Famous Coarse Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Flour Bin

by Henry Lawson
 By Lawson's Hill, near Mudgee, 
On old Eurunderee – 
The place they called "New Pipeclay", 
Where the diggers used to be – 
On a dreary old selection, 
Where times were dry and thin, 
In a slab and shingle kitchen 
There stood a flour bin. 

'Twas "ploorer" with the cattle, 
'Twas rust and smut in wheat, 
'Twas blight in eyes...Read more of this...

Poems

by Ruth Stone
When you come back to me
it will be crow time
and flycatcher time,
with rising spirals of gnats
between the apple trees.
Every weed will be quadrupled,
coarse, welcoming
and spine-tipped.
The crows, their black flapping
bodies, their long calling
toward the mountain;
relatives, like mine,
ambivalent, eye-hooded;
hooting and tearing.
And you will take me in
to your fractal meaningless
babble; the quick of my mouth,
the madness of my tongue....Read more of this...

Rabbi Ben Ezra

by Robert Browning
 Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned 'Nor...Read more of this...

Ode on Adversity

by Mary Darby Robinson
 WHERE o'er my head, the deaf'ning Tempest blew, 
And Night's cold lamp cast forth a feeble ray; 
Where o'er the woodlands, vivid light'nings flew, 
Cleft the strong oak, and scorch'd the blossom'd spray; 
At morn's approach, I mark the sun's warm glow 
O'er the grey hill a crimson radiance throw; 
I mark the silv'ry fragrant dew, 
Give lustre to...Read more of this...

Belle Isle 1949

by Philip Levine
 We stripped in the first warm spring night
and ran down into the Detroit River
to baptize ourselves in the brine
of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,
melted snow. I remember going under
hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl
I'd never seen before, and the cries
our breath made caught at the same time
on the cold, and rising through the layers
of darkness into...Read more of this...

Having it Out with Melancholy

by Jane Kenyon
 1FROM THE NURSERY


When I was born, you waited 
behind a pile of linen in the nursery, 
and when we were alone, you lay down 
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.


And from that day on 
everything under the sun and moon 
made me sad -- even the yellow 
wooden beads that slid and spun 
along...Read more of this...

Study of an Elevation In Indian Ink

by Rudyard Kipling
 Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.
 Stands at the top of the tree;
And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led
 To the hoisting of Potiphar G.

 Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
 Is seven years junior to Me;
Each bridge that he makes either buckles or breaks,
 And his work is as rough as he.

 Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
 Is coarse as a chimpanzee;
And...Read more of this...

No One So Much As You

by Edward Thomas
 No one so much as you
Loves this my clay, 
Or would lament as you
Its dying day. 

You know me through and through
Though I have not told, 
And though with what you know
You are not bold. 

None ever was so fair
As I thought you: 
Not a word can I bear
Spoken against you. 

All that I ever did
For you seemed coarse
Compared...Read more of this...

The Wild Old Wicked Man

by William Butler Yeats
 Because I am mad about women
I am mad about the hills,'
Said that wild old wicked man
Who travels where God wills.
'Not to die on the straw at home.
Those hands to close these eyes,
That is all I ask, my dear,
From the old man in the skies.
 Daybreak and a candle-end.

'Kind are all your words, my dear,
Do not the rest withhold.
Who can...Read more of this...

View Of The Capitol From The Library Of Congress

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Moving from left to left, the light
is heavy on the Dome, and coarse.
One small lunette turns it aside
and blankly stares off to the side
like a big white old wall-eyed horse.

On the east steps the Air Force Band
in uniforms of Air Force blue
is playing hard and loud, but--*****--
the music doesn't quite come through.

It comes in snatches, dim then keen,
then mute,...Read more of this...

Native Moments

by Walt Whitman
 NATIVE moments! when you come upon me—Ah you are here now! 
Give me now libidinous joys only! 
Give me the drench of my passions! Give me life coarse and rank! 
To-day, I go consort with nature’s darlings—to-night too; 
I am for those who believe in loose delights—I share the midnight orgies of young men;
I dance with the dancers, and...Read more of this...

A Country Life:to His Brother Mr Thomas Herrick

by Robert Herrick
 Thrice, and above, blest, my soul's half, art thou,
In thy both last and better vow;
Could'st leave the city, for exchange, to see
The country's sweet simplicity;
And it to know and practise, with intent
To grow the sooner innocent;
By studying to know virtue, and to aim
More at her nature than her name;
The last is but the least; the first doth tell
Ways less...Read more of this...

Le Manteau De Pascal

by Jorie Graham
 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

Opifex

by Thomas Edward Brown
 As I was carving images from clouds,
And tinting them with soft ethereal dyes
Pressed from the pulp of dreams, one comes, and cries:--
"Forbear!" and all my heaven with gloom enshrouds.

"Forbear!" Thou hast no tools wherewith to essay
The delicate waves of that elusive grain:
Wouldst have due recompense of vulgar pain?
The potter's wheel for thee, and some coarse clay!

"So work, if work...Read more of this...

The Children of Lir

by Katharine Tynan
 Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses;
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool;
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, 
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; 
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early: 
And the day's a...Read more of this...

Whether or Not

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Dunna thee tell me its his'n, mother,
      Dunna thee, dunna thee.
--Oh ay! he'll be comin' to tell thee his-sèn
      Wench, wunna he?

Tha doesna mean to say to me, mother,
      He's gone wi that--
--My gel, owt'll do for a man i' the dark,
   ...Read more of this...

The Fall of Jock Gillespie

by Rudyard Kipling
 This fell when dinner-time was done --
 'Twixt the first an' the second rub --
That oor mon Jock cam' hame again
 To his rooms ahist the Club.

An' syne he laughed, an' syne he sang,
 An' syne we thocht him fou,
An' syne he trumped his partner's trick,
 An' garred his partner rue.

Then up and spake an elder mon,
 That held...Read more of this...

Buffalo Country

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Out where the grey streams glide, 
Sullen and deep and slow, 
And the alligators slide 
From the mud to the depths below 
Or drift on the stream like a floating death, 
Where the fever comes on the south wind's breath, 
There is the buffalo. 
Out of the big lagoons, 
Where the Regia lilies float, 
And the Nankin heron croons...Read more of this...

Guard thyself from being coarse in the eyes of all

by Omar Khayyam
Guard thyself from being coarse in the eyes of all
drinkers, guard thyself from acquiring a bad reputation
before the sages, and drink wine; for, whether you drink
or not, if you belong to the fire of Hell, you would not
know how to enter Paradise.
393...Read more of this...

Death Of A Naturalist

by Seamus Heaney
 All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade...Read more of this...

On Gray Eyes

by William Strode
 Looke how the russet morne exceeds the night,
How sleekest Jett yields to the di'monds light,
So farr the glory of the gray-bright eye
Out-vyes the black in lovely majesty.
A morning mantl'd with a fleece of gray
Laughs from her brow and shewes a spotlesse day:
This di'mond-like doth not his lustre owe
To borrowed helpe, as black thinges cast a show,
It needs noe day...Read more of this...

Florida

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters, 
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, 
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. 
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every...Read more of this...

Prairie-Grass Dividing The

by Walt Whitman
 THE prairie-grass dividing—its special odor breathing, 
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, 
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, 
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, 
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command—leading, not
 following, 
Those with a never-quell’d audacity—those with...Read more of this...

The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown 
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He...Read more of this...

Reading

by Ruth Stone
It is spring when the storks return.
They rise from storied roofs.
In the quick winter afternoon
you lie on your bed
with a library book close to your face,
your body on a single bed,
and the storks rise
with the sound of a lifted sash.
You know without looking
that a servant girl
is leaning out in the soft foreign air.
A slow spiral of smoke
from green firewood
is reflected...Read more of this...

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