Famous Grunting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown 
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He...Read more of this...

The Truce of the Bear

by Rudyard Kipling
 Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go
By the Pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in --
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless -- toothless, broken of speech,
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over...Read more of this...

Letter to S.S. from Mametz Wood

by Robert Graves
 I never dreamed we’d meet that day 
In our old haunts down Fricourt way, 
Plotting such marvellous journeys there 
For jolly old “Apr?s-la-guerre.” 

Well, when it’s over, first we’ll meet 
At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat 
In Wales, a curious little shop 
With two rooms and a roof on top, 
A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet 
That never needs a...Read more of this...

For the Union Dead

by Robert Lowell
 "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam." 

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I...Read more of this...

Badger

by John Clare
 When midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den,
And put a sack within the hole, and lie
Till the old grunting badger passes by.
He comes an hears - they let the strongest loose.
The old fox gears the noise and drops the goose.
The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry,
And the old hare...Read more of this...

Frankenstein

by Edward Field
 The monster has escaped from the dungeon
where he was kept by the Baron,
who made him with knobs sticking out from each side of his neck
where the head was attached to the body
and stitching all over
where parts of cadavers were sewed together.

He is pursued by the ignorant villagers,
who think he is evil and dangerous because he is ugly
and makes ugly...Read more of this...

Respondez!

by Walt Whitman
 RESPONDEZ! Respondez! 
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) 
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! 
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? 
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind!...Read more of this...

Wilderness

by Carl Sandburg
 THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess …...Read more of this...

242. The Poet's Progress

by Robert Burns
 THOU, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign;
Of thy caprice maternal I complain.
 The peopled fold thy kindly care have found,
The hornèd bull, tremendous, spurns the ground;
The lordly lion has enough and more,
The forest trembles at his very roar;
Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell.
Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour,
In all th’...Read more of this...

Implications of One Plus One

by Marge Piercy
 Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging, 
continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten 
veins of fire deep in the earth and raising 
tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra. 

Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's 
airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses, 
our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering 
like fog over warm water, thickening to rain. 

Sometimes...Read more of this...

The Pig

by Christopher Smart
 In ev'ry age, and each profession, 
Men err the most by prepossession; 
But when the thing is clearly shown, 
And fairly stated, fully known, 
We soon applaud what we deride, 
And penitence succeeds to pride.-- 
A certain Baron on a day 
Having a mind to show away, 
Invited all the wits and wags, 
Foot, Massey, Shuter, Yates, and Skeggs,...Read more of this...

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