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Famous Dung Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...of a garden,
 Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
 But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
 Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
 Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.
 And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
 Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
 Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
 And even fruit trees

And yes, she has lon...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert



...out when the trench was stiff with dead;
I've lulled you by the coral-laced lagoon;
I've packed you on a camel from the dung-fire on the bled,
To the hell-for-breakfast Mountains of the Moon.

I've ground you to the shanty men, a-whooping heel and toe,
And the hula-hula graces in the glade.
I've swung you in the igloo to the lousy Esquimau,
And the Haussa at a hundred in the shade.
The ****** on the levee, and the Dinka by the Nile
have shuffled to your insolent appeal.
I've ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Chris...Read more of this...
by Kavanagh, Patrick
...Dedication

for Moremi, 1963

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe
That roots the fores...Read more of this...
by Soyinka, Wole
...upon a Bedouin's horse-hair roof
From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned
Among the coarse grass and the camel-dung.
He set his chisel to the hardest stone.
Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life,
Derided and deriding, driven out
To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread,
He found the unpersuadable justice, he found
The most exalted lady loved by a man.

Hic. Yet surely there are men who have made their art
Out of no tragic war, lovers of life,
Impulsive me...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler



...of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

 Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.


II

What is the late November doing
With the disturbance of the spring
And creatures of the summer heat,
And snowdrops writhing under feet
And hollyhocks that aim too high
Red into gr...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ork 
I came to Accra. 

Here at last, I looked back on my Dream;   
I heard the Voice that loosed 
The Long-looked dungeons of my soul 
I sensed that Africa had come 
Not up from Hell, but from the sum of Heaven’s glory. 

I lifted up mine eyes to Ghana 
And swept the hills with high Hosanna; 
Above the sun my sight took flight   
Till from that pinnacle of light 
I saw dropped down this earth of crimson, green and gold 
Roaring with color, drums and song. 

H...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...in the western evening
 in a smoke-red dust.. . .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a coon in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hit...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...town
his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down;

and what he sung
no matter. He is flung
on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung

with his dead wives
with open, bloody eyes,
while those metallic feathers oxidize.


St. Peter's sin
was worse than that of Magdalen
whose sin was of the flesh alone;

of spirit, Peter's,
falling, beneath the flares,
among the "servants and officers."

Old holy sculpture
could set it all together
in one small scene, past and future:

Christ stands amaz...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth
...Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled ther...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...of them the others are down upon; 
Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. 

Through me forbidden voices; 
Voice of sexes and lusts—voices veil’d, and I remove the veil; 
Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur’d. 

I do not press my fingers across my mouth;
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart; 
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. 

I believe in the flesh and the app...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...fallen--
Are you too good to fall?

"When we were wan and bloodless
He gave you ale enow;
The pirates deal with him as dung,
God! are you bloodless now?"

"Grip, Wulf and Gorlias, grip the ash!
Slaves, and I make you free!
Stamp, Hildred hard in English land,
Stand Gurth, stand Gorlias, Gawen stand!
Hold, Halfgar, with the other hand,
Halmer, hold up on knee!

"The lamps are dying in your homes,
The fruits upon your bough;
Even now your old thatch smoulders, Gurth,
Now is th...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...lve,
He taught, and first he follow'd it himselve.

With him there was a PLOUGHMAN, was his brother,
That had y-laid of dung full many a fother*. *ton
A true swinker* and a good was he, *hard worker
Living in peace and perfect charity.
God loved he beste with all his heart
At alle times, were it gain or smart*, *pain, loss
And then his neighebour right as himselve.
He woulde thresh, and thereto dike*, and delve, *dig ditches
For Christe's sake, for every poore wight,
Withoute...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ry."
"Ancient history, Sergeant.
He's done."
"Say that again, Monsieur Charles, and I'll stun
You where you stand for a dung-eating Royalist."
The Sergeant gives the poker a savage twist;
He is as purple as the cooling horseshoes.
The air from the bellows creaks through the flues.
Tap! Tap! The blacksmith shoes Victorine,
And through the doorway a fine sheen
Of leaves flutters, with the sun between.
By a spurt of fire from the forge
You can see the Sergeant, with swollen gorg...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...My mother-- preferring the strange to the tame:
Dove-note, bone marrow, deer dung,
Frog's belly distended with finny young,
Leaf-mould wilderness, hare-bell, toadstool,
Odd, small snakes loving through the leaves,
Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all
Wild and natural -flashed out her instinctive love,
and quick, she
Picked up the fluttering. bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,
And held the little horror to the mirror, where
...Read more of this...
by Kizer, Carolyn
...rn to think like me
And bless his ravished sight to see
Such order from confusion sprung,
Such gaudy tulips raised from dung....Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan
...barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the
Grecian.
I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his
right & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men
into a perception of the infinite this the North American tribes
practise. & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience.
only for the sake of present ease or gratification?
_______________________________________________

PLATE 14

The ancient tradition that the ...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...ther, as I the body !
Shall we not glut our lust
On these wretches whom Fate hath hurled
To a hell of jesus and shoddy,
Dung and ethics and dust ?

Thou as I art Fate.
Coe then, conquer and kiss me !
Come ! what hinders? Believe me :
This is the thought we await.
The mark is fair ; can you miss me ?

See, how subtly I writhe !
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death ! how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils !
Ah ! this is t...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister
...t and past law, 
For I have dream’d that the law they are under now is enough. 

If otherwise, all came but to ashes of dung,
If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray’d! 
Then indeed suspicion of death. 

Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now, 
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation? 

10
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good, 
The whole univer...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Oil brown smog over Denver 
Oil red dung colored smoke 
level to level across the horizon 

blue tainted sky above 
Oil car smog gasoline 
hazing red Denver's day 

December bare trees 

sticking up from housetop streets 

Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over 

radar wheels, black smoke 

drifts from tailfins 

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains 
Oil from Texa...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry