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Famous Grappling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...may grow a soul when turned to fronds,
But here the thing's best left at home with friends.

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,
To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned
To do without what blood remained these wounds....Read more of this...
by Owen, Wilfred



...their trenches, going over the top, 
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, 
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, 
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...nly I have striven 
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven 
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel. 
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell; 
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven....Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...e clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, 
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, 
Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull, 
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, 
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, 
She hers, he his, pursuing....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...l, under the flower of my soul 
And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong 
Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil's little control. 

And there is the dark, my darling, where the roots are entangled and fight 
Each one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, I know that there 
In the night where we first have being, before we rise on the light, 
We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and we do not spare. 

And in the original dark the root...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.



...be a poet.

Then, oh, how charming it would be
If, when in haste hysteric
You called the page, you learned that he
Was grappling with a lyric.

Or else what rapture it would yield,
When cook sent up the salad,
To find within its depths concealed
A touching little ballad.

Or if for tea and toast you yearned,
What joy to find upon it
The chambermaid had coyly laid
A palpitating sonnet.

Your baker could the fashion set;
Your butcher might respond well;
With every tart a triol...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...sand times over. 

For JACK UPON PRANCK is in the performance of gåñé together or seperate. 

For Clapperclaw is in the grappling of the words upon one another in all the modes of versification. 

For the sleekness of a Cat is in his áãëáéçöé . 

For the Greek is thrown from heaven and falls upon its feet. 

For the Greek when distracted from the line is sooner restored to rank and rallied into some form than any other. 

For the purring of a Cat is his ôñõæåé . 

For his cry...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher
...Or waves his sword, and could he them conj?re 
Within its circle, knows himself secure. 
The fatal bark him boards with grappling fire, 
And safely through its port the Dutch retire. 
That precious life he yet disdains to save 
Or with known art to try the gentle wave. 
Much him the honours of his ancient race 
Inspire, nor would he his own deeds deface, 
And secret joy in his calm soul does rise 
That Monck looks on to see how Douglas dies. 
Like a glad lover, the fierce fla...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...tched each button a peapod getting tucked back in. 
Watched harm with its planeloads folded up in the sleeves. 
Watched grappling hooks trawl through the late-night waters. 
Watched bands of stations scan unable to ascertain.
There are fingers, friend, that never grow sluggish.
They crawl up the coat and don't miss an eyehole.
Glinting in kitchenlight.
Supervised by the traffic god.
Hissed at by grassblades that wire-up outside
their stirring rhetoric — this is your land, thi...Read more of this...
by Graham, Jorie
...with costly bales; 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm; 

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...n and peaceful, you learn’d from joys and prosperity only; 
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish—advancing, grappling with direst
 fate,
 and
 recoiling not; 
And now to conceive, and show to the world, what your children en-masse really are; 
(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse really are?) 


 5...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...rinkled,
The meek head poises like a flower-bell.

All the old scars of wanton wars are vanished;
And what blue bruises grappling Sense had left
And sad remains of redder stains are banished,
And the dim blotch of heart-committed theft.

O still vast vision of transfigured features
Unvisited by secret crimes or dooms,
Remain, remain amid these water-creatures,
Stand, shine among yon water-lily blooms.

For eighteen centuries ripple down the river,
And windy times the stalks o...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...ewage out.
Wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words,
and tell terrors and profits and loves--curses of men
grappling plans of business and questions of women
in plots of love.

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
hold together the stone walls and floors.

Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the
mortar clinch the pieces and p...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...rk branches of the riven pines, 
Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn 
Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines. 


In rain, and fog that on the withered hill 
Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down; 
Or light snows fell that made forlorner still 
The ravaged country and the ruined town; 


Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair, 
The winter constellations blazing forth -- 
Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear -- 
Gleamed on our bayone...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...e Dragon sings 
And beats upon the dark with furious wings; 
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires, 
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town; 
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires, 
And hurls their martyred music toppling down. 
Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze, 

Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas. 
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night, 
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams. 
Tenderly stooping earthward from their ...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...ld never pant
For all that beauty sighs to grant
With half the fervour hate bestows
Upon the last embrace of foes,
When grappling in the fight they fold
Those arms that ne'er shall lose their hold:
Friends meet to part; love laughs at faith;
True foes, once met, are joined till death!


With sabre shivered to the hilt,
Yet dripping with the blood he spilt;
Yet strained within the severed hand
Which quivers round that faithless brand;
His turban far behind him rolled,
And clef...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...eat ship through and through. 

Dazed and dumb with the sudden death, 
He scarce had time to draw a breath 

Before the grappling-irons bit deep, 
And the boarders slew his crew like sheep. 

Hawk stood up straight, his breast to the steel; 
His cutlass made a bloody wheel. 

His cutlass made a wheel of flame. 
They shrank before him as he came. 

And the bodies fell in a choking crowd, 
And still he thundered out aloud, 

"The hemp that shall hang me is not grown!" 
They fle...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...e, women worth dying for,
And money.
I go where you wist not of
Nor I nor any man nor woman.
I only know I go to storms
Grappling against things wet and naked."
There is no pity of it and no blame.
None of us is in the wrong.
After all it is only this:
You for the little hills and I go away....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...n in dying; 
Mustering his last feeble blow 
'Gainst the nearest levell'd foe, 
Though faint beneath the mutual wound, 
Grappling on the gory ground. 

XXVII. 

Still the old man stood erect, 
And Alp's career a moment check'd. 
"Yield thee, Minotti; quarter take, 
For thine own, thy daughter's sake." 

"Never, renegado, never! 
Though the life of thy gift would last for ever." 

"Francesca! — oh, my promised bride: 
Must she too perish by thy pride?" 

"She is safe." — "Wher...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...aptivates --
The Soul stares after it, secure --
A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more --

To scan a Ghost, is faint --
But grappling, conquers it --
How easy, Torment, now --
Suspense kept sawing so --

The Truth, is Bald, and Cold --
But that will hold --
If any are not sure --
We show them -- prayer --
But we, who know,
Stop hoping, now --

Looking at Death, is Dying --
Just let go the Breath --
And not the pillow at your Cheek
So Slumbereth --

Others, Can wrestle --
Yours, i...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry