Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Hold Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Bradstreet, Anne
...said, sad mother, I assent.
151 Your fearful sins great cause there 's to lament.
152 My guilty hands (in part) hold up with you,
153 A sharer in your punishment's my due.
154 But all you say amounts to this effect,
155 Not what you feel, but what you do expect.
156 Pray, in plain terms, what is your present grief?
157 Then let's join heads and hands for your relief.

Old England. 

158 Well, to the matter, then. There's grown of late
159 'Twixt Ki...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...ing to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff,
And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot wipe it off.

Hold up those hands of innocence -- go, scare your sheep together,
The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether;
And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen,
Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them yours again!

"The charge is old"? -- As old as Cain -- as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments -- have...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,--
Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark with a century's fringe of dust,--
That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.

Who the painter was none may tell,--
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry, it must be confessed,
Fist as a rose that h...Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise
...uld like to dictate to me,
you would like to tell me
who among you is most valuable,
who most resembles me.
And you hold up as an example
the pure life, the detachment
you struggle to acheive--

How can you understand me
when you cannot understand yourselves?
Your memory is not
powerful enough, it will not
reach back far enough--

Never forget you are my children.
You are not suffering because you touched each other
but because you were born,
because you required life...Read more of this...

by Jonson, Ben
...most ;  but, madam, think what store The world hath seen, which all these had in trust,And at her strong arm's end, hold up, and even, The souls she loves.  Those other glorious notes, Inscribed in touch or marble, or the coats Painted, or carv'd upon our great men's tombs, Or in their windows, do but prove the wombs That bred them, graves : when they were born they died,  That had no muse to make their fame abide. How many equal with t...Read more of this...



by Hood, Thomas
...ds,
Enough to shock a saint,
That though she did seem in a fit,
'Twas nothing but a feint.

"Come, girl," said he, "hold up your head,
He'll be as good as me;
For when your swain is in our boat,
A boatswain he will be."

So when they'd made their game of her,
And taken off her elf,
She roused, and found she only was
A coming to herself.

"And is he gone, and is he gone?"
She cried, and wept outright:
"Then I will to the water side,
And see him out of sight."

...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...ow grin, and grin your bravest! 
We need be strong to fight; 
For you go home to picture 
And I go home to write. 

Hold up your head in England, 
Tread firm on London streets; 
We come from where the strong heart 
Of all Australia beats! 
Hold up your head in England 
However poor you roam! 
For no men are your betters 
Who never sailed from home! 

From a hundred years of hardships – 
'Tis ours to tell the cost – 
From a thousand miles of silence 
Where London would be ...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...d from the planted womb the man of straw.

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.

In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies
Here break a kiss in no love's quar...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooking flowers.
Everything here is yellow and green.

Surely spring will allow
a girl without a stitch on
to turn softly in her sunlight
and not be afraid of her bed.
She has already counted seven
blossoms in her green green mirror....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...me have my own way;
Let others promulge the laws—I will make no account of the laws; 
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace—I hold up agitation and conflict; 
I praise no eminent man—I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy. 

(Who are you? you mean devil! And what are you secretly guilty of, all your life? 
Will you turn aside all your life? Will you grub and chatter all your life?)

(And who are you—blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, r...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...grade class,"

the principal said. "I asked all those who had 'Trout fishing

in America' written on their backs to hold up their hands,and

all the children in the class held up their hands, except one

and he had spent his whole lunch period hiding in the lavatory.

What do you boys make of it . . . ? This 'Trout fishing in

America' business?"

 We didn't say anything.

 The one of us still had his mad blink going. I am certain

that it was his ...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...at night,
Sadly, from hill to hill.

They seemed as trees walking the earth,
As witless and as tall,
Yet they took hold upon the heavens
And no help came at all.

They bred like birds in English woods,
They rooted like the rose,
When Alfred came to Athelney
To hide him from their bows

There was not English armour left,
Nor any English thing,
When Alfred came to Athelney
To be an English king.

For earthquake swallowing earthquake
Uprent the Wessex tree;
The whir...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a
moment, and say your last words in
silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp 
to light you on your way....Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...on the way,
Now by my father's soule that is dead,
*But ye be merry, smiteth off* mine head. *unless you are merry,
Hold up your hands withoute more speech. smite off my head*

Our counsel was not longe for to seech*: *seek
Us thought it was not worth to *make it wise*, *discuss it at length*
And granted him withoute more avise*, *consideration
And bade him say his verdict, as him lest.
Lordings (quoth he), now hearken for the best;
But take it not, I pray you, in...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...left... 
and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!" 
but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?" 
"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!" 
I shake the cat, hold him up in 
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...susceptibility to. He has to keep 
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

 If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye. It's all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids 
one tear, his only possession, like the bee's sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you're not paying attention
he'll swallow it. However, if you watch, he'll hand it over,...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...ght to me that I should look skyward? 
Only I grope among you, pale-faces, caryatids, as among a forest of pillars that hold up the dome of high ideal heaven 
Which is my prison, 
And all these human pillars of loftiness, going stiff, metallic-stunned with the weight of their responsibility 
I stumble against them. 
Stumbling-blocks, painful ones. 

To keep on holding up this ideal civilisation 
Must be excruciating: unless you stiffen into metal, when it is easier to...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...uty he could not make,
And give her, for her comfort's sake!
He would beat his weary, empty hands
Upon the table, would hold up strands
Of silver and gold, and ask her why
She scorned the best which he could buy.
He would pray as to some high-niched saint,
That she would cure him of the taint
Of failure. He would clutch the wall
With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall
He could catch, and hold her, and make her live!
With sobs he would ask her to forgive
All he h...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...OCTOBER: Ægloga DecimaPIERCE & CUDDIE
Cuddie, for shame hold up thy heavye head,
And let us cast with what delight to chace,
And weary thys long lingring Phoebus race.
Whilome thou wont the shepheards laddes to leade,
In rymes, in ridles, and in bydding base:
Now they in thee, and thou in sleepe art dead.

CUDDY
Piers, I have pyped erst so long with payne,
That all mine Oten reedes bene rent and wore:
And...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...nto Satanas he led him down.
'And now hath Satanas,' said he, 'a tail
Broader than of a carrack is the sail.
Hold up thy tail, thou Satanas,' quoth he,
'Shew forth thine erse, and let the friar see
Where is the nest of friars in this place.'
And *less than half a furlong way of space* *immediately* 
Right so as bees swarmen out of a hive,
Out of the devil's erse there gan to drive
A twenty thousand friars *on a rout.* *in a crowd*
And throughout hell the...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Hold Up poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs