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Famous Dug Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...cies of the churl, 
Look to thy woodcraft,' and so leaving him, 
Now with slack rein and careless of himself, 
Now with dug spur and raving at himself, 
Now with droopt brow down the long glades he rode; 
So marked not on his right a cavern-chasm 
Yawn over darkness, where, nor far within, 
The whole day died, but, dying, gleamed on rocks 
Roof-pendent, sharp; and others from the floor, 
Tusklike, arising, made that mouth of night 
Whereout the Demon issued up from Hell. ...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...our, this unbidden guest,
Pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering,
And ploughed a bloody furrow with its dart,
And dug a long red road, and cleft with winged death her heart.

Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry
On the boy's body fell the Dryad maid,
Sobbing for incomplete virginity,
And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,
And all the pain of things unsatisfied,
And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing
side.

Ah! pitiful it was to hea...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...came out upon the waste. 

And there he would have knelt, but that his knees
Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug
His fingers into the wet earth, and pray'd. 

`Too hard to bear! why did they take me hence?
O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou
That didst uphold me on my lonely isle,
Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness
A little longer! aid me, give me strength
Not to tell her, never to let her know.
Help me no to break in upon her peace.
My children too!...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...her was Womanhood or Fame? 

XXII. 

And Lara sleeps not where his fathers sleep, 
But where he died his grave was dug as deep; 
Nor is his mortal slumber less profound, 
Though priest nor bless'd, nor marble deck'd the mound; 
And he was mourn'd by one whose quiet grief, 
Less loud, outlasts a people's for their chief. 
Vain was all question ask'd her of the past, 
And vain e'en menace — silent to the last; 
She told nor whence nor why she left behind 
Her all for o...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...
But you that have the sight will not employ 
The will to see with it. If you did so, 
There might be fewer ditches dug for others 
In your perspective; and there might be fewer
Contemporary motes of prejudice 
Between you and the man who made the dust. 
Call him a genius or a gentleman, 
A prophet or a builder, or what not, 
But hold your disposition off the balance,
And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe 
I tell you nothing new to your surmise, 
Or to the t...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...ought to do about it.
(They treated it as his.) "You take a jackknife,
And spread the opening, and you've got a dugout
All dug to go a-fishing in." To Paul
The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty
Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees.
There was no entrance for them to get in by.
It looked to him like some new kind of hollow
He thought he'd better take his jackknife to.
So after work that evening be came back
And let enough light into it b...Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...as or the Government
or rebel troops came, until we were sent
to 'relocation camps' until the archives
burned, until we dug the ditch, the grave
beside the aspen grove where adolescent
boys used to cut class, until we went
to the precinct house, eager to behave
like citizens..."
I count my hours and days,
finger for luck the word-scarred table which
is not my witness, shares all innocent
objects' silence: a tin plate, a basement
door, a spade, barbed wire, a ring ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...traight; 
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart—the living and dead lay
 together; 
The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt—the newcomers saw them there; 
Some, half-kill’d, attempted to crawl away;
These were despatch’d with bayonets, or batter’d with the blunts of
 muskets; 
A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more came to
 release him; 
The three were all torn, and cover’d with the boy’s blood. 

At eleven o’clock began the ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
..., wilder country,
That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain,
Branched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt;
Look right, look left, look straight before,---
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,
Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
---And the whole is our Duke's country.

III.

I was born th...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...Encountered by all sorts of men,
``Before he was lodged in his den,---
``From the poor slave whose club or bare hands
``Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,
``With no King and no Court to applaud,
``By no shame, should he shrink, overawed,
``Yet to capture the creature made shift,
``That his rude boys might laugh at the gift,
``---To the page who last leaped o'er the fence
``Of the pit, on no greater pretence
``Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,
``Lest his pay for a...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...ir and sang. She would live forever.
Leaves flew past her window along a gust . . .
And graves were dug in the earth, and coffins passed,
And music ebbed with the ebbing hours.
And dreams went along her veins, and scattering clouds
Threw streaming shadows on walls and towers.


XI.

Snow falls. The sky is grey, and sullenly glares
With purple lights in the canyoned street.
The fiery sign on the dark tower wreathes and flares . ....Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...sky 
Under the appetites for blood 
Under the dismal starvation 
The cavern closed 

The kind earth filled 
The graves dug in advance 
Children were no longer afraid 
Of maternal depths 

And madness and stupidity 
And vulgarity make way 
For humankind and brotherhood 
No longer fighting against life -- 
For an everlasting humankind 

VIII. Liberty 

On my school notebooks 
On my desk, on the trees 
On the sand, on the snow 
I write your name 
On all the read pages 
On a...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save, -
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest. 

XIV
It might be months, or years, or days -
I kept no count, I took no note -
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where;
It was at length ...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...s and lost like our children.



Cyril Williams, gravedigger at Killingbeck, buried among

The graves his own hands dug, lay beside your mother,

‘In death as in life together,’ - what parody lies hidden

Beneath the marble chips of the unmarked grave?

Where is the cross of weathered wood and stapled names?

The thirty roses that you left had withered on the stem,

The weeds had spread and spread and you yourself

Were paler than the dead.



There may be little time...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...ain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again. 

XVIII.
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two and went his way. 

XIX.
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter -- the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, ...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...slain,
Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight,
And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight.
A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light,
And there a seed, racked with heroic pain,
Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain:
It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me
To weep the blossom it would never be.
But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered
Into a rose whose beauty challenged, "Coward!"
There was no thing alive save only I
That held life in contempt an...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...he passed
His summer days in constant prayer,
Deep studies and eternal fast.
Already with a humble shovel
The elder dug himself a grave -
As, calling saints to bless his hovel,
Death - nothing other - did he crave.

So once, upon a falling night, he
Was bowing by his wilted shack
With meekest prayer to the Almighty.
The grove was turning slowly black;
Above the lake a mist was lifting;
Through milky clouds across the sky
The ruddy moon was softly drifting,
When wa...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ortege mostly drivers. 

Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is pass’d, the
 new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, 
The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin,
 the
 earth is swiftly shovel’d in,
The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence, 
A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done, 
He is decently put away—is there anything more? 

He was a good fellow, free-mouth...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...lt fields hard.
A one-legged passerby came here
And alone said in the yard:

"Awful times near. For freshly dug graves
There will be not be enough place soon.
Expect pest, expect plague, expect coward,
And eclipses of Sun and Moon.

But the enemy won't get to divide
Our lands for his fun:
Holy Mary will spread on her own
Over great sorrows a white gown"

II

From the burning forests is flying
Sweet smell of the evergreens.
Over children s...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things