Famous Gnaws Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

To A Madonna

by Charles Baudelaire
 MADONNA, mistress, I would build for thee 
An altar deep in the sad soul of me; 
And in the darkest corner of my heart, 
From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, 
Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine 
For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! 
And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned 
Wrought of the...Read more of this...

The Universal Republic

by Victor Hugo
 ("Temps futurs.") 
 
 {Part "Lux," Jersey, Dec. 16-20, 1853.} 


 O vision of the coming time! 
 When man has 'scaped the trackless slime 
 And reached the desert spring; 
 When sands are crossed, the sward invites 
 The worn to rest 'mid rare delights 
 And gratefully to sing. 
 
 E'en now the eye that's...Read more of this...

The Enemy

by Charles Baudelaire
 My youth was nothing but a black storm
Crossed now and then by brilliant suns.
The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores
Nothing's left of the fruit my garden held once.

I should employ the rake and the plow,
Having reached the autumn of ideas,
To restore this inundated ground
Where the deep grooves of water form tombs in the lees.

And who knows if...Read more of this...

Ollie McGee

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Have you seen walking through the village
A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?
That is my husband who, by secret cruelty
never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;
Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,
And with broken pride and shameful humility,
I sank into the grave.
But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart?
The face of...Read more of this...

Worm Either Way

by D. H. Lawrence
 If you live along with all the other people 
and are just like them, and conform, and are nice 
you're just a worm -- 

and if you live with all the other people 
and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform 
then you're just the worm that has turned, 
in either case, a worm....Read more of this...

Walls

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they...Read more of this...

II. The Pauper Witch of Grafton

by Robert Frost
 Now that they've got it settled whose I be,
I'm going to tell them something they won't like:
They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.
Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting
To make a present of me to each other.
They don't dispose me, either one of them,
To spare them any trouble. Double trouble's
Always the witch's motto anyway.
I'll...Read more of this...

The Irreparable

by Charles Baudelaire
 AN we suppress the old Remorse 
Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, 
Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, 
Or as the acorn on the oak? 
Can we suppress the old Remorse? 

Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, 
May we drown this our ancient foe, 
Destructive glutton, gorging well, 
Patient as the ants, and slow? 
What...Read more of this...

The Broken Balance

by Robinson Jeffers
 I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...

The Mantra-Yoga

by Aleister Crowley
 I

How should I seek to make a song for thee
When all my music is to moan thy name?
That long sad monotone - the same - the same -
Matching the mute insatiable sea
That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!
An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.

Even...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke
The First Elegy


Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me 
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel...Read more of this...

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

by Vachel Lindsay
 I asked the old *****, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."


I. IN WHICH A RACING AUTO COMES FROM THE EAST

This is the order of the music of the morning: —
First, from the far East comes but a crooning.
The...Read more of this...

Distress Coils

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

The waiting volcano inside us
gnaws, digs, trembles,
weighs its chances. 
Distress coils up,
shrinks silent like a sick beast.
We are unrecognizable,
unique
in the certainty of our ferocity....Read more of this...

Dialogue Between Ghost And Priest

by Sylvia Plath
 In the rectory garden on his evening walk
Paced brisk Father Shawn. A cold day, a sodden one it was
In black November. After a sliding rain
Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk,
Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze
Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.

Hauled sudden from solitude,
Hair prickling on his head,
Father Shawn perceived a ghost
Shaping...Read more of this...

Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College

by Thomas Gray
 Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way.

Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,
Ah fields beloved in vain,
Where once my careless childhood...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Gnaws poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace