Famous Fist Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Boy Named Sue

...h and I'd bust his head,
I tell you, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean.
My fist got hard and my wits got keen.
Roamed from town to town to hide my shame,
but I made me a vow to the moon and the stars,
I'd search the honky tonks and bars and kill
that man that gave me that awful name.

But it was Gatlinburg in mid July and I had
just hit town and my throat was dry.
I'd thought i'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon in a s...Read more of this...
by Silverstein, Shel


As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...playing,
And your port immovable where you stand; 
With still the inextinguishable glance, and the clench’d and lifted fist, 
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner, utterly crush’d beneath
 you; 
The menacing, arrogant one, that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the
 murderous knife; 
—Lo! the wide swelling one, the braggart, that would yesterday do so much!
To-day a carrion dead and damn’d, the despised of all the earth! 
An offal ra...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Avons Harvest

...e knew it was all over; and I struck him. 
Pound for pound, he was the better brute; 
But bulking in the way then of my fist 
And all there was alive in me to drive it, 
Three of him misbegotten into one
Would have gone down like him—and being larger, 
Might have bled more, if that were necessary. 
He came up soon; and if I live for ever, 
The vengeance in his eyes, and a weird gleam 
Of desolation—it I make you see it—
Will be before me as it is tonight. 
I shall not ever kn...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Balloons

...he other side of it,
He bites,

Then sits
Back, fat jug
Contemplating a world clear as water.
A red
Shred in his little fist....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Eviradnus

...ished hand; holy and white 
 And loyal all his noble life had been, 
 A Christian Samson coming on the scene. 
 With fist alone the gate he battered down 
 Of Sickingen in flames, and saved the town. 
 'Twas he, indignant at the honor paid 
 To crime, who with his heel an onslaught made 
 Upon Duke Lupus' shameful monument, 
 Tore down, the statue he to fragments rent; 
 Then column of the Strasburg monster bore 
 To bridge of Wasselonne, and threw it o'er 
 Into t...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor


Gioconda And Si-Ya-U

...shirted Fascists.
The cry of a man out of work
who jumped into the Seine
rose from the dark water.
And ah! you on whose fist-size head
 mountain-like winds descend,
at this very minute you're probably busy
building towers of thick, leather-bound books
to get answers to the questions you asked of the stars.
READ
SI-YA-U
 READ...
And when your eyes find in the lines what they desire,
 when your eyes tire,
rest your tired head
 like a black-and-yellow Japanese chrysanthemum
 on ...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim

Lesbos

...peer from the door,
Sad hag. 'Every woman's a whore.
I can't communicate.'

I see your cute décor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Samson Agonistes

...?

Sam: No man with-holds thee, nothing from thy hand
Fear I incurable; bring up thy van,
My heels are fetter'd, but my fist is free.

Har: This insolence other kind of answer fits.

Sam: Go baffl'd coward, lest I run upon thee,
Though in these chains, bulk without spirit vast,
And with one buffet lay thy structure low,
Or swing thee in the Air, then dash thee down 
To the hazard of thy brains and shatter'd sides.

Har: By Astaroth e're long thou shalt lament
These braveries ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Snowbound a Winter Idyl

...r of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist; 
The warm, dark languish of her eyes 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 
Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
Knew every change of scowl and pout; 
And the sweet voice had notes more high 
And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 
What convent-gate has held its lock 
Against the c...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The Epic Of The Lion

...who knows what thoughts these small heads hold? 
 She rose up in her cot—full height, and bold, 
 And shook her pink fist angrily at him. 
 Whereon—close to the little bed's white rim, 
 All dainty silk and laces—this huge brute 
 Set down her brother gently at her foot, 
 Just as a mother might, and said to her, 
 "Don't be put out, now! There he is, dear, there!" 
 
 EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I. 


 




...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

The Everlasting Mercy

...hit me light 
As though he didn't trust his right, 
He flapped me somehow with his wrist 
As though he couldn't use his fist, 
And when he hit he winced with pain. 
I thought, "Your sprained thumb's crocked again." 
So I got strength and Bill gave ground, 
And that round was an easy round. 

During the wait my Jimmy said, 

What's making Billy fight so dead? 
He's all to pieces. Is he blown?" 
"His thumb's out." 
"No? Then it's your own. 
It's all your own, but don't be rash ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Flight Of The Duchess

...manage!
They should have got his cheek fresh tannage
Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!
Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!
(Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game!
Oh for a noble falcon-lanner
To flap each broad wing like a banner,
And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!)
Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin
---Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine
Put to his lips, when they saw him pine,
A cup of our own Moldavia fine,
Cotnar for i...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Lonely God

...O, in fury I 
Then roared them senseless, then threw down the sky 
And stamped upon it, buffeted a star 
With my great fist, and flung the sun afar: 
Shouted My anger till the mighty sound 
Rung to the width, frighting the furthest bound 
And scope of hearing: tumult vaster still, 
Throning the echo, dinned My ears, until 
I fled in silence, seeking out a place 
To hide Me from the very thought of Space. 

And so, He thought, in Mine own Image I 
Have made a man, remote from...Read more of this...
by Stephens, James

The Sacrifice

...riousness.
Was ever grief like mine? 

They buffet me, and box me as they list, 
Who grasp the earth and heaven with my fist, 
And never yet, whom I would punish, miss'd: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Behold, they spit on me in scornful wise, 
Who by my spittle gave the blind man eyes, 
Leaving his blindness to mine enemies: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

My face they cover, though it be divine.
As Moses' face was veiled, so is mine, 
Lest on their double-dark souls either shine...Read more of this...
by Herbert, George

The Schooner Flight

...st of the crew,bawling out, "Catch it,"
and start mincing me like I was some hen
because of the poems. Some case is for fist,
some case is for tholing pin, some is for knife -
this one was for knife. Well, I beg him first,
but he kept reading, "O my children, my wife,"
and playing he crying, to make the crew laugh;
it move like a flying fish, the silver knife
that catch him right in the plump of his calf,
and he faint so slowly, and he turn more white
than he thought he was. ...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

The Shroud of Color

...udinous with carnal yield,
A grim ensanguined mead whereon I saw
Evolve the ancient fundamental law
Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw.
There with the force of living, hostile hills
Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills,
With greater din contended fierce majestic wills
Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife
For love of what my heart despised, for life
That unto me at dawn was now a prayer
For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear
For day again;...Read more of this...
by Cullen, Countee

The Sick Muse

...he green succubus and the red urchin, 
Have they poured you fear and love from their urns? 
The nightmare of a mutinous fist that despotically turns, 
Does it drown you at the bottom of a loch beyond searching? 

I wish that your breast exhaled the scent of sanity, 
That your womb of thought was not a tomb more frequently 
And that your Christian blood flowed around a buoy that was rhythmical, 

Like the numberless sounds of antique syllables, 
Where reigns in turn the father...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles

The Triumph of Life

...in which these worms did monarchize
"Who make this earth their charnel.--Others more
Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
"Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
Of lawyer, statesman, priest & theorist,
"And others like discoloured flakes of snow
On fairest bosoms & the sunniest hair
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
"Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Wife of Baths Tale

...
But afterward repented me full sore.
He woulde suffer nothing of my list.* *pleasure
By God, he smote me ones with his fist,
For that I rent out of his book a leaf,
That of the stroke mine eare wax'd all deaf.
Stubborn I was, as is a lioness,
And of my tongue a very jangleress,* *prater
And walk I would, as I had done beforn,
From house to house, although he had it sworn:* *had sworn to
For which he oftentimes woulde preach prevent it
And me of olde Roman gestes* teach *stor...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

To The Sound Of Violins

...rom factory, shop floor and market stall

Running from the reality of the ward where my son 

Pounds the ledge with his fist and seems out to blast

My very existence with words like bullets.

The need to anaesthetise the pain resurfaces 

Again and again. In Leeds City Square where 

Pugin’s church, the Black Prince and the Central Post Office

In its Edwardian grandeur are startled by the arching spumes

Or white water fountains and the steel barricades of Novotel

Rise fro...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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