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Famous Bottomless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Heaney, Seamus
...ards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless....Read more of this...



by Poe, Edgar Allan
...hese lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and ch...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...My wound was slight, 
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell 
Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell 
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light. 

At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew, 
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare: 
For, though low down upon the list, I’m there; 
‘In proud and glorious memory’ ... that’s my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire: 
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed. 
Once I came h...Read more of this...

by Mueller, Lisel
...."

And they fished with their lips and tongues
until the water was gone
and the moon had slipped away
in the soft, bottomless mud....Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...r its fertile slime;
And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,
Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods,
O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,
They fight the elements with elements,
(That one would say, meadow and forest walked
Upright in human shape to rule their like.)
And by the order in the field disclose,
The order regnant in the yeoman's brain.

What these strong masters wrote at large in miles,
I followed in small copy in my acre:
For there's no rood...Read more of this...



by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...its fertile slime, 
And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow, 
Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods 
O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year, 
They fight the elements with elements 
(That one would say, meadow and forest walked. 
Transmuted in these men to rule their like), 
And by the order in the field disclose 
The order regnant in the yeoman's brain. 
What these strong masters wrote at large in miles, 
I followed in small copy in my acre; 
For there's ...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.

Not even a good flogging made him holler!

O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain's dangling a schol...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
... Him the Almighty Power 
Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. 
 Nine times the space that measures day and night 
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, 
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, 
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom 
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought 
Both of...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...rged them behind: Headlong themselves they threw 
Down from the verge of Heaven; eternal wrath 
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit. 
Hell heard the unsufferable noise, Hell saw 
Heaven ruining from Heaven, and would have fled 
Affrighted; but strict Fate had cast too deep 
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound. 
Nine days they fell: Confounded Chaos roared, 
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall 
Through his wild anarchy, so huge a rout 
Incumbered him w...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
Who, leagued with millions more in rash revolt,
Kept not my happy station, but was driven 
With them from bliss to the bottomless Deep—
Yet to that hideous place not so confined
By rigour unconniving but that oft,
Leaving my dolorous prison, I enjoy
Large liberty to round this globe of Earth,
Or range in the Air; nor from the Heaven of Heavens
Hath he excluded my resort sometimes.
I came, among the Sons of God, when he
Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job,
To prove him, and ...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...e to come to her rescue,
gather up the little dog in your arms,
untangle the leash, lead her to safety,
and receive her bottomless gratitude, but
the mechanic is calling you over to look
at something under your car. It seems that he has
run into a problem and the job is going
to cost more than he had said and take
much longer than he had thought.
Well, it can't be helped, you hear yourself say
as you return to your place by the workbench,
knowing that as soon as the h...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...Guard yourself from the terrible empty light of space, the bottomless
Pool of the stars. (Expose yourself to it: you might learn something.)

Guard yourself from perceiving the inherent nastiness of man and woman.
(Expose yourself to it: you might learn something.)

Faith, as they now confess, is preposterous, an act of will. Choose the Christian sheep-cote
Or the Communist rat-fight: faith will ...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...e, it is a child
Sucking his thumb and biting his lip,
But grasp it all, there may be more!
From the topless sky to the bottomless floor
With the heavy head and the fingertip:
All is not blind, obscene, and poor.
Socrates stands by me stockstill,
Teaching hope to my flickering will,
Pointing to the sky's inexorable blue
---Old Noumenon, come true, come true!...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to
 steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
 Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
 but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this l...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...the domesticity of these windows,
The baby lace, the green-leaved confectionery,

The thick Germans slumbering in their bottomless Stolz.
And the black phones on hooks

Glittering
Glittering and digesting

Voicelessness. The snow has no voice.


28 January 1963...Read more of this...

by Herrick, Robert
...ng streams betray small depth below.
 So when love speechless is, she doth express
 A depth in love, and that depth bottomless.
Now since my love is tongueless, know me such,
 Who speak but little, 'cause I love so much....Read more of this...

by Vallejo, Cesar
...Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."

Now I go hide
as before, from all evening
lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.
Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.
Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.
I remember we made ourselves cry,
brother, from...Read more of this...

by Hoagland, Tony
...ey say No, No, No until
they are overwhelmed and punch
their buddy in the face for joy,

or make a joke about gravy and bottomless holes
to a middle-aged waitress who is gently
setting down the plate in front of them.

If they are grotesque, if
what they say and do is often nothing more
than a kind of psychopathic fart,

it is only because of the tractors,
the tractors in their blood,
revving their engines, chewing up the turf
inside their arteries and veins
It is the tes...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...d locks,
Oh Love, of thy minstrel!

With thy glimmering torch
Lightest thou him
Through the fords when 'tis night,
Over bottomless places
On desert-like plains;
With the thousand colours of morning
Gladd'nest his bosom;
With the fierce-biting storm
Bearest him proudly on high;
Winter torrents rush from the cliffs,--
Blend with his psalms;
An altar of grateful delight
He finds in the much-dreaded mountain's
Snow-begirded summit,
Which foreboding nations
Crown'd with spirit-dan...Read more of this...

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