Famous Chronic Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Sea Dirge

...means choose the Sea.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat,
 You prefer not a vestige of grass or tree,
And a chronic state of wet in your feet,
 Then--I recommend the Sea.

For I have friends who dwell by the coast--
 Pleasant friends they are to me!
It is when I am with them I wonder most
 That anyone likes the Sea.

They take me a walk: though tired and stiff,
 To climb the heights I madly agree;
And, after a tumble or so from the cliff,
 They kindly suggest the ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis


Boots

...--
  There's no discharge in the war!

We--can--stick--out--'unger, thirst, an' weariness,
But--not--not--not--not the chronic sight of 'em --
Boot--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again,
  An' there's no discharge in the war!

'Taint--so--bad--by--day because o' company,
But night--brings--long--strings--o' forty thousand million
Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again.
  There's no discharge in the war!

I--'ave--marched--six--weeks in 'Ell an' certify...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Making Good

...e overhead,
He may be on his uppers and have hocked his evening dress -
(Financially speaking - in the red)
He may have chronic shortage to repay the old home mortgage,
And almost be a bankrupt in his biz.,
But though he skips his dinner,
And each day he's growing thinner,
If he thinks he is a winner,
 Then he is. 

But when I say Success I mean the sublimated kind;
A man may gain it yet be on the dole.
To me it's music of the heart and sunshine of the mind,
Serenity and swee...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law

...is done at all? Yes, think
of the odds! or shrug them off forever.
This luxury of the precocious child,
Time's precious chronic invalid,--
would we, darlings, resign it if we could?
Our blight has been our sinecure:
mere talent was enough for us--
glitter in fragments and rough drafts.

Sigh no more, ladies.
 Time is male
and in his cups drinks to the fair.
Bemused by gallantry, we hear
our mediocrities over-praised,
indolence read as abnegation,
slattern thought styled intui...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

The Bench-Legged Fyce

...ce
Hed most o' the virtues, an' nary a vice.
Some folks called him Sooner, a name that arose
From his predisposition to chronic repose;
But, rouse his ambition, he couldn't be beat -
Yer bet yer he got thar on all his four feet!

Mos' dorgs hez some forte - like huntin' an' such,
But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much;
Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be
On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me;
Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!"
When ...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene


The Sea

...l means choose the SEA.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat,
You prefer not a vestige of grass or tree,
And a chronic state of wet in your feet,
Then -I recommend the SEA.

For I have friends who dwell by the coast,
Pleasant friends they are to me!
It is when I'm with them I wonder most
That anyone likes the SEA.

They take me a walk: though tired and stiff,
To climb the heights I madly agree:
And, after a tumble or so from the cliff,
They kindly suggest the SEA.

I...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Terrible Abstractions

...ned too 
But not of what his hairy forebear knew. 

The terrible abstractions prowl about 
The compound of his fear and chronic doubt; 
He keeps fires burning boldly all night through, 
But cannot keep the murderous shadows out....Read more of this...
by Scannell, Vernon

The Withdrawal

...side without arrival.

Hell?

Darling,
terror in happiness may not cure the hungry future,
the time when any illness is chronic,
and the years of discretion are spent on complaint—

until the wristwatch is taken from the wrist....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

Those Winter Sundays

...ear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?...Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert

Uncle Bob

...weekend leaves

He made and mended

Everybody’s clothes,

Crying copiously

While he sewed.

When they cleared out

The chronic cases

Uncle Bob came home,

Shopping for Edna,

Doing the garden;

When the lodger left

Without a word, the police

Searched his room,

The garden shed,

Even the chest freezer.

Oesophageal cancer

Is very final.

John, his son, waiting

To take the house,

Departed for a month’s fishing

Until it was all over.



As a last rite

They put him in t...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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