Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Brawn Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Plath, Sylvia
...ntless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his horny loins;
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the ...Read more of this...



by Wilmot, John
...gorged at another time
With a vast meal of slime
Which your devouring **** had drawn
From porters' backs and footmen's brawn,
I was content to serve you up
My ballock-full for your grace cup,
Nor ever thought it an abuse
While you had pleasure for excuse -
You that could make my heart away
For noise and color, and betray
The secrets of my tender hours
To such knight-errant paramours,
When, leaning on your faithless breast,
Wrapped in security and rest,
Soft kindness all my p...Read more of this...

by Melville, Herman
...empire in her eyes.
So she, with graver air and lifted flag;
While the shadow, chased by light,
Fled along the far-brawn height,
And left her on the crag....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...d it.) 

He masters whose spirit masters—he tastes sweetest who results sweetest in the long
 run;
The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint; 
In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, manners, engineering, an appropriate native
 grand-opera, shipcraft, any craft, he or she is greatest who contributes the greatest
 original
 practical example. 

Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the streets, 
People’s lips salute only doers, love...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...e got no show! It's sure and certain death. . . ."
And there we hung, and there we clung, with beef and brawn and thew,
And sinews cracked and joints were racked, and panting came our breath;
And there we swayed and there we prayed, till strength and hope were spent --
Then Dick, he threw us off like rats, and after Jim he went.

With mighty urge amid the surge of river-rage he leapt,
And gripped his mate and desperate he fought to gain the shore;
With tee...Read more of this...



by Lanier, Sidney
...lk is here?
Now comes the Course-of-things, shaped like an Ox,
Slow browsing, o'er my hillside, ponderously --
The huge-brawned, tame, and workful Course-of-things,
That hath his grass, if earth be round or flat,
And hath his grass, if empires plunge in pain
Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking Ox
Comes browsing o'er my hills and vales of Time,
And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it, sharp,
And sicklewise, about my poets' heads,
And twists them in, all -- Dante, ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Familiarity some claim
 Can breed contempt,
So from it let it be your aim
 To be exempt.
Let no one exercise his brawn
 To slap your back,
Lest he forget your name is John,
 And call you Jack.

To those who crash your private pew
 Be sour as krout;
Don't let them see the real 'you,'
 And bawl you out.
Don't call your Cousin William--Bill,
 But formal be.
Have care! Beware and shun famil--
 Iarity.

I'm quite polite. My hat I doff
 But little say.Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...oot, shoulder and shank—
By a grey eye's heed steered well, one crew, fall to;
Stand at stress. Each limb's barrowy brawn, his thew
That onewhere curded, onewhere sucked or sank—
 Soared or sank—,
Though as a beechbole firm, finds his, as at a roll-call, rank
And features, in flesh, what deed he each must do—
 His sinew-service where do. 

He leans to it, Harry bends, look. Back, elbow, and liquid waist
In him, all quail to the wallowing o' the plough: 's cheek cr...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...ne out of the ditch
One time at Georgie Kirby's.
So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard --
That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 Stir! rouse thee! Sit! if thou know'st not to rise; 
 Sit up, thou tortured sluggard! ope thine eyes! 
 Stretch thy brawn, Giant! Sleep is foul and vile! 
 Art fagged, art deaf, art dumb? art blind this while? 
 They lie who say so! Thou dost know and feel 
 The things they do to thee and thine. The heel 
 That scratched thy neck in passing—whose? Canst say? 
 Yes, yes, 'twas his, and this is his fête-day. 
 Oh, thou that wert of humankind—couched so— ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...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 been as peeved as they,
And know what misery ca...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...sweet flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate
 eggs! it shall be you! 
Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! 
Trickling sap of maple! fibre of manly wheat! it shall be you! 

Sun so generous, it shall be you! 
Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you! 
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me, it shall be you! 
Broad, muscular fields! branches of live oak! loving lounge...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...fine
 He'd fail to make the hundred.
Though he was not a rolling stone
 No moss he seemed to gather:
A patriarch of brawn and bone
 Was Great Grandfather.

He should have been senile and frail
 Instead of hale and hearty;
But no, he loved a mug of ale,
 A boisterous old party.
'As frisky as a cold,' said he,
 'A man's allotted span
I've lived but now I plan to be
 A Centenarian.'

Then one night when I called on him
 Oh what a change I saw!
His head was bowed,...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...at I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out th...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...at?
Against the knockin' of sevenfold dawn,
An' red-tipped candles from morn to morn
Have dipped an' danced upon thy brawn
Till thou art worn--
    Oh, I have cost thee summat.

Look in the mirror an' see thy-sen,
    --What, I am showin' thee summat.
Wasted an' wan tha sees thy-sen,
An' thy hand that holds the mirror shakes
Till tha drops the glass and tha shudders when
Thy luck breaks.
    Sure, tha'rt afraid o' summat.

Frail thou art, my saucy man,
    --L...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...er also,
A Manciple, and myself, there were no mo'.

The MILLER was a stout carle for the nones,
Full big he was of brawn, and eke of bones;
That proved well, for *ov'r all where* he came, *wheresoever*
At wrestling he would bear away the ram.
He was short-shouldered, broad, a thicke gnarr*, *stump of wood
There was no door, that he n'old* heave off bar, *could not
Or break it at a running with his head.
His beard as any sow or fox was red,
And thereto broad, ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...was afraid. 

And during the siege Colonel Baden was cheerful and gay,
While the starving population were living on brawn each day;
And alas! the sufferings of the women and children were great,
But they all submitted patiently to their fate. 

For seven months besieged they fought the Boers without dismay,
Until at last the Boers were glad to run away;
Because Baden-Powell's gallant band put them to flight
By cannon shot and volleys of musketry to the left and right....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...full of bellicose rage, they're showing us how to be men.
We're only beginning to find ourselves; we're wonders of brawn and thew;
But when we go back to our Sissy jobs, -- oh, what are we going to do?

For shoulders curved with the counter stoop will be carried erect and square;
And faces white from the office light will be bronzed by the open air;
And we'll walk with the stride of a new-born pride, with a new-found joy in our eyes,
Scornful men who have diced with deat...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...**scrap
Or elles what you list, we may not chese;* *choose
A Godde's halfpenny,  or a mass penny;
Or give us of your brawn, if ye have any;
A dagon* of your blanket, leve dame, *remnant
Our sister dear, -- lo, here I write your name,--
Bacon or beef, or such thing as ye find."
A sturdy harlot* went them aye behind, *manservant 
That was their hoste's man, and bare a sack,
And what men gave them, laid it on his back
And when that he was out at door, anon
He *planed a...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...

So as in country ways I go
 Wife loves the town;
But though I'm slow, serene I know
 I won't break down.
With brawn and bone I reckon mine
 The best machine:
Old folks and donkeys best combine,
 --"Giddup, Titine!"...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Brawn poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things