Famous Dig In Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Dig 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 dig in poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dig in poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Song of Perfect Propriety

by Dorothy Parker
 Oh, I should like to ride the seas,
A roaring buccaneer;
A cutlass banging at my knees,
A dirk behind my ear.
And when my captives' chains would clank
I'd howl with glee and drink,
And then fling out the quivering plank
And watch the beggars sink.

I'd like to straddle gory decks,
And dig in laden sands,
And know the feel of throbbing necks
Between my knotted hands.
Oh, I...Read more of this...

The Last Quarter of the Moon

by Amy Lowell
 How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of...Read more of this...

Irkallas White Caves

by Kenneth Patchen
 I believe that a young woman
Is standing in a circle of lions
In the other side of the sky.

In a little while I must carry her the flowers
Which only fade here; and she will not cry
If my hands are not very full.

±

Fiery antlers toss within the forests of heaven
And ocean’s plaintive towns
Echo the tread of celestial feet.
O the beautiful eyes...Read more of this...

Among Those Killed In The Dawn Raid Was A Man Aged A Hundred

by Dylan Thomas
 When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor.
Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun
And the craters of his eyes grew springshots...Read more of this...

This Much And More

by Djuna Barnes
If my lover were a comet
Hung in air,
I would braid my leaping body
In his hair.

Yea, if they buried him ten leagues
Beneath the loam,
My fingers they would learn to dig
And I’d plunge home!...Read more of this...

O Mother..

by Mihai Eminescu
O mother, darling mother, lost in time's formless haze 
Amidst the leaves' sweet rustle you call my name always; 
Amidst their fluttering murmur above your sacred grave  
I hear you softly whisper whene'er the branches wave; 
While o'er your tomb the willows their autumn raiment heap... 
For ever wave the branches, and you for ever sleep. 

When l shall...Read more of this...

Careers

by Robert Graves
 Father is quite the greatest poet 
 That ever lived anywhere. 
You say you’re going to write great music— 
 I chose that first: it’s unfair. 
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and 
 do Christ and angels, or lovely pears 
 and apples and grapes on a green dish, 
 or storms at sea, or anything...Read more of this...

Holy-Cross Day

by Robert Browning
 ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO
ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON
IN ROME.

[``Now was come about Holy-Cross Day,
and now must my lord preach his first sermon
to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in tine
merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to
speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous
table here in Rome should be, though but
once yearly, cast...Read more of this...

Salvage

by Amy Clampitt
 Daily the cortege of crumpled 
defunct cars 
goes by by the lasagna-
layered flatbed 
truckload: hardtop 

reverting to tar smudge,
wax shine antiqued to crusted 
winepress smear, 
windshield battered to
intact ice-tint, a rarity

fresh from the Pleistocene. 
I like it; privately 
I find esthetic 
satisfaction in these 
ceremonial removals

from the category of
received ideas
to regions where pigeons' 
svelte smoke-velvet
limousines, taxiing 

in whirligigs, reclaim...Read more of this...

Death Fugue

by Paul Celan
 Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents
 he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden
 hair Margarete
he writes...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

by James Tate
 Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. 
He likes nothing better than to put on 
his little overalls and his straw hat. 
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." 
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve. 
He stands...Read more of this...

Requiem

by Ogden Nash
 Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."...Read more of this...

My Land and I

by Henry Lawson
 They have eaten their fill at your tables spread, 
Like friends since the land was won; 
And they rise with a cry of "Australia's dead!" 
With the wheeze of "Australia's done!" 
Oh, the theme is stale, but they tell the tale 
(How the weak old tale will keep!) 
Like the crows that croak on a splintered rail, 
That have...Read more of this...

Hymn 34 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 The gospel the power of God to salvation.

Rom. 1:16. 

What shall the dying sinner do
That seeks relief for all his woe?
Where shall the guilty conscience find
Ease for the torment of the mind?

How shall we get our crimes forgiv'n?
Or form our natures fit for heav'n?
Can souls all o'er defiled with sin
Make their own powers and passions clean?

In vain we search,...Read more of this...

Looking Walking Being

by Denise Levertov
 "The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in."
Mark Rudman

I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo...Read more of this...

The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church

by Robert Browning
 Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews -- sons mine -- ah God, I know not! Well --
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we...Read more of this...

Her Late Husband (Kings-Hintock 182-.)

by Thomas Hardy
 "No--not where I shall make my own; 
 But dig his grave just by 
The woman's with the initialed stone - 
 As near as he can lie - 
After whose death he seemed to ail, 
 Though none considered why. 

"And when I also claim a nook, 
 And your feet tread me in, 
Bestow me, under my...Read more of this...

351. Second Epistle to Robert Graham Esq. of Fintry

by Robert Burns
 LATE crippl’d of an arm, and now a leg,
About to beg a pass for leave to beg;
Dull, listless, teas’d, dejected, and deprest
(Nature is adverse to a cripple’s rest);
Will generous Graham list to his Poet’s wail?
(It soothes poor Misery, hearkening to her tale)
And hear him curse the light he first survey’d,
And doubly curse the luckless rhyming trade?


 Thou, Nature! partial...Read more of this...

Saadi

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.

God who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, "Sit aloof;"
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,—
Ever...Read more of this...

Crossing The Atlantic

by Anne Sexton
 We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind,
over a terrible hardness.
Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer
in twenty weeks or twenty days
I cross toward him in five.
Wraped in robes--
not like Caesar but like liver with bacon--
I rest on the stern
burning my mouth with a wind-hot ash,
watching my ship
bypass the swells
as easily as an old woman reads a palm.
I...Read more of this...

Lucindy Jane

by Robert William Service
 When I was young I was too proud
 To wheel my daughter in her pram.
"It's infra dig," I said aloud,--
 Bot now I'm old, behold I am
Perambulating up and down
 Grand-daughter through the town.

And when I come into the Square,
 Beside the fountain I will stop;
And as to rest I linger there,
 The dames will say: "How do, Grand-pop!
Lucindy...Read more of this...

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

by Mother Goose
One, two,
Buckle my shoe;
Three, four,
Knock at the door;
Five, six,
Pick up sticks;
Seven, eight,
Lay them straight;
Nine, ten,
A good, fat hen;
Eleven, twelve,
Dig and delve;
Thirteen, fourteen,
Maids a-courting;
Fifteen, sixteen,
Maids in the kitchen;
Seventeen, eighteen,
Maids a-waiting;
Nineteen, twenty,
My plate's empty....Read more of this...

In The Slight Ripple The Mind Perceives The Heart

by Delmore Schwartz
 In the slight ripple, the fishes dart
Like fingers, centrifugal, like wishes
Wanton. And pleasures rise
 as the eyes fall 
Through the lucid water. The small pebble, 
The clear clay bottom, the white shell
Are apparent, though superficial. 
Who would ask more of the August afternoon? 
Who would dig mines and follow shadows? 
"I would," answers bored Heart, "Lounger, rise"
(Underlip trembling, face...Read more of this...

Off the Turnpike

by Amy Lowell
 Good ev'nin', Mis' Priest.
I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye.
Yes, it's all over.
All my things is packed
An' every last one o' them boxes
Is on Bradley's team
Bein' hauled over to th' depot.
No, I ain't goin' back agin.
I'm stoppin' over to French's fer to-night,
And goin' down first train in th' mornin'.
Yes, it do seem kinder *****
Not to be goin' to...Read more of this...

Doctors

by Anne Sexton
 They work with herbs
and penicillin
They work with gentleness
and the scalpel.
They dig out the cancer,
close an incision
and say a prayer
to the poverty of the skin.
They are not Gods
though they would like to be;
they are only a human
trying to fix up a human.
Many humans die.
They die like the tender,
palpitating berries
in November.
But all along the doctors remember:
First do no harm.
They would kiss...Read more of this...

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