Famous Chokes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon

by J R R Tolkien
 There is an inn, a merry old inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.

The ostler has a tipsy cat
that plays a five-stringed fiddle;
And up and down he saws his bow
Now squeaking high, now purring low,
now sawing in the middle.

The landlord keeps...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

Marriage And Feasts

by Victor Hugo
 ("La salle est magnifique.") 
 
 {IV. Aug. 23, 1839.} 


 The hall is gay with limpid lustre bright— 
 The feast to pampered palate gives delight— 
 The sated guests pick at the spicy food, 
 And drink profusely, for the cheer is good; 
 And at that table—where the wise are few— 
 Both sexes and all...Read more of this...

Benediction

by Charles Baudelaire
 When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:

"Ah! I'd rather You'd will me a snake's skin
Than to keep feeding this monstrous slur!
I curse that night's ephemera are sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.

"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To...Read more of this...

The Telegraph Operator

by Robert William Service
 I will not wash my face;
I will not brush my hair;
I "pig" around the place--
There's nobody to care.
Nothing but rock and tree;
Nothing but wood and stone,
Oh, God, it's hell to be
Alone, alone, alone!

Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws
Corral me in a ring.
I feel as if I was
The only living thing
On all this blighted earth;
And so I frowst and shrink,
And crouching by...Read more of this...

Goliath and David

by Robert Graves
 (For D. C. T., Killed at Fricourt, March, 1916)


Yet once an earlier David took 
Smooth pebbles from the brook: 
Out between the lines he went 
To that one-sided tournament, 
A shepherd boy who stood out fine
And young to fight a Philistine 
Clad all in brazen mail. He swears 
That he’s killed lions, he’s killed bears, 
And those that scorn...Read more of this...

from crossing the line

by Rg Gregory
 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as...Read more of this...

eight roundels

by Rg Gregory
 (roundel: variation of the rondeau
consisting of three stanzas of three
lines each, linked together with but
two rhymes and a refrain at the end
of the first and third group)



1.
the blind rose

today's fullness is tomorrow's gone
(the next day after no one knows)
last year's dream now feeds upon
 what blindly grows

imagine if you like a rose
on which no likely sun has shone
a darkness...Read more of this...

The Destroyers

by Rudyard Kipling
 The strength of twice three thousand horse
 That seeks the single goal;
The line that holds the rending course,
 The hate that swings the whole;
The stripped hulls, slinking through the gloom,
 At gaze and gone again --
The Brides of Death that wait the groom --
 The Choosers of the Slain!

Offshore where sea and skyline blend
 In rain, the daylight dies;
The...Read more of this...

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

The Hard Road - 1 of 3

by Li Bai
Pure wine costs, for the golden cup,

ten thousand coppers a flagon,

And a jade plate of dainty food calls for million coins.

I fling aside my chop-sticks and cup, I cannot eat nor drink...

I pull out my dagger, I peer four ways in vain.

I would cross the Yellow River, but ice chokes the ferry;

I would climb the Tai-hang Mountains,

but the sky is...Read more of this...

Tar

by C K Williams
 The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, 
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to 
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble 
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening...Read more of this...

When The Old Man Smokes

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the forenoon's restful quiet,
When the boys are off at school,
When the window lights are shaded
And the chimney-corner cool,
Then the old man seeks his armchair,
Lights his pipe and settles back;
Falls a-dreaming as he draws it
Till the smoke-wreaths gather black.
And the tear-drops come a-trickling
Down his cheeks, a silver flow—
Smoke or memories you wonder,
But you never ask him,—no;
For there 's something almost...Read more of this...

Sheltered Garden

by Hilda Doolittle
 I have had enough. 
I gasp for breath. 

Every way ends, every road, 
every foot-path leads at last 
to the hill-crest -- 
then you retrace your steps, 
or find the same slope on the other side, 
precipitate. 

I have had enough -- 
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies, 
herbs, sweet-cress. 

O for some sharp swish of a branch -- 
there is no...Read more of this...

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