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Famous Grist Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...The hills and glens are lost:


Ne’er sae murky blew the night
 That drifted o’er the hill,
But bonie Peg-a-Ramsay
 Gat grist to her mill....Read more of this...



by Field, Eugene
...ance,
The morris dance,
The highland song, the greenwood ditty,
Of these I read,
Or, when the need,
My Miller grinds me grist that's gritty!

When of such stuff
We've had enough,
Why, there be other friends to greet us;
We'll moralize
In solemn wise
With Plato or with Epictetus.

Sneer as you may,
I'm proud to say
That I, for one, am very grateful
To Heaven, that sends
These genial friends
To banish other friendships hateful!

And when I'm done,
I'd have no son
Pounce on ...Read more of this...

by Graves, Robert
...ed at by most, 
Phrased so disdainfully, 
Composed so painfully. 
He struck what Milton missed, 
Milling an English grist 
With homely turn and twist. 
He was English through and through, 
Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew, 
Though well their tongues he knew, 
The living and the dead: 
Learned Erasmus said, 
Hic ’unum Britannicarum 
Lumen et decus literarum.
But oh, Colin Clout! 
How his pen flies about, 
Twiddling and turning, 
Scorching and burning, 
Thrusting and ...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
How proud my mother was of the mansion!
How proud of father's rise in the world!
And how my father loved and watched us,
And guarded our happiness.
But I believe the house was a curse,
For father's fortune was little beside it;
And when my husband fo...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...el fate
 Has cheated of their due.

A am no grey philanthropist,
 Too humble is my lot
Yet how I'm glad to give the grist
 My singing mill has brought.
For I have had such lyric days,
 So rich, so full, so sweet,
That I with gratitude and praise
 Would make my life complete.

I'VE MADE MY WILL: now near the end,
 At peace with all mankind,
To children lame I would be friend,
 And brother to the blind . . .
And if there be a God, I pray
 He bless my las...Read more of this...



by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; 
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took 
The guise of any grist-mill brok, 
And dread Olympus at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 

A careless boy that night he seemed; 
But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trainëd thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be, 
Who, following in...Read more of this...

by Herrick, Robert
...he platter, or close by,
To purge the fairy family.
Near to the altar stands the priest,
There offering up the holy-grist;
Ducking in mood and perfect tense,
With (much good do't him) reverence.
The altar is not here four-square,
Nor in a form triangular;
Nor made of glass, or wood, or stone,
But of a little transverse bone;
Which boys and bruckel'd children call
(Playing for points and pins) cockall.
Whose linen-drapery is a thin,
Sub|ile, and ductile codling's s...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...nd
To be coming home the way I was,
He told me a little about himself.
He came from higher up in the pass
Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks
Is blocks split off the mountain mass --
And hop. eless grist enough it looks
Ever to grind to soil for grass.
(The way it is will do for moss.)
There he had built his stolen shack.
It had to be a stolen shack
Because of the fears of fire and logs
That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:
Visions of half the wor...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...People --
 To her well-ploughed windy sea,
To the hush of our dread high-altar
 Where The Abbey makes us We.
To the grist of the slow-ground ages,
 To the gain that is yours and mine --
To the Bank of the Open Credit,
 To the Power-house of the Line!

We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her!
 We've drunk to our mothers'land;
We've drunk to our English brother
 (And we hope he'll understand).
We've drunk as much as we're able,
 And the Cross swings low for the morn;
...Read more of this...

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