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Famous Clod Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...flaunting flow’rs our gardens yield,
High shelt’ring woods and wa’s maun shield;
But thou, beneath the random bield
 O’ clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble field,
 Unseen, alane.


There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
 In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
 And low thou lies!


Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow’ret of the rural shade!
By love’s simplicity betray’d,
 And guileless t...Read more of this...



by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...nied. 

You would not recognise me now: 
a bulging bulk of sinews, 
groaning, 
and writhing, 
What can such a clod desire? 
Though a clod, many things! 

The self does not care 
whether one is cast of bronze 
or the heart has an iron lining. 
At night the self only desires 
to steep its clangour in softness, 
in woman. 

And thus, 
enormous, 
I stood hunched by the window, 
and my brow melted the glass. 
What will it be: love or no-love? 
...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...shall know why Man restrains 
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; 
When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod, 
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God:(7) 
Then shall Man's pride and dullness comprehend 
His actions', passions', being's, use and end; 
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why 
This hour a slave, the next a deity. 
Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault; 
Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought; 
His knowledge measur'd to his st...Read more of this...

by Donne, John
...No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee....Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...nty given, 
In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ? 

Will he, from penal sufferings free, 
Released from shroud and wormy clod, 
All calm and glorious, rise and see 
Creation's Sire­Existence' God ?

Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, 
Will he behold them, fading, fly; 
Swept from Eternity's repose, 
Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ?

If so­endure, my weary frame; 
And when thy anguish strikes too deep, 
And when all troubled burns life's flame,
Think of the quie...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...ther with their eyes on flame— 
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; 
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms 
Like chrysalids impatient for the air, 
The shining dorrs are bus...Read more of this...

by Murray, Judith Sargent
...Weak is the leveled, enervated mind,
And but while here to vegetate designed.
The torpid spirit mingling with its clod
Can scarcely boast its origin from God.
Stupidly dull—they move progressing on—
They eat, and drink, and all their work is done,
While others, emulous of sweet applause,
Industrious seek for each event a cause,
Tracing the hidden springs whence knowledge flows,
Which nature all in beauteous order shows.
     Yet cannot I their sentiments...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...t, to make the terror of thee more, 
Trick thyself out in ghastly imageries 
Of that which Life hath done with, and the clod, 
Less dull than thou, will hide with mantling flowers 
As if for pity?' But he spake no word; 
Which set the horror higher: a maiden swooned; 
The Lady Lyonors wrung her hands and wept, 
As doomed to be the bride of Night and Death; 
Sir Gareth's head prickled beneath his helm; 
And even Sir Lancelot through his warm blood felt 
Ice strike, and all tha...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...all
Upon the South's o'er-brimming sea
That needs thee not; or crawl
To the dry provinces, and fall
Till every convert clod shall give to thee

Green worship; if thou grow or fade,
Bring on delight or misery,
Fly east or west, be made
Snow, hail, rain, wind, grass, rose, light, shade;
What matters it to thee? There is no thee.

Pass, kinsman Cloud, now fair and mild:
Discharge the will that's not thine own.
I work in freedom wild,
But work, as plays a little child,
S...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...die; 
Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man 
Which God inspired, cannot together perish 
With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave, 
Or in some other dismal place, who knows 
But I shall die a living death? O thought 
Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath 
Of life that sinned; what dies but what had life 
And sin? The body properly had neither, 
All of me then shall die: let this appease 
The doubt, since human reach no further knows. 
For though the L...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our c...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 ("Une terre au flanc maigre.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xi., October, 1840.} 


 A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, 
 Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; 
 And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, 
 Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; 
 Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, 
 And harder in the things th...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God
``In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
``And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
``(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
``The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
``As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.
``Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,
``I shall dare to discover some province, s...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
..., to live with love,
And faith, that through the love of love doth find
My Lord's dear presence in the stars above,
The clods below, the flesh without, the mind
Within, the bread, the tear, the smile.
Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile,
Let me alone."

____
Baltimore, 1878-9.



II. The Ship of Earth.


"Thou Ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard,
And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold,
I fear thee, O! I fear thee, ...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...ng shalt thou go 25 
To mix forever with the elements; 
To be a brother to the insensible rock  
And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain 
Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak 
Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould. 30 
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world ¡ªwith kings  
The powerful of the earth ¡ªth...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...nonentitized; drunk am I more than half a god.
Well, let the flesh be sacrificed; spirit shall speak and shame the clod.
Who would not gladly, gladly give Life to do one thing that will live?"

Smith had a friend, we'll call him Brown; dearer than brothers were those two.
When in the wassail Smith would drown, Brown would rescue and pull him through.
When Brown was needful Smith would lend; so it fell as the years went by,
Each on the other would depend: then...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...of Fairy Land.

"If I have taken the common clay
 And wrought it cunningly
In the shape of a God that was digged a clod,
 The greater honour to me."

"If thou hast taken the common clay,
 And thy hands be not free
From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil
 The greater shame to thee."

The lark will make her hymn to God,
 The partridge call her brood,
While I forget the heath I trod,
 The fields wherein I stood.

'Tis dule to know not night from mor...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
..., gently, pray!" 

XXXVIII.
And has not such a Story from of Old
Down Man's successive generations roll'd
Of such a clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mould? 

XXXIX.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet! 

XL.
A Moment's Halt -- a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste --
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has re...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...."
So God was left to His divinity,
Omnipotent at that most costly fee.

There was a lesson here, but still the clod
In me was sycophant unto the rod,
And cried, "Why mock me thus?Am I a god?"

"One trial more:this failing, then I give You leave to die; no
further need to live."

Now suddenly a strange wild music smote
A chord long impotent in me; a note
Of jungles, primitive and subtle, throbbed
Against my echoing breast, and tom-toms sobbed
In every pulse-beat o...Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...ghed down by the cross,
Christ stopped for a moment,
weary.
Watching him, the mob
yelled, jeering:
“Get movin’, you clod!”

That’s right!
Be spiteful.
Spit upon him who begs for a rest
on his day of days,
harry and curse him.
To the army of zealots, doomed to do good,
man shows no mercy!

That does it!

I swear by my pagan strength -
gimme a girl,
young,
eye-filling,
and I won’t waste my feelings on her.
I'll rape her
and spear her heart with a gibe
willingly....Read more of this...

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