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Famous Grips Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...rve or sweat,
Thro’ winter’s cauld, or simmer’s heat:
They’ve nae sair wark to craze their banes,
An’ fill auld age wi’ grips an’ granes:
But human bodies are sic fools,
For a’ their colleges an’ schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them,
They mak enow themsel’s to vex them;
An’ aye the less they hae to sturt them,
In like proportion, less will hurt them.
 A country fellow at the pleugh,
His acre’s till’d, he’s right eneugh;
A country girl at her wheel,
Her dizzen’s d...Read more of this...



by Atwood, Margaret
...hand you can use,
two feet that walk.
All the brain's gadgets.

Hello, hello.
The one hand that still works
grips, won't let go.

That is not a train.
There is no cricket.
Let's not panic.

Let's talk about axes,
which kinds are good,
the many names of wood.

This is how to build
a house, a boat, a tent.
No use; the toolbox

refuses to reveal its verbs;
the rasp, the plane, the awl,
revert to sullen metal.

Do you recognize anything? I ...Read more of this...

by Breton, Andre
...e them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chai...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...t again --
 Take her out in ballast, riding light and cargo-free.
 And it's time to clear and quit
 When the hawser grips the bitt,
 So we'll pay you with the foresheet and a promise from the sea!

Heh! Tally on. Aft and walk away with her!
 Handsome to the cathead, now; O tally on the fall!
Stop, seize and fish, and easy on the davit-guy.
 Up, well up the fluke of her, and inboard haul!
 Well, ah fare you well, for the Channel wind's took hold of us,
 Choking dow...Read more of this...

by Lindley, John
...’s excuse for novelty
and the South’s deleted scene.

I’m the one who takes his lunch break
with the extras and the grips.
I’m the funny liquorice coils of hair
and the funny looking lips.

I’m the white wide eyes and pearly teeth.
I’m the jet black skin that shines.
I’m the soft-shoe shuffling Uncle Tom
for your nickels and your dimes.

I’m the Alabami Mammy
for a state I’ve never seen.
I’m the bona fide Minstrel Man
whose blackface won’t wash cle...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...!

I had a dream: Upon the stair
I met a maid who kissed my lips;
A nightie was her only wear,
We almost came to loving grips.
And then she opened wide a door,
And pointed to a bonny bed . . .
Oh blast! I wakened up before
I could discover - were we wed?

Alas! Those dreams of broken bliss,
Of wakenings too sadly soon!
With memories of sticky kiss,
And limbs so languidly a-swoon!
Alas those nightmares devil driven!
Those pantless prowlings in Pall Mall!
Oh why...Read more of this...

by McKay, Claude
...pain away, 
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather. 
But the old fever seizes me to-day, 
As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather. 
I have given up myself to every urge, 
With not a care of precious powers spent, 
Have bared my body to the strangest scourge, 
To soothe and deaden my heart's unhealing rent. 
But you have torn a nerve out of my frame, 
A gut that no physician can replace, 
And reft my life of happiness and aim. 
Oh what new pu...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...'s rage.
Woe to the bristly Bandicoot, that lurks on foreign ships,
And woe to any Cat with whom Growltiger came to grips!

But most to Cats of foreign race his hatred had been vowed;
To Cats of foreign name and race no quarter was allowed.
The Persian and the Siamese regarded him with fear--
Because it was a Siamese had mauled his missing ear.

Now on a peaceful summer night, all nature seemed at play,
The tender moon was shining bright, the barge at Molesey lay....Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...e My Time
Because I feel the shadow's Depth
so much I wanted 2 accomplish
before I reached my Death

I have come 2 grips with the possibility
and wiped the last tear from My eyes
I Loved All who were Positive
In the event of my Demise...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...the loathsome hound 
 Cerberus, and feeds upon them. 
 The swampy ground 
 He ranges; with his long clawed hands he grips 
 The sinners, and the fierce and hairy lips 
 (Thrice-headed is he) tear, and the red blood drips 
 From all his jaws. He clutches, and flays, and rends, 
 And treads them, growling: and the flood descends 
 Straight downward. 
 When he saw us, the loathly worm 
 Showed all his fangs, and eager trembling frame 
 Nerved for the leap. But un...Read more of this...

by Morris, William
...Ever again shall we twine arms and lips."
"Yea, she is mad: thy heavy law, O Lord,
Is very tight about her now, and grips
Her poor heart, so that no right word

"Can reach her mouth; so, Lord, forgive her now,
That she not knowing what she does, being mad,
Kills me in this way: Guenevere, bend low
And kiss me once! for God's love kiss me! sad

"Though your face is, you look much kinder now;
Yea once, once for the last time kiss me, lest I die."
"Christ! my hot lips ar...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...re, except
each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.

 3

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
The beak that grips her, she becomes. And Nature,
that sprung-lidded, still commodious
steamer-trunk of tempora and mores
gets stuffed with it all: the mildewed orange-flowers,
the female pills, the terrible breasts
of Boadicea beneath flat foxes' heads and orchids.
Two handsome women, gripped in argument,
each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream
across the cut gl...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...nd laid it to my lips,
But he was on me with a tiger-bound;
And as we locked and reeled and rocked with wild and wicked grips,
The poison cup went crashing to the ground.
"Don't do it, Bill," he madly shrieked. "Maybe I acted wrong.
See, here's my Bible - use it as you will;
But promise me - you'll read a little as you go along...
You do! Then take it, Brother; smoke your fill."

And so I did. I smoked and smoked from Genesis to Job,
And as I s...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...ingly as flame, 
And seared me white with burning scars; 
When I stood up for age-long wars 
And held the very Fiend at grips; 
When all my mutinous body rose 
To range itself beside my foes, 
And, like a greyhound in the slips, 
The Beast that dwells within me roared, 
Lunging and straining at his cord. . . . 
For all the blusterings of Hell, 
It was not then I slipped and fell; 
For all the storm, for all the hate, 
I kept my soul inviolate! 

But when the f...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
... 

Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, 
Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller 
Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, 
The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. 

For he who has not folded in his arms 
A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, 
Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, 
When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. 

O irresistible, with fleshless face, 
Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: 
"Proud lovers with the pai...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...s. 
But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood, 
He hates the tree as ivy would, 
As the dragon of the ivy would 
That has us in his grips....Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...e for a week or two.
The war of 1812 seems to me
About as just as a war could be.
How could we help but come to grips
With a nation that stopped and searched our ships,
And took off our seamen for no other reason
Except that they needed crews that season.
I can get angry still at the tale
Of their letting the Alabama sail,
And Palmerston being insolent
To Lincoln and Seward over the Trent.
All very long ago, you'll say,
But whenever I go up Boston-way,
I drive...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...ings creep from the ground. 
It is so long ago that she died, so long ago! 
Dust crushes her, earth holds her, mold grips her. 
Fiends, do you not know that she is dead? . . . 
"Let us dance the pavon!" she said; the waxlights glittered like swords on the polished floor. 
Twinkling on jewelled snuffboxes, beaming savagely from the crass gold of candelabra, 
From the white shoulders of girls and the white powdered wigs of men . . . 
All life...Read more of this...

by Crapsey, Adelaide
...The cold
With steely clutch
Grips all the land…alack,
The little people in the hills
Will die!...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...is full of cracking whips.
 You wonder how it is you're going still.
You foam with rage. Oh, God! to be at grips
 With someone you can rush and crush and kill.
Your sleeve is dripping blood; you're seeing red;
 You're battle-mad; your turn is coming now.
See! there's the jagged barbed wire straight ahead,
 And there's the trench -- you'll get there anyhow.
Your puttee catches on a strand of wire,
 And down you go; perhaps it saves your life,
For over ...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things