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Famous Breathing In Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Browning, Robert
...heart! 
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes, 
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere; 
It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh? 
These hot long ceremonies of our church 
Cost us a little--oh, they pay the price, 
You take me--amply pay it! Now, we'll talk. 

So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs. 
No deprecation,--nay, I beg you, sir! 
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know, 
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out, 
We'd see truth dawn toget...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...Green fingers 
holding the hillside, 
mustard whipping in 
the sea winds, one blood-bright 
poppy breathing in 
and out. The odor 
of Spanish earth comes 
up to me, yellowed 
with my own piss. 
 40 miles from Málaga 
half the world away 
from home, I am home and 
nowhere, a man who envies 
grass. 
 Two oxen browse 
yoked together in the green clearing 
below. Their bells cough. When 
the darkness and the wet roll in 
at dusk they gath...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...Bowery, 
who wept at the romance of the streets with their 
 pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the 
 bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in 
 their lofts, 
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned 
 with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded 
 by orange crates of theology, 
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty 
 incantations which in the yellow morning were 
 stanzas of gibberish, 
wh...Read more of this...

by Corso, Gregory
...le page!

Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!

I would have taken the page
breathing in the crime!
For no evidence have I wrung from dreams--
yet what triumph is there in private credence?

Often, in some steep ancestral book,
when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples
and torched-skin mushrooms,
my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age
and I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk,
pour secrecy upon the dying page....Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
... Her eyes are unfocused, everything's root beer. 
I write root beer, root beer, to make her happy.

from Breathing In, Breathing Out, Anhinga Press, 2002
© 2000, Fleda Brown
(first published in The Southern Review, 36 [2000])
...Read more of this...



by Gregory, Rg
...for the next sound for the
blade of the knife
  i become aware
of the ticking clock...and my father's
heavy breathing in the next room
the curtain moves and a faint light
like a living thing creeps on the bed
something - a twig - scratches on the pane
a car changes gear on a nearby hill
there is a creak in the house again
a door rattles in a hidden wind - an owl's cry
dogs barking - even a distant train - all
friendly and easy to explain
   i relax
and yawn get ou...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...le hear the voice
1.14 Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time."
1.15 The Lily of the valley, breathing in the humble grass,
1.16 Answer'd the lovely maid and said: "I am a wat'ry weed,
1.17 And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales;
1.18 So weak, the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head.
1.19 Yet I am visited from heaven, and he that smiles on all
1.20 Walks in the valley and each morn over me spreads his han...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fo...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...fested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far la...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...ee-god disheartened, 
 Perplexed, or in pain. 

And, heeding, it awed me to gather 
 That Nature herself there 
Was breathing in aerie accents, 
 With dirgeful refrain, 

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days, 
 Had grieved her by holding 
Her ancient high fame of perfection 
 In doubt and disdain . . . 

- "I had not proposed me a Creature 
 (She soughed) so excelling 
All else of my kingdom in compass 
 And brightness of brain 

"As to read my defect...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...has been the death,
This death may be the life: my spirit sight
Knows that at last, at least. My doubtful breath
Is breathing in a nobler air; I know,
I know it in my soul, despite of this,
The clinging darkness of the Long Ago,
Cruel as death, and closer than a kiss,
This horror of great darkness. I am come
Into this darkness to attain the light:
To gain my voice I make myself as dumb:
That I may see I close my outer sight:
So, I am here. My brows are bent in pra...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary....Read more of this...

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