Famous Foothold Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Castle

by Edwin Muir
 All through that summer at ease we lay,
And daily from the turret wall
We watched the mowers in the hay
And the enemy half a mile away
They seemed no threat to us at all. 

For what, we thought, had we to fear
With our arms and provender, load on load,
Our towering battlements, tier on tier,
And friendly allies drawing near
On every leafy summer...Read more of this...

Brown's Descent

by Robert Frost
 Brown lived at such a lofty farm
 That everyone for miles could see
His lantern when he did his chores
 In winter after half-past three.

And many must have seen him make
 His wild descent from there one night,
’Cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything,
 Describing rings of lantern light.

Between the house and barn the gale
 Got him by something he had...Read more of this...

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XXIII

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Call to me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog's imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away

when you think you've captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold-
we, at...Read more of this...

1 Peter 5:8-9

by The Bible
Be on your guard every day
Don't let your armour down
The enemy, the devil, is on the prowl
Like a fierce lion, he roams around
Always stand firm in the faith
Against Satan's fiery darts,
Don't let him have a foothold in
Or leave open the door of your heart
For we need to continually stand
Upon God's holy word
And not to give up on our faith
But remembering...Read more of this...

The Testing-Tree

by Stanley Kunitz
 1

On my way home from school
up tribal Providence Hill
past the Academy ballpark
where I could never hope to play
I scuffed in the drainage ditch
among the sodden seethe of leaves
hunting for perfect stones
rolled out of glacial time
into my pitcher’s hand;
then sprinted lickety-
split on my magic Keds
from a crouching start,
scarcely touching the ground
with my flying skin
as I poured it on
for the prize...Read more of this...

Vacant Lot With Pokeweed

by Amy Clampitt
 Tufts, follicles, grubstake
biennial rosettes, a low-
life beach-blond scruff of
couch grass: notwithstanding
the interglinting dregs

of wholesale upheaval and
dismemberment, weeds do not
hesitate, the wheeling
rise of the ailanthus halts
at nothing—and look! here's

a pokeweed, sprung up from seed
dropped by some vagrant, that's
seized a foothold: a magenta-
girdered bower, gazebo twirls
of blossom rounding into

raw-buttoned, garnet-rodded
fruit one more wayfarer
perhaps may salvage from
the season's frittering,
the annual wreckage....Read more of this...

Dream Song 114: Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines

by John Berryman
 Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines.
When ich when was ever not in trouble?
But did he whip out whines
afore? And when check in wif ales & lifelines
anyone earlier O?-”Some, now, Mr Bones,
many.-”I am fleeing double:

Mr Past being no friends of mine,
all them around: Sir Future Dubious,
calamitous & grand:
I can no foothold here; wherefore I pines
for Dr Present, who won't...Read more of this...

A Hermit Thrush

by Amy Clampitt
 Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day, 
the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up 
the scree-slope of what at high tide
will be again an island,

to where, a decade since well-being staked 
the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us 
back, year after year, lugging the 
makings of another picnic—

the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified
fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming 
seas, the gales...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and...Read more of this...

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