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Famous Haul Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bishop, Elizabeth
...hat black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down 
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after eve...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...h drinking wings!
The statues of great rain stand still,
And the flakes fall like hills.

Sing and strike his heavy haul
Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light!
His decks are drenched with miracles.
Oh miracle of fishes! The long dead bite!

Out of the urn a size of a man
Out of the room the weight of his trouble
Out of the house that holds a town
In the continent of a fossil

One by one in dust and shawl,
Dry as echoes and insect-faced,
His fathers cling to the ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.<...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...taken in his boat,
The screw purling, turning
Indolent fathoms white,
I tasted freedom with him.
To get out early, haul
Steadily off the bottom,
Dispraise the catch, and smile
As you find a rhythm
Working you, slow mile by mile,
Into your proper haunt
Somewhere, well out, beyond...

Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...so sloppy & peddled so loose
He busted himself & cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell in to cha...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...d 
Is mine,--and also mine the little chant, 
So sure to rise from every fishing-bark 
When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net. 
The image of the sun-god on the phare, 
Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine; 
The P?o'er-storied its whole length, 
As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too. 
I know the true proportions of a man 
And woman also, not observed before; 
And I have written three books on the soul, 
Proving absurd all written hitherto, 
An...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...! 

Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! 
Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! 
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? 
Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? 
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough? 

Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only! 
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound...Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
...Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finnished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in s...Read more of this...

by Pastan, Linda
...After Adam Zagajewski



I am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.
On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
but in spring my head aches
from the flowery scents.
My husband fills a room with Mozart
which I turn off, embracing
the silence as if it were an empty page
waiting for me alone to fill it.
He digs in the black earth
with his bare hands. I scrub it
from the creases of his skin,...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...ad, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
For, said the paper, "When this war is done
The men's first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, --
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in the...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells.
The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel.
Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped:
Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky.

Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e come to me days and nights, and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself. 

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am; 
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary; 
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, 
Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come next;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it. 

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with lingu...Read more of this...

by Twain, Mark
...roaches to,
We're all"--then with a shout,]
"Huray! huray!
Avast! belay!
Take in more sail!
Lord, what a gale!
Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!"
"Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump!
Ho, hostler, heave the lead!

"A quarter-three!--'tis shoaling fast!
Three feet large!--t-h-r-e-e feet!--
Three feet scant!" I cried in fright
"Oh, is there no retreat?"

Said Dollinger, the pilot man,
As on the vessel flew,
"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
And he will fetch you throu...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...spite to the bleak, bald-headed North.

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan,
For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man;
And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams;
And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams.

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such,
Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch;
About as fat as a chanc...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...And as I walked, I said, "It's strange, 
There's Death let loose to-night, and Change." 

In Cabbage Walk, I made a haul 
Of two big pears from lawyer's wall, 
And, munching one, I took the lane 
Back into Market-place again. 
Lamp-lighter Dick had passed the turning. 
And all the Homend lamps were burning, 
The windows shone, the shops were busy, 
But that strange Heaven made me dizzy. 
The sky had all God's warning writ 
In bloody marks all over it, 
And ove...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...to take her part.
They push and spatter her. Her sails are loose,
Her tackles hanging, waiting men to seize
And haul them taut, with chanty-singing, as they choose.

23
At the great wharf's edge Mynheer Kurler stands,
And by his side, his daughter, young Christine.
Max Breuck is there, his hat held in his hands,
Bowing before them both. The brigantine
Bounces impatient at the long delay,
Curvets and jumps, a cable's length from shore.
A heavy galliot u...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...hoal and drifts out her seine-net. 
 They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great 
 labor haul it in.

 I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, 
 then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall 
 to the other of their closing destiny the 
 phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body 
 sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...the line o' the British craft;
The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed: --
"It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all -- we'll out to the seas again --
Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain.
It's fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea, and the swing of the unbought brine --
We'll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o' the Line:
Till we come as a ship o' the Line, my lads, of thirty foot...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...the Aronia by the river 
Lighted up the swarming shad, 

And the bulging nets swept shoreward 
With their silver-sided haul, 
Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, 
He was merriest of them all. 

When, among the jovial huskers 
Love stole in at Labor's side 
With the lusty airs of England 
Soft his Celtic measures vied. 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake 
And the merry fair's carouse; 
Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 
And the Woman of Three Cows, 

By the blazing hear...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things