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Famous Digest Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ake love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history 
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and bl...Read more of this...
by Amichai, Yehuda



...power 
 mad. She wants to take our cars from out our 
 garages. 
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers' 
 Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. 
 Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
 tions. 
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. 
 Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us 
 all work sixteen hours a day. Help. 
America this is quite serious. 
America this is the impression I get from looking in 
 the television set. 
America is this c...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...s shows Great Pride, or Little Sense;
Those Heads as Stomachs are not sure the best
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay Turn thy Rapture move,
For Fools Admire, but Men of Sense Approve;
As things seem large which we thro' Mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to Magnify.

Some foreign Writers, some our own despise;
The Ancients only, or the Moderns prize:
(Thus Wit, like Faith by each Man is apply'd
To one small Sect, and All are damn'd beside.)
Mean...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...that's born of fear: 
While at the same time, there's a taste I have, 
A toy of soul, a titillating thing, 
Refuses to digest these dainties crude. 
The naked life is gross till clothed upon: 
I must take what men offer, with a grace 
As though I would not, could I help it, take! 
An uniform I wear though over-rich-- 
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine; 
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake 
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel 
And kiss my hand--of course t...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...ck, to no true Skill in Physick bred, 
With frequent Visits cursed his Patient's Bed; 
Enquiring, how he did his Broths digest, 
How chim'd his Pulse, and how he took his Rest:
If shudd'ring Cold by Burnings was pursu'd,
And at what time the Aguish Fit renew'd. 
The waining Wretch, each day become more faint, 
In like proportion doubles his Complaint;
Now swooning Sweats he begs him to allay,
Now give his Lungs more liberty to play, 
And take from empty'd Veins these scorchin...Read more of this...
by Finch, Anne Kingsmill



...Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er be gone)
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir t' his glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.
And as a robbed man, which by search doth find
His st...Read more of this...
by Donne, John
...cles is writ,
Plainer than the day,
Underneath, within, above,
Love, love, love, love.
He lives in his eyes,
There doth digest, and work, and spin,
And buy, and sell, and lose, and win;
He rolls them with delighted motion,
Joy-tides swell their mimic ocean.
Yet holds he them with tortest rein,
That they may seize and entertain
The glance that to their glance opposes,
Like fiery honey sucked from roses.

He palmistry can understand,
Imbibing virtue by his hand
As if it were a ...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ht
 My head;
For just a hundred of the lot
 I've read.

A hundred books, but of the best,
 I can
With wisdom savour and digest
 And scan.
Yet when afar from kin and kith
 In nooks
Of quietness I'm happy with
 Sweet books.

So as nine hundred at me stare
 In vain,
My lack I'm wistfully aware
 Of brain;
Yet as my leave of living ends,
 With looks
Of love I view a hundred friends,
 My books....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...an only live again
By virtue of your kindling brain;
In magice print they packed their best:
Come - try their wisdom to digest. . . ."

Said I: "Alas! I am not able;
I lay my cards upon the table,
And with deep shame and blame avow
I am too old to read you now;
So I will lock you in glass cases
And shun your sad, reproachful faces."

 * * * * * * * * *

My library is noble planned,
Yet in it desolate I stand;
And though my thousand books I prize,
Feeling a witling in their ey...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl, 
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep 
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred, 
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound 
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan, 
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song 
Of birds on every bough; so much the more 
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve 
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, 
As through unquiet rest: He, on his side 
Leaning half raised, with looks of...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Head alone shows you in the prodigious act
Of digesting what centuries alone digest:
The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow,
Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts
Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white
Into salt seas. Hercules had a simple time,
Rinsing those stables: a baby's tears would do it.
But who'd volunteer to gulp the Laocoon,
The Dying Gaul and those innumerable pietas
Fester...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...b of Baile and Aillinn

Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig,
What juncture of the apple and the yew,
Surmount their bones; but speak what none have heard.

The miracle that gave them such a death
Transfig...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...which groan. 

6
Until one day I totter and fall -- 
fall on this 
stomach that has tried so hard to keep up, 
to digest the blood as it leaked in, 
to break up 
and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze 
blows over me, blows off 
the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood 
and rotted stomach 
and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear, 

blows across 
my sore, lolled tongue a song 
or screech, until I think I must rise up 
and dance. And I lie still. 
...Read more of this...
by Kinnell, Galway
...d moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest
A cinder of sidereal fire,
And make her translunary guest
The native of an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers
Find in her lap their fitting place,
For every particle that's hers
Came at the first from outer space.

All that is Earth has once been sky;
Down from the sun of old she came,
Or from some star that travelled by
Too close to hi...Read more of this...
by Lewis, C S
...ng else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong...Read more of this...
by Carver, Raymond

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry