Famous Grunt Poems by Famous Poets

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

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113. A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton Esq

...ick to sound believing.


 Learn three-mile pray’rs, an’ half-mile graces,
Wi’ weel-spread looves, an’ lang, wry faces;
Grunt up a solemn, lengthen’d groan,
And damn a’ parties but your own;
I’ll warrant they ye’re nae deceiver,
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer.


 O ye wha leave the springs o’ Calvin,
For gumlie dubs of your ain delvin!
Ye sons of Heresy and Error,
Ye’ll some day squeel in quaking terror,
When Vengeance draws the sword in wrath.
And in the fire throws the ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


141. Tam Samson's Elegy

...again grown weel,
 To preach an’ read?
“Na’ waur than a’! cries ilka chiel,
 “Tam Samson’s dead!”


Kilmarnock lang may grunt an’ grane,
An’ sigh, an’ sab, an’ greet her lane,
An’ cleed her bairns, man, wife, an’ wean,
 In mourning weed;
To Death she’s dearly pay’d the kane—
 Tam Samson’s dead!


The Brethren, o’ the mystic level
May hing their head in woefu’ bevel,
While by their nose the tears will revel,
 Like ony bead;
Death’s gien the Lodge an unco devel;
 Tam Samson’s d...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert

258. Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner

...house;
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin’,
Perusing Bunyan, Brown, an’ Boston,
Till by an’ by, if I haud on,
I’ll grunt a real gospel-groan:
Already I begin to try it,
To cast my e’en up like a pyet,
When by the gun she tumbles o’er
Flutt’ring an’ gasping in her gore:
Sae shortly you shall see me bright,
A burning an’ a shining light.


 My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,
The ace an’ wale of honest men:
When bending down wi’ auld grey hairs
Beneath the load of years ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert

Café Talk

...h
An adult prism.'
 'Will they never stop,
Your words?' she said and settled to the dark.

'But we use words, we cannot grunt or bark,
Use any surer means to make that first
Sharp glare of origin again appear
Through the marred glass,' I cried, 'but can you hear?'
'Quite well, you needn't shout.' I felt the thirst
Coil back into my body till it shook,
And, 'Are you cold?' she said, then ceased to look
And picked a bit of cotton from her dress.
Out in the square a child began ...Read more of this...
by Blackburn, Thomas

Counter-Attack

...ifle ... rapid fire... 
And started blazing wildly ... then a bang 
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out 
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked 
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, 
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans... 
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, 
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed....Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried


Flee On Your Donkey

...weak.
O my hunger! My hunger!
I was the one
who opened the warm eyelid
like a surgeon
and brought forth young girls
to grunt like fish.

I told you,
I said—
but I was lying—
that the kife was for my mother . . .
and then I delivered her.

The curtains flutter out
and slump against the bars.
They are my two thin ladies
named Blanche and Rose.
The grounds outside
are pruned like an estate at Newport.
Far off, in the field,
something yellow grows.

Was it last month or last yea...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Forest Of Europe

...the rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva,"

but now that fever is a fire whose glow
warms our hands, Joseph, as we grunt like primates
exchanging gutturals in this wintry cave
of a brown cottage, while in drifts outside
mastodons force their systems through the snow....Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

My Dentist

...a Christian Scientist;
I don't believe in pain;
My dentist had a powerful wrist,
He tries and tries in vain
To make me grunt or groan or squeal
With probe or rasp or drill. . . .
But oh, what agony I feel
When HE PRESENTS HIS BILL!

Sitting in the dental chair,
Don't you wish you weren't there:
Well, your cup of woe to fill,
Just think of his infernal bill....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Oonts

...ont!
 With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes;
 We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt,
 An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks.

Wot makes the rear-guard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in,
An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin?
It ain't the chanst o' being rushed by Paythans from the 'ills,
It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is bloomin' frills!
 O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy scary oont...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Sow

...cular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled

Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape

A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent

Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Bachelors Soliloquy

...t button down the back,
When he himself might all these troubles shirk
With a bare refusal? Who would bundles bear,
And grunt and sweat under a shopping load?
Who would samples match; buy rats for hair,
Cart cheese and crackers home to serve at night
For lunch to feed your friends; play pedro
After tea; sing rag time songs, amusing
Friendly neighbors. Buy garden tools
To lend unto the same. Stay home at nights
In smoking coat and slippers and slink to bed
At ten o'clock to sa...Read more of this...
by Guest, Edgar Albert

The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor

...Ball, yet men of every race,
That bow before the Great God Jazz were gathered in that place.
Yea, there were those who grunt: "Ya! Ya!" and those who squeak: "We! We!"
Likewise Dutch, Dago, Swede and Finn, Polack and Portugee.
Yet like ripe grain before the gale that national hotch-potch
Went down before the fury of the Irish and the Scotch.
Aye, though they closed their gaping ranks and rallied to the fray,
To the Shamrock and the Thistle went the glory of the day.

You sho...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Bench-Legged Fyce

...Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be
On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me;
Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!"
When I tickled the back of that bench-legged fyce!

He wuz long in the bar'l, like a fyce oughter be;
His color wuz yaller as ever you see;
His tail, curlin' upward, wuz long, loose, an' slim -
When he didn't wag it, why, the tail it wagged him!
His legs wuz so crooked, my bench-legged pup
Wuz as tall settin' down as he wuz standin' up!...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Child and the Mariner

...The sea his home, though it was always roused 
By such wild storms as never leave Cape Horn; 
Happy to hear the tempest grunt and squeal 
Like pigs heard dying in a slaughterhouse. 
A true-born mariner, and this his hope -- 
His coffin would be what his cradle was, 
A boat to drown in and be sunk at sea; 
Salted and iced in Neptune's larder deep. 
This man despised small coasters, fishing-smacks; 
He scorned those sailors who at night and morn 
Can see the coast, when in thei...Read more of this...
by Davies, William Henry

The Colossus

...I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over th...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Everlasting Mercy

...ight in for the jaw. 
I stopped it on my shoulder bone, 
And at the shock I heard Bill groan 
A little groan or moan or grunt 
As though I'd hit his wind a bunt. 
At that, I clinched, and while we clinched, 
His old time right arm dig was flinched, 
And when we broke he hit me light 
As though he didn't trust his right, 
He flapped me somehow with his wrist 
As though he couldn't use his fist, 
And when he hit he winced with pain. 
I thought, "Your sprained thumb's crocked ag...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Imperfect Enjoyment

...ll the town a common fucking-post,
On whom each whore relieves her tingling ****
As hogs do rub themselves on gates and grunt,
May'st thou to ravenous chancres be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings waste away;
May strangury and stone thy days attend;
May'st thou ne'er piss, who did refuse to spend
When all my joys did on false thee depend.
And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wronged Corinna right for thee....Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

The Pig

...f* a Pig, [imitated] 
All swore 'twas serious, and no joke, 
For doubtless underneath his cloak, 
He had conceal'd some grunting elf, 
Or was a real hog himself. 
A search was made, no pig was found-- 
With thund'ring claps the seats resound, 
And pit and box and galleries roar, 
With--"O rare! bravo!" and "Encore!" 
Old Roger Grouse, a country clown, 
Who yet knew something of the town, 
Beheld the mimic and his whim, 
And on the morrow challeng'd him. 
Declaring to each bea...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

The Truce of the Bear

...om his stony playground -- down from his well-digged lair --
Out on the naked ridges ran Adam-zad the Bear --
Groaning, grunting, and roaring, heavy with stolen meals,
Two long marches to northward, and I was at his heels!

"Two long marches to northward, at the fall of the second night,
I came on mine enemy Adam-zad all panting from his flight.
There was a charge in the musket -- pricked and primed was the pan --
My finger crooked on the trigger -- when he reared up like a m...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

...e of scissors. 
She runs on a treadmill every morning, 
fits herself into machines of weights 
and pulleys to heave and grunt, 
an image in her mind she can never 
approximate, a body of rosy 
glass that never wrinkles, 
never grows, never fades. She 
sits at the table closing her eyes to food 
hungry, always hungry: 
a woman made of pain. 

A cat or dog approaches another, 
they sniff noses. They sniff asses. 
They bristle or lick. They fall 
in love as often as we do, 
as p...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

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