Famous Gasped Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Barefoot Boy

...vidly to me
 Of woody pathways winding endlessly
Along the creek, where even yesterday
He plunged his shrinking body -- gasped and shook --
 Yet called the water "warm," with never lack
Of joy. And so, half enviously I look
 Upon this graceless barefoot and his track, -- 
 His toe stubbed -- ay, his big toe-nail knocked back
Like unto the clasp of an old pocketbook....Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb


Ben Duggan

...star, 
Ben Duggan dying in the rocks, five miles from Talbragar. 

They knelt around, 
He raised his head 
And faintly gasped, `Jack Denver's dead, 
Roll up at Talbragar!' 

But one short hour before he died he woke to understand, 
They told him, when he asked them, that the funeral was `grand'; 
And then there came into his eyes a strange victorious light, 
He smiled on them in triumph, and his great soul took its flight. 
And still the careless bushmen tell by tent and sha...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

...ole or 
scratched."

Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched
Her long thigh. "I have news!" she gasped. "Popeye, forced as 
you know to flee the country
One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, 
duplicate father, jealous of the apartment
And all that it contains, myself and spinach
In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder
At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant

Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant
Rays of th...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Hiawathas Fishing

...fter and forever 
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, 
Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!"
And again the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Gasped and quivered in the water, 
Then was still, and drifted landward 
Till he grated on the pebbles, 
Till the listening Hiawatha 
Heard him grate upon the margin, 
Felt him strand upon the pebbles, 
Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, 
Lay there dead upon the margin.
Then he heard a clang and flapping, 
As of many wings assembling, 
Heard a screaming and co...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix

...eath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-socket's rim.

Then I cast...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; III: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills

...ry, let us eat some though.”
“All gone!” they said, and then Starvation,
(Who is not lazy) laid Nit low.

Nit trembled, gasped, and, as the phrase is,
Cashed in his checks, gave up his breath,
And turned his toes up to the daisies—
His laziness had caused his death!

 Warning

Spelling reformers should make haste.
If each reformer wants a taste....Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker

Phantasmagoria CANTO V ( Byckerment )

...ne or two
Are all you really need
To let the wind come whistling through -
But HERE there'll be a lot to do!"
I faintly gasped "Indeed! 

"If I 'd been rather later, I'll
Be bound," I added, trying
(Most unsuccessfully) to smile,
"You'd have been busy all this while,
Trimming and beautifying?" 

"Why, no," said he; "perhaps I should
Have stayed another minute -
But still no Ghost, that's any good,
Without an introduction would
Have ventured to begin it. 

"The proper thing, a...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Pickthorn Manor

...er smothered to his coat. "Everard, loose 
me, we shall drown --" and squeezed
Against him, she beat with her hands. He gasped "Never, 
by God!" The slidden boat gave way
And the black foamy water split -- and met. Bubbled 
up through the spray
A wailing rose and in the branches rasped,
And creaked, and stilled. Over the treetops, clasped
In the blue evening, a clear moon was set.

LXII
They lie entangled in the twisting roots, Embraced 
forever. Their cold marriage bed
Close...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Preface to Hunting of the Snark

...o that he could not 
possibly say either name before the other, can it be doubted that, 
rather than die, he would have gasped out ``Rilchiam!''....Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Telephoning In Mexican Sunlight

...e open
where all could hear, for these tiny, irascible,
nectar-addicted puritans jumped back
all at once, as if the air gasped....Read more of this...
by Kinnell, Galway

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

...words, with all eyes fixed on gaping Major Brown,
Like a libation to the gods, each dashed his cocktail down.
The Major gasped with horror as the trio smacked their lips.
He twiddled at his eye-glass with unsteady finger-tips.
Into his starry cocktail with a look of woe he peered,
And its ice-worm, to his thinking, mosy incontinently leered.
Yet on him were a hundred eyes, though no one spoke aloud,
For hushed with expectation was the waiting, watching crowd.
The Major's fumb...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Consecrating Mother

...of its might.
I wanted to share this
but I stood alone like a pink scarecrow.

The ocean steamed in and out,
the ocean gasped upon the shore
but I could not define her,
I could not name her mood, her locked-up faces.
Far off she rolled and rolled
like a woman in labor
and I thought of those who had crossed her,
in antiquity, in nautical trade, in slavery, in war.
I wondered how she had borne those bulwarks.
She should be entered skin to skin,
and put on like one's first or l...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Everlasting Mercy

...ven. 
The book He lent is given back 
All blotted red and smutted black. 

"Open the door," said Jim, "and call." 
Jane gasped "They'll see me. Loose me, Saul." 
She pushed me by, and ducked downstair 
With half the pins out of her hair. 
I went inside the lit room rollen 
Her scented handkerchief I'd stolen. 
"What would you fancy, Saul?" they said. 
"A gin punch hot and then to bed." 
"Jane, fetch the punch bowl to the gemmen; 
And mind you don't put too much lemon. 
Our go...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Fight With The Dragon

...s the strife.
And yet my heart I felt a prey
To gloom, and panted for the fray;
Ay, even in the stilly night,
In vision gasped I in the fight;
And when the glimmering morning came,
And of fresh troubles knowledge gave,
A raging grief consumed my frame,
And I resolved the thing to brave."

"And to myself I thus began:
'What is't adorns the youth, the man?
What actions of the heroes bold,
Of whom in ancient song we're told,
Blind heathendom raised up on high
To godlike fame and...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Holy Grail

...
"Where is that goodly company," said I, 
"That so cried out upon me?" and he had 
Scarce any voice to answer, and yet gasped, 
"Whence and what art thou?" and even as he spoke 
Fell into dust, and disappeared, and I 
Was left alone once more, and cried in grief, 
"Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself 
And touch it, it will crumble into dust." 

`And thence I dropt into a lowly vale, 
Low as the hill was high, and where the vale 
Was lowest, found a chapel, and thereby 
A hol...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Hunting Of The Snark

...so that he could not possibly say either name before the other, can it be doubted that, rather than die, he would have gasped out "Rilchiam!"


CONTENTS

Fit the First. The Landing
Fit the Second. The Bellman's Speech
Fit the Third. The Baker's Tale
Fit the Fourth. The Hunting
Fit the Fifth. The Beaver's Lesson
Fit the Sixth. The Barrister's Dream
Fit the Seventh. The Banker's Fate
Fit the Eighth. The Vanishing


Fit the First.

THE LANDING


"Just the place for a Snark!" th...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point

...me out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew. . .
And round me and round me ye go!
O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe.

III.
And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where I knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar;
And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.

IV.
I am ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point

...me out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew. . .
And round me and round me ye go!
O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe.

III.
And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where I knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar;
And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.

IV.
I am ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Unpromised Land Montgomery Alabama

...like to think I'd do
if I were him.

Before the war
half-naked coffles were paraded to Court Square,
where Mary Chesnut gasped--"seasick"--to see
a bright mulatto on the auction block,
who bantered with the buyers, sang bawdy songs,
and flaunted her green satin dress, smart shoes,
I'm sure the poor thing knew who'd purchase her,
wrote Mrs. Chestnut, who plopped on a stool
to discipline her thoughts. Today I saw,
in that same square, three black girls pick loose tar,
flick it ...Read more of this...
by Hudgins, Andrew

Twas like a Maelstrom with a notch

...zen led
From Dungeon's luxury of Doubt
To Gibbets, and the Dead --

And when the Film had stitched your eyes
A Creature gasped "Reprieve"!
Which Anguish was the utterest -- then --
To perish, or to live?...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

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