Famous Bitten Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Familiar Letter

..., and I'm sorry I've written,--
I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf;
For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten,
And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself....Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell


A Servant to Servants

...
I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way. 
My father's brother, he went mad quite young. 
Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, 
Because his violence took on the form 
Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; 
But it's more likely he was crossed in love, 
Or so the story goes. It was some girl. 
Anyway all he talked about was love. 
They soon saw he would do someone a mischief 
If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended 
In father's building him a sort of cage, 
Or ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

A Song Of Despair

...vid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

O...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

Avons Harvest

...ght, for good assurance 
That it was I, or chance and I together, 
Did all that sowing. If I seem to you
To be a little bitten by the question, 
Without a miracle it might be true; 
The miracle is to me that I’m not eaten 
Long since to death of it, and that you sit 
With nothing more agreeable than a ghost.
If you had thought a while of that, you might, 
Unhappily, not have come; and your not coming 
Would have been desolation—not for you, 
God save the mark!—for I would hav...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

...C, I AM
NAKED, I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE, THIS REALLY SUCKS.

A few guys feel sorry for me and risk getting their hands bitten off by
sticking dollars in my garter belt. My disheveled pubic hairs stand at
full attention, ready to poke the guys' eyes out if they get too close.

Then I notice this bald guy in the audience, I've got a new empathy for
bald people, I figure maybe it works both ways, maybe this guy will stick
10 bucks in my garter.

I saunter over.

I'm teetering a...Read more of this...
by Estep, Maggie


Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford

...int the gods
Who made it so: the gods have always eyes
To see men scratch; and they see one down here
Who itches, manor-bitten to the bone,
Albeit he knows himself -- yes, yes, he knows--
The lord of more than England and of more
Than all the seas of England in all time
Shall ever wash. D'ye wonder that I laugh?
He sees me, and he doesn't seem to care;
And why the devil should he? I can't tell you.

I'll meet him out alone of a bright Sunday,
Trim, rather spruce, and quite th...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Faces

...ut by the turn’d-in nails, 
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well. 

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
And this is some murderer’s knife, with a half-pull’d scabbard. 

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee; 
An unceasing death-bell tolls there. 

3
Those then are really men—the bosses and tufts of the great round globe! 

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas’d and cadaverous march?
Well, you cannot tr...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

From ‘Paracelsus'

...rumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask— 
God joys therein! The wroth sea’s waves are edged 
With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, 
When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, 
Staring together with their eyes on flame— 
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
Buds tenderly upon roug...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Gareth And Lynette

...ats and drinks, be thine.' 

He rose and past; then Kay, a man of mien 
Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself 
Root-bitten by white lichen, 

'Lo ye now! 
This fellow hath broken from some Abbey, where, 
God wot, he had not beef and brewis enow, 
However that might chance! but an he work, 
Like any pigeon will I cram his crop, 
And sleeker shall he shine than any hog.' 

Then Lancelot standing near, 'Sir Seneschal, 
Sleuth-hound thou knowest, and gray, and all the hounds;...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Laughter and Tears IX

...solitary place. 

After a few moments of complete silence, I heard the following words uttered with sighs from weather-bitten lips, "Shed not tears, my beloved; love that opens our eyes and enslaves our hearts can give us the blessing of patience. Be consoled in our delay our delay, for we have taken an oath and entered Love's shrine; for our love will ever grow in adversity; for it is in Love's name that we are suffering the obstacles of poverty and the sharpness of misery ...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

O We Are The Outcasts

...a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms
with their flabby hearts
they tell us
what's wrong with the world-
as if we didn't know that a cop's club
can crack the head
and that war is a dirtier game than
marriage . . .
or down in a basement bar
hiding from a wife who doesn't appreciate him
and children he doesn't
want
he tells us that his heart is drowning...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Part 6 of Trout Fishing in America

...e in Salt Lake.

 The Mormon woman told us that when she had been mar-

ried in the temple at Salt Lake, a mosquito had bitten her on

the wrist just before the ceremony and her wrist had swollen

up and become huge and just awful. It could've been seen

through the lace by a blindman. She had been so embarrassed.

 She told us that those Salt Lake mosquitoes always made

her swell up when they bit her. Last year, she had told us,

she'd been in Salt Lake, doing some temple w...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Symptoms

...ou have given me a raging temper,
Insomnia, a rising sense of panic,
A hopeless challenge, bouts of introspection,
Raw, bitten nails, a voice that’s strangely manic,
A selfish streak, a fear of isolation,
A silly smile, lips that are chapped and sore,
A running joke, a risk, an inspiration –
Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a premonition,
Chattering teeth, a goal, a lot to lose,
A granted wish, mixed motives, superstitions,
Hang-ups and heada...Read more of this...
by Hannah, Sophie

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

...
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the springtime shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

The Last Tournament

...ckward she replied, 
`Can he be wronged who is not even his own, 
But save for dread of thee had beaten me, 
Scratched, bitten, blinded, marred me somehow--Mark? 
What rights are his that dare not strike for them? 
Not lift a hand--not, though he found me thus! 
But harken! have ye met him? hence he went 
Today for three days' hunting--as he said-- 
And so returns belike within an hour. 
Mark's way, my soul!--but eat not thou with Mark, 
Because he hates thee even more than f...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

...ps, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Man Against the Sky

..., 
Who moved along the molten west,
And over the round hill’s crest 
That seemed half ready with him to go down, 
Flame-bitten and flame-cleft, 
As if there were to be no last thing left 
Of a nameless unimaginable town,— 
Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken 
Down to the perils of a depth not known, 
From death defended though by men forsaken, 
The bread that every man must eat alone; 
He may have walked while others hardly dared 
Look on to see him stand where ma...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Three Women

...That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then? This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers: doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Welsh Landscape

...at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song. To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
...Read more of this...
by Thomas, R S

White Flock

...the thrown-over predatory profile
Became horribly heavy and stark,
And one could not hear the breathing
Through the bitten-up lips turned dark.

But suddenly the last bit of strength
Came alive in the eyes of blue:
"It is good that you released me,
Not always kind were you."

And then the face became younger,
And I recognized him once more.
And then I said, "Holy Father,
Accept a slave of yours."



x x x

I came over to the pine forest.
It is hot, and ...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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