Famous Boil Poems by Famous Poets

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

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133. The Brigs of Ayr

...ng deluges o’erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil;
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course.
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source,
Aroused by blustering winds an’ spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes;
While crashing ice, borne on the rolling spate,
Sweeps dams, an’ mills, an’ brigs, a’ to the gate;
And from Glenbuck, 6 down to the Ratton-key, 7
Auld Ayr is just one le...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Cloud in Trousers

...luggish fish of the imagination 
flounders softly in the slush of the heart. 
And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth 
of loves and nightingales, 
the tongueless street merely writhes 
for lack of something to shout or say. 

In our pride, we raise up again 
the cities¡¯ towers of Babel, 
but god, 
confusing tongues, 
grinds 
cities to pasture. 

In silence the street pushed torment. 
A shout stood erect in the gullet. 
Wedged in the throat, 
bul...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir

A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor

...nd revealed the thirteenth floor.

It was cheap cigars like lurid scars
That glowed in the rancid gloom,
The murk was a-boil with fusel oil
And the reek of stale perfume.
And round and round there dragged and wound
A loathsome conga chain,
The square and the hep in slow lock step,
The slayer and the slain.
(For the souls of the victims ascend on high,
But their bodies below remain.)

The clean souls fly to their home in the sky,
But their bodies remain below
To pursue the Cai...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

A Tale of Two Cities

..., 'neath the palms,
 Asks an alms,
And the burden of its lamentation is, Briefly, this:
"Because for certain months, we boil and stew,
 So should you.
Cast the Viceroy and his Council, to perspire
 In our fire!"
And for answer to the argument, in vain
 We explain
That an amateur Saint Lawrence cannot fry:
 "All must fry!"
That the Merchant risks the perils of the Plain
 For gain.
Nor can Rulers rule a house that men grow rich in,
 From its kitchen.
Let the Babu drop inflammat...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Absalom And Achitophel

...s father could not, or he would not see.
Some warm excesses, which the Law forbore,
Were constru'd youth that purged by boiling o'er:
And Amnon's murther, by a specious name,
Was call'd a just revenge for injur'd fame.
Thus prais'd, and lov'd, the noble youth remain'd,
While David, undisturb'd, in Sion reign'd.
But life can never be sincerely blest:
Heav'n punishes the bad, and proves the best.
The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murm'ring race,
As ever tri'd th'extent and stretch...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John


Avons Harvest

...he to pay the toll
To peace on earth? Good will to men—oh, yes! 
That’s easy; and it means no more than sap, 
Until we boil the water out of it 
Over the fire of sacrifice. I’ll do it; 
And in a measurable way I’ve done it—
But not for him. What are you smiling at? 
Well, so it went until a day in June. 
We were together under an old elm, 
Which now, I hope, is gone—though it’s a crime 
In me that I should have to wish the death
Of such a tree as that. There were no trees 
L...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Coffee

...after her. I looked at the pan full of water on the stove.
I knew that it would take a year before the water started to boil. It was now October
and there was too much water in the pan. That was the problem. I threw half of the water
into the sink.
The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet.
I looked out the back porch. There were sacks of garbage there. I stared at the garbage
and tried to figure out what she had been eating lately by...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Epipsychidion (excerpt)

...t together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confus'd in Passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instin...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Hyperion

...and screw'd;
Without a motion, save of their big hearts
Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd
With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.
Mnemosyne was straying in the world;
Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered;
And many else were free to roam abroad,
But for the main, here found they covert drear.
Scarce images of life, one here, one there,
Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Isabella or The Pot of Basil

...inking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,
And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:
It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache,
And in the dawn she started up awake;

XLII.
"Ha! ha!" said she, "I knew not this hard life,
"I thought the worst was simple misery;
"I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife
"Portion'd us--happy days, or else to die;
"But there is crime--a brother's bloody knife!
"Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

May

...too a name
That superstition holds to fame
Whose red and purple mottled flowers
Are cropt by maids in weeding hours
To boil in water milk and way1
For washes on an holiday
To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
I'th'2 middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers the toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lowly joys
That met the may wi hopes as sw...Read more of this...
by Clare, John

November

...ttoning his doublet closer to his chin,
He bends and scampers o'er the elting soil,
While clouds above him in wild fury boil,
And winds drive heavily the beating rain;
He turns his back to catch his breath awhile,
Then ekes his speed and faces it again,
To seek the shepherd's hut beside the rushy plain.

The boy, that scareth from the spiry wheat
The melancholy crow—in hurry weaves,
Beneath an ivied tree, his sheltering seat,
Of rushy flags and sedges tied in sheaves,
Or from...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen

Ode To Maize

...d lend it
your virginal flavor.

Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads through
blue sierras.

But is there
no end
to your treasure?

In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the empty
table of the miner.

Your light, your cornmeal, your hope
pervades America's solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are enemy legions.

Within your...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

Saving a Train

...ne hundred and fifty feet deep,
And enough to make one's flesh to creep. 

Far beneath the bridge a mountain-stream did boil and rumble,
And on that night did madly toss and tumble;
Oh! it must have been an awful sight
To see the great cataract falling from such a height. 

It was the duty of Carl's father to watch the bridge on stormy nights,
And warn the on-coming trains of danger with the red lights;
So, on this stormy night, the boy Carl hobbled along
Slowly and fearlessl...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...band that surrounds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the straight way out,
The distance between us. Long ago
The strewn evidence meant something,
The small accidents and pleasur...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

The General Prologue

...o to vigils all before,
And have a mantle royally y-bore.

A COOK they hadde with them for the nones*, *occasion
To boil the chickens and the marrow bones,
And powder merchant tart and galingale.
Well could he know a draught of London ale.
He could roast, and stew, and broil, and fry,
Make mortrewes, and well bake a pie.
But great harm was it, as it thoughte me,
That, on his shin a mormal* hadde he. *ulcer
For blanc manger, that made he with the best 

A SHIPMAN was t...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Hunting Of The Snark

...e far
 Than mutton, or oysters, or eggs:
(Some think it keeps best in an ivory jar,
 And some, in mahogany kegs:)

"You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue:
 You condense it with locusts and tape:
Still keeping one principal object in view--
 To preserve its symmetrical shape."

The Butcher would gladly have talked till next day,
 But he felt that the Lesson must end,
And he wept with delight in attempting to say
 He considered the Beaver his friend.

While the Beaver con...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Incantation

...Scene: Federal Political Arena 
A darkened cave. In the middle, a cauldron, boiling. 
Enter the three witches. 
1ST WITCH: Thrice hath the Federal Jackass brayed. 

2ND WITCH: Once the Bruce-Smith War-horse neighed. 

3RD WITCH: So Georgie comes, 'tis time, 'tis time, 
Around the cauldron to chant our rhyme. 

1ST WITCH: In the cauldron boil and bake 
Fillet of a tariff snake, 
Home-made flannels -- mostly cotton, 
Apples full of mo...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The Lady of the Lake

...s might suit the spectre's child.
     Where with black cliffs the torrents toil,
     He watched the wheeling eddies boil,
     Jill from their foam his dazzled eyes
     Beheld the River Demon rise:
     The mountain mist took form and limb
     Of noontide hag or goblin grim;
     The midnight wind came wild and dread,
     Swelled with the voices of the dead;
     Far on the future battle-heath
     His eye beheld the ranks of death:
     Thus the lone Seer, fr...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Wizard Way

...forked hazel staff, 
And the rose of no terrene graff, 
And the lamp of no olive oil 
With heart's blood that alone may boil. 
With naked breast and feet unshod 
I follow the wizard way to God. 

Wherever he leads my foot shall follow; 
Over the height, into the hollow, 
Up to the caves of pure cold breath, 
Down to the deeps of foul hot death, 
Across the seas, through the fires, 
Past the palace of desires; 
Where he will, whether he will or no, 
If I go, I care not whither...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister

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