Famous Grasp Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Delicatessen

by Joyce Kilmer
 Why is that wanton gossip Fame
So dumb about this man's affairs?
Why do we titter at his name
Who come to buy his curious wares?
Here is a shop of wonderment.
From every land has come a prize;
Rich spices from the Orient,
And fruit that knew Italian skies,
And figs that ripened by the sea
In Smyrna, nuts from hot Brazil,
Strange pungent meats from Germany,
And currants...Read more of this...

With Lifes Tomorrow Time You Grasp

by Mihai Eminescu
With life's tomorrow time you grasp, 
Its yesterdays you fling away, 
And still, in spite of all remains 
Its long eternity, today. 

When one thing goes, another comes 
In this wide world by heaven borne; 
And when the sun is setting here 
'Tis somewhere else just breaking dawn. 

It seems somehow that other waves 
Are rolling down the same old...Read more of this...

Things I Didnt Know I Loved

by Nazim Hikmet
 it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain 
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it 
I've never worked the earth
it must be my...Read more of this...

We see -- Comparatively --

by Emily Dickinson
 We see -- Comparatively --
The Thing so towering high
We could not grasp its segment
Unaided -- Yesterday --

This Morning's finer Verdict --
Makes scarcely worth the toil --
A furrow -- Our Cordillera --
Our Apennine -- a Knoll --

Perhaps 'tis kindly -- done us --
The Anguish -- and the loss --
The wrenching -- for His Firmament
The Thing belonged to us --

To spare...Read more of this...

Mourning

by Victor Hugo
 ("Charle! ô mon fils!") 
 
 {March, 1871.} 


 Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me? 
 Must all fade, naught endure? 
 Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee, 
 But still for us obscure? 
 
 My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines! 
 Sweet mutual love we've known; 
 For man, alas! plans,...Read more of this...

Any Wife To Any Husband

by Robert Browning
 I

My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say— 
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still
A whole long life through, had but love its will,
Would death that leads me from thee brook delay!

II

I have but to be by thee, and...Read more of this...

550. Song—A Lass wi' a Tocher

by Robert Burns
 AWA’ wi’ your witchcraft o’ Beauty’s alarms,
The slender bit Beauty you grasp in your arms,
O, gie me the lass that has acres o’ charms,
O, gie me the lass wi’ the weel-stockit farms.


Chorus.—Then hey, for a lass wi’ a tocher,
Then hey, for a lass wi’ a tocher;
Then hey, for a lass wi’ a tocher;
 The nice yellow guineas for me.


Your...Read more of this...

The Hosts

by Alan Seeger
 Purged, with the life they left, of all 
That makes life paltry and mean and small, 
In their new dedication charged 
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, 
That lends a light to their lusty brows 
And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, 
These are the men that have taken vows, 
These are the hardy, the flower, the...Read more of this...

Finnish Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IF the loved one, the well-known one,
Should return as he departed,
On his lips would ring my kisses,
Though the wolf's blood might have dyed them;
And a hearty grasp I'd give him,
Though his finger-ends were serpents.

Wind! Oh, if thou hadst but reason,
Word for word in turns thou'dst carry,
E'en though some perchance might perish
'Tween two lovers so far distant.

All choice morsels I'd...Read more of this...

The Conversazzhony

by Eugene Field
 What conversazzhyonies wuz I really did not know,
For that, you must remember, wuz a powerful spell ago;
The camp wuz new 'nd noisy, 'nd only modrit sized,
So fashionable sossiety wuz hardly crystallized.
There hadn't been no grand events to interest the men,
But a lynchin', or a inquest, or a jackpot now an' then.
The wimmin-folks wuz mighty scarce, for wimmin, ez a...Read more of this...

The Tyger

by William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread...Read more of this...

With Lifes Tomorrow Time You Grasp

by Mihai Eminescu
With life's tomorrow time you grasp, 
Its yesterdays you fling away, 
And still, in spite of all remains 
Its long eternity, today. 

When one thing goes, another comes 
In this wide world by heaven borne; 
And when the sun is setting here 
'Tis somewhere else just breaking dawn. 

It seems somehow that other waves 
Are rolling down the same old...Read more of this...

The Crisis

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A man of low degree was sore oppressed,
Fate held him under iron-handed sway,
And ever, those who saw him thus distressed
Would bid him bend his stubborn will and pray.
But he, strong in himself and obdurate,
Waged, prayerless, on his losing fight with Fate.[Pg 112]
Friends gave his proffered hand their coldest clasp,
Or took it not at all; and Poverty,
That bruised his...Read more of this...

The Lamp of Life

by Amy Lowell
 Always we are following a light,
Always the light recedes; with groping hands
We stretch toward this glory, while the lands
We journey through are hidden from our sight
Dim and mysterious, folded deep in night,
We care not, all our utmost need demands
Is but the light, the light! So still it stands
Surely our own if we exert our might.
Fool! Never can'st thou grasp...Read more of this...

The End

by Amy Lowell
 Throughout the echoing chambers of my brain
I hear your words in mournful cadence toll
Like some slow passing-bell which warns the soul
Of sundering darkness. Unrelenting, fain
To batter down resistance, fall again
Stroke after stroke, insistent diastole,
The bitter blows of truth, until the whole
Is hammered into fact made strangely plain.
Where shall I look for comfort? Not to you.
Our worlds are drawn apart,...Read more of this...

A Minor Poet

by Amy Levy
 "What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"


Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh,...Read more of this...

Psalm 71:1-5

by The Bible
In you, O Lord, do I put my trust
And in you, I take refuge
Deliver me in your righteousness
For you're the God that rescues
Be to me the place of shelter
Where I can safely abide
For you're my rock and my fortress
Where I can run and hide
Rescue me from the hand of the wicked,
From the grasp of the evil one
For you have always...Read more of this...

Robin Hoods Flight

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Robin Hood's mother, these twelve years now,
Has been gone from her earthly home;
And Robin has paid, he scarce knew how,
A sum for a noble tomb.

The church-yard lies on a woody hill,
But open to sun and air:
It seems as if the heaven still
Were looking and smiling there.

Often when Robin looked that way,
He looked through a sweet thin tear;
But he looked...Read more of this...

First Sight

by Philip Larkin
 Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon...Read more of this...

The Beauty of Death XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and 
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights; 
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and 
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body; 
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with...Read more of this...

The Cumberland

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
AT anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, 
On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war; 
And at times from the fortress across the bay 
The alarum of drums swept past, 
Or a bugle blast 5 
From the camp on the shore. 

Then far away to the south uprose 
A little feather of snow-white smoke, 
And we knew that the iron ship of...Read more of this...

Cupbearer, bring my wine-cup, let me grasp it!

by Omar Khayyam
Cupbearer, bring my wine-cup, let me grasp it!
Bring that delicious darling, let me grasp it!
That pleasing chain which tangles in its coils
Wise men and fools together, let me grasp it!...Read more of this...

Everything That Acts Is Actual

by Denise Levertov
 From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me

into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?

The flawed moon acts on...Read more of this...

To His Orphan Grandchildren

by Victor Hugo
 ("O Charles, je te sens près de moi.") 
 
 {July, 1871.} 


 I feel thy presence, Charles. Sweet martyr! down 
 In earth, where men decay, 
 I search, and see from cracks which rend thy tomb, 
 Burst out pale morning's ray. 
 
 Close linked are bier and cradle: here the dead, 
 To charm us,...Read more of this...

The Phantom of Love

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Grasp 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