth, ye’ll stain the mitre
 Some luckless day!


Young, royal Tarry-breeks, I learn,
 Ye’ve lately come athwart her—
A glorious galley, 4 stem and stern,
 Weel rigg’d for Venus’ barter;
But first hang out, that she’ll discern,
 Your hymeneal charter;
Then heave aboard your grapple airn,
 An’ large upon her quarter,
 Come full that day.


Ye, lastly, bonie blossoms a’,
 Ye royal lasses dainty,
Heav’n mak you guid as well as braw,
 An’ gie you lads a-plenty!
But sneer na British boys awa!
 For kings are unco scant aye,
An’ German gentles are but sma’,
 They’re better just than want aye
 On ony day.


Gad bless you a’! consider now,
 Ye’re unco muckle dautit;
But ere the course o’ life be through,
 It may be bitter sautit:
An’ I hae seen their coggie fou,
 That yet hae tarrow’t at it.
But or the day was done, I trow,
 The laggen they hae clautit
 Fu’ clean that day.


 Note 1. The American colonies had recently been lost. [back]
Note 2. King Henry V.—R. B. [back]
Note 3. Sir John Falstaff, vid. Shakespeare.—R. B. [back]
Note 4. Alluding to the newspaper account of a certain Royal sailor’s amour.—R. B. This was Prince William Henry, third son of George III, afterward King William IV. [back]

 Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear 
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am indoors, of course, and this is a pane, here,
and I have arranged the flowers for you
again. Have taken the dead cordless ones, the yellow bits past apogee,
the faded cloth, the pollen-free abandoned marriage-hymn
back out, leaving the few crisp blooms to swagger, winglets, limpid

 debris
Shall I arrange these few remaining flowers?
Shall I rearrange these gossamer efficiencies?
Please don't touch me with your skin.
Please let the thing evaporate.
Please tell me clearly what it is.
The party is so loud downstairs, bristling with souvenirs.
It's a philosophy of life, of course,
drinks fluorescent, whips of syntax in the air
above the heads -- how small they seem from here,
the bobbing universal heads, stuffing the void with eloquence,
and also tiny merciless darts
of truth. It's pulled on tight, the air they breathe and rip.
It's like a prize the way it's stretched on tight
over the voices, keeping them intermingling, forcing the breaths to

 marry, marry,
cunning little hermeneutic cupola,
dome of occasion in which the thoughts re-
group, the footprints stall and gnaw in tiny ruts,
the napkins wave, are waved , the honeycombing
thoughts are felt to dialogue, a form of self-
congratulation, no?, or is it suffering? I'm a bit
dizzy up here rearranging things,
they will come up here soon, and need a setting for their fears,
and loves, an architecture for their evolutionary
morphic needs -- what will they need if I don't make the place? --
what will they know to miss?, what cry out for, what feel the bitter

 restless irritations
for? A bit dizzy from the altitude of everlastingness,
the tireless altitudes of the created place,
in which to make a life -- a liberty -- the hollow, fetishized, and starry

 place,
a bit gossamer with dream, a vortex of evaporations,
oh little dream, invisible city, invisible hill
I make here on the upper floors for you --
down there, where you are entertained, where you are passing
time, there's glass and moss on air,
there's the feeling of being numerous, mouths submitting to air, lips

 to protocol,
and dreams of sense, tongues, hinges, forceps clicking
in anticipation ofas if the moment, freeze-burned by accuracies--of
could be thawed open into life again
by gladnesses, by rectitude -- no, no -- by the sinewy efforts at
sincerity -- can't you feel it gliding round you,
mutating, yielding the effort-filled phrases of your talk to air,
compounding, stemming them, honeying-open the sheerest

 innuendoes till
the rightness seems to root, in the air, in the compact indoor sky,
and the rest, all round, feels like desert, falls away,
and you have the sensation of muscular timeliness,and you feel the calligraphic in you reach out like a soul
into the midst of others, in conversation,
gloved by desire, into the tiny carnage
of opinionsSo dizzy. Life buzzing beneath me
though my feeling says the hive is gone, queen gone,
the continuum continuing beneath, busy, earnest, in con-
versation. Shall I prepare. Shall I put this further
to the left, shall I move the light, the point-of-view, the shades are
drawn, to cast a glow resembling disappearance, slightly red,
will that fix it, will that make clear the task, the trellised ongoingness
and all these tiny purposes, these parables, this marketplace
of tightening truths?
Oh knit me that am crumpled dust,
the heap is all dispersed. Knit me that am. Say therefore. Say
philosophy and mean by that the pane.
Let us look out again. The yellow sky.
With black leaves rearranging it

 I love the naked ages long ago 
When statues were gilded by Apollo, 
When men and women of agility 
Could play without lies and anxiety, 
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines, 
As it exercised its noble machine. 
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then, 
Would not place on her daughters a burden, 
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the people, 
Would feed creation from her brown nipples. 
Men, elegant and strong, would have the right 
To be proud to have beauty named their king; 
Virgin fruit free of blemish and cracking, 
Whose flesh smooth and firm would summon a bite! 
The Poet today, when he would convey 
This native grandeur, would not be swept away 
By man free and woman natural, 
But would feel darkness envelop his soul 
Before this black tableau full of loathing. 
O malformed monsters crying for clothing! 
O ludicrous heads! Torsos needing disguise! 
O poor writhing bodies of every wrong size, 
Children that the god of the Useful swaths 
In the language of bronze and brass! 
And women, alas! You shadow your heredity, 
You gnaw nourishment from debauchery, 
A virgin holds maternal lechery 
And all the horrors of fecundity! 

We have, it is true, corrupt nations, 
Beauty unknown to the radiant ancients: 
Faces that gnaw through the heart's cankers, 
And talk with the cool beauty of languor; 
But these inventions of our backward muses 
Are never hindered in their morbid uses 
Of the old for profound homage to youth, 
—To the young saint, the sweet air, the simple truth, 
To the eye as limpid as the water current, 
To spread out over all, insouciant 
Like the blue sky, the birds and the flowers, 
Its perfumes, its songs and its sweet fervors.

 Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us 
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

 MY curse upon your venom’d stang,
That shoots my tortur’d gums alang,
An’ thro’ my lug gies mony a twang,
 Wi’ gnawing vengeance,
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
 Like racking engines!


When fevers burn, or argues freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or colics squeezes,
Our neibor’s sympathy can ease us,
 Wi’ pitying moan;
But thee—thou hell o’ a’ diseases—
 They mock our groan.


Adown my beard the slavers trickle
I throw the wee stools o’er the mickle,
While round the fire the giglets keckle,
 To see me loup,
While, raving mad, I wish a heckle
 Were in their doup!


In a’ the numerous human dools,
Ill hairsts, daft bargains, cutty stools,
Or worthy frien’s rak’d i’ the mools,—
 Sad sight to see!
The tricks o’ knaves, or fash o’fools,
 Thou bear’st the gree!


Where’er that place be priests ca’ hell,
Where a’ the tones o’ misery yell,
An’ ranked plagues their numbers tell,
 In dreadfu’ raw,
Thou, TOOTHACHE, surely bear’st the bell,
 Amang them a’!


O thou grim, mischief-making chiel,
That gars the notes o’ discord squeel,
Till daft mankind aft dance a reel
 In gore, a shoe-thick,
Gie a’ the faes o’ SCOTLAND’S weal
 A townmond’s toothache!

 Under this loop of honeysuckle, 
A creeping, coloured caterpillar, 
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray, 
I nibble it leaf by leaf away. 

Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man’s-looking-glasses; 
Rooks flap croaking across the lane. 
I eat and swallow and eat again. 

Here come raindrops helter-skelter; 
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm. 
I’ll mind my business: I’m a good worm. 

When I’m old, tired, melancholy, 
I’ll build a leaf-green mausoleum 
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away. 

Some say worms win resurrection, 
With white wings beating flitter-flutter, 
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care? 
Either way I’ll miss my share.

Under this loop of honeysuckle, 
A hungry, hairy caterpillar, 
I crawl on my high and swinging seat, 
And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.

 FROM pent-up, aching rivers; 
From that of myself, without which I were nothing; 
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men; 
From my own voice resonant—singing the phallus, 
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people, 
Singing the muscular urge and the blending, 
Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning! 
O for any and each, the body correlative attracting! 
O for you, whoever you are, your correlative body! O it, more than all else, you
 delighting!)
—From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day; 
From native moments—from bashful pains—singing them; 
Singing something yet unfound, though I have diligently sought it, many a long year; 
Singing the true song of the Soul, fitful, at random; 
Singing what, to the Soul, entirely redeem’d her, the faithful one, even the
 prostitute, who detain’d me when I went to the city;
Singing the song of prostitutes; 
Renascent with grossest Nature, or among animals; 
Of that—of them, and what goes with them, my poems informing; 
Of the smell of apples and lemons—of the pairing of birds, 
Of the wet of woods—of the lapping of waves,
Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land—I them chanting; 
The overture lightly sounding—the strain anticipating; 
The welcome nearness—the sight of the perfect body; 
The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back lying and floating; 
The female form approaching—I, pensive, love-flesh tremulous, aching;
The divine list, for myself or you, or for any one, making; 
The face—the limbs—the index from head to foot, and what it arouses; 
The mystic deliria—the madness amorous—the utter abandonment; 
(Hark close, and still, what I now whisper to you, 
I love you—-O you entirely possess me,
O I wish that you and I escape from the rest, and go utterly off—O free and lawless, 
Two hawks in the air—two fishes swimming in the sea not more lawless than we;) 
—The furious storm through me careering—I passionately trembling; 
The oath of the inseparableness of two together—of the woman that loves me, and whom
 I love more than my life—that oath swearing; 
(O I willingly stake all, for you!
O let me be lost, if it must be so! 
O you and I—what is it to us what the rest do or think? 
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other, and exhaust each other, if it must
 be so:) 
—From the master—the pilot I yield the vessel to; 
The general commanding me, commanding all—from him permission taking;
From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long, as it is;) 
From sex—From the warp and from the woof; 
(To talk to the perfect girl who understands me, 
To waft to her these from my own lips—to effuse them from my own body;) 
From privacy—from frequent repinings alone;
From plenty of persons near, and yet the right person not near; 
From the soft sliding of hands over me, and thrusting of fingers through my hair and
 beard; 
From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom; 
From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting with excess; 
From what the divine husband knows—from the work of fatherhood;
From exultation, victory, and relief—from the bedfellow’s embrace in the night; 
From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips, and bosoms, 
From the cling of the trembling arm, 
From the bending curve and the clinch, 
From side by side, the pliant coverlid off-throwing,
From the one so unwilling to have me leave—and me just as unwilling to leave, 
(Yet a moment, O tender waiter, and I return;) 
—From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews, 
From the night, a moment, I, emerging, flitting out, 
Celebrate you, act divine—and you, children prepared for,
And you, stalwart loins.

 [How different people and different animals look upon the moon: showing that each creature finds in it his own mood and disposition]


The Old Horse in the City

The moon's a peck of corn. It lies 
Heaped up for me to eat. 
I wish that I might climb the path 
And taste that supper sweet. 

Men feed me straw and scanty grain 
And beat me till I'm sore. 
Some day I'll break the halter-rope 
And smash the stable-door, 

Run down the street and mount the hill 
Just as the corn appears. 
I've seen it rise at certain times 
For years and years and years. 


What the Hyena Said

The moon is but a golden skull, 
She mounts the heavens now, 
And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms 
Are wreathed around her brow. 

The Moon-Worms are a doughty race: 
They eat her gray and golden face. 
Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head: 
These caverns are their dwelling-place. 

The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies, 
From the great hollows of her eyes 
Behold all souls, and they are wise: 
With tiny, keen and icy eyes, 
Behold how each man sins and dies. 

When Earth in gold-corruption lies 
Long dead, the moon-worm butterflies 
On cyclone wings will reach this place — 
Yea, rear their brood on earth's dead face. 


What the Snow Man Said

The Moon's a snowball. See the drifts 
Of white that cross the sphere. 
The Moon's a snowball, melted down 
A dozen times a year. 

Yet rolled again in hot July 
When all my days are done 
And cool to greet the weary eye 
After the scorching sun. 

The moon's a piece of winter fair 
Renewed the year around, 
Behold it, deathless and unstained, 
Above the grimy ground! 

It rolls on high so brave and white 
Where the clear air-rivers flow, 
Proclaiming Christmas all the time 
And the glory of the snow! 


What the Scare-crow Said

The dim-winged spirits of the night 
Do fear and serve me well. 
They creep from out the hedges of 
The garden where I dwell. 

I wave my arms across the walk. 
The troops obey the sign, 
And bring me shimmering shadow-robes 
And cups of cowslip-wine. 

Then dig a treasure called the moon, 
A very precious thing, 
And keep it in the air for me 
Because I am a King. 


What Grandpa Mouse Said

The moon's a holy owl-queen. 
She keeps them in a jar 
Under her arm till evening, 
Then sallies forth to war. 

She pours the owls upon us. 
They hoot with horrid noise 
And eat the naughty mousie-girls 
And wicked mousie-boys. 

So climb the moonvine every night 
And to the owl-queen pray: 
Leave good green cheese by moonlit trees 
For her to take away. 

And never squeak, my children, 
Nor gnaw the smoke-house door: 
The owl-queen then will love us 
And send her birds no more. 


The Beggar Speaks

"What Mister Moon Said to Me."

Come, eat the bread of idleness, 
Come, sit beside the spring: 
Some of the flowers will keep awake, 
Some of the birds will sing. 

Come, eat the bread no man has sought 
For half a hundred years: 
Men hurry so they have no griefs, 
Nor even idle tears: 

They hurry so they have no loves: 
They cannot curse nor laugh — 
Their hearts die in their youth with neither 
Grave nor epitaph. 

My bread would make them careless, 
And never quite on time — 
Their eyelids would be heavy, 
Their fancies full of rhyme: 

Each soul a mystic rose-tree, 
Or a curious incense tree: 
Come, eat the bread of idleness, 
Said Mister Moon to me. 


What the Forester Said

The moon is but a candle-glow 
That flickers thro' the gloom: 
The starry space, a castle hall: 
And Earth, the children's room, 
Where all night long the old trees stand 
To watch the streams asleep: 
Grandmothers guarding trundle-beds: 
Good shepherds guarding sheep.