Famous Inch Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Inch poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous inch poems. These examples illustrate what a famous inch poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ms adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street t...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and rake
them down the chalkboard of the job market's soul.
So I go in the beauty salon.
This beautiful Puerto Rican girl in tight white spandex and a push-up bra
sits me down and starts chopping my hair:
"Girlfriend," she says, "what the hell you got growing outta
your head there, what is that, hair implants? Yuck, you w...Read more of this...
by
Estep, Maggie
...place where I began
And I was lucky even before I
Was born for the red-hot shrapnel fell
And missed my mother by an inch
As she walked through the Blitz
In Bradford in nineteen forty-one.
Sydney Graham this poem is for you,
Although we never met, your feet
Have walked on the waters of poetic faith,
Hold out a hand for me to grasp,
A net to catch the dancing reflections
Of the midnight stars and smooth
The green tongue of the seawave
When it speaks to me as I s...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...all the way, there stops---
Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from life's safe hem!
XXIII.
With me, youth led ... I will speak now,
No longer watch you as you sit
Reading by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it,
Mutely, my heart knows how---
XXIV.
When, if I think but deep enough,
You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
And you, too, find without rebuff
Response your soul seeks ma...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...Clay comes out to meet Liston
and Liston starts to retreat,
if Liston goes back an inch farther
he'll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with his left,
Clay swings with his right,
Look at young Cassius
carry the fight
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room,
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom.
Now Clay lands with a right,
What a beautiful swing,
and the punch raises the Bear
clean out of the...Read more of this...
by
Ali, Muhammad
...ent;
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm’d, every inch as good as
myself.
4
The Lord advances, and yet advances;
Always the shadow in front—always the reach’d hand bringing up the laggards.
Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming;
I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of runners clearing the way,
I hear victorious drums.
This face is a life-boat;
This is th...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...reseated in thy place of light,
The mockery of my people, and their bane.'
He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.
Then waiting by the doors the warhorse neighed
At a friend's voice, and he spake again:
`Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes,
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head,
My pride in...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.
If you were only one inch tall, you'd walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of flu...Read more of this...
by
Silverstein, Shel
...inutes.
The trout in those telephone booths were good fellows.
There were a lot of young cutthroat trout six to nine inches
long, perfect pan size for local calls. Sometimes there
were a few fellows, eleven inches or so--for the long dis-
tance calls.
I've always liked cutthroat trout. They put up a good fight,
running against the bottom and then broad jumping. Under
their throats they fly the orange banner of Jack the Ripper.
Also in the creek were a few stubborn...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...rmal weight.
The surgeon told me that they'd come over from camping
on Big Lost River where he had caught a fourteen-inch brook
trout. He was young looking, though he did not have much
hair on his head.
I talked to the surgeon for a little while longer and said
good-bye. We were leaving in the afternoon for Lake Josephus
located at the edge of the Idaho Wilderness, and he was leav-
ing for America, often only a place in the mind.
A NOTE ON THE CAMPING
...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...d go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean;
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar
than the rest.
I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing:
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and
withdraws at the peep of the day, with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels, swelling the house with their
plenty,...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...nd from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
...Read more of this...
by
Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...ric point, forbear
To feature me my Lord by rule and line.
Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair,
Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp,
Would'st count the strings upon an angel's harp?
Forbear, forbear.
"Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deep
Than there is line to sound with: let me love
My fellow not as men that mandates keep:
Yea, all that's lovable, below, above,
That let me love by heart, by heart, because
(Free from the penal pressure of the laws)
I f...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...cy more than once
Before he told of Norcross. When the word
Of his release (he would have called it so)
Made half an inch of news, there were no tears
That are recorded. Women there may have been
To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing,
The few there were to mourn were not for love,
And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least,
Was in the meagre legend that I gathered
Years after, when a chance of travel took me
So near the region of his nativity
That a ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...f liquor dulled the pain,
And then the flasks clinked again.
Time!
There was Bill as grim as death,
He rushed, I clinched, to get more breath,
And breath I got, though Billy bats
Some stinging short-arms in my slats.
And when we broke, as I foresaw,
He swung his right 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, ...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...us of Hell
Had set upon the Duke of Normandy,
Their rightful Regent, snarled in his great face,
Snapped jagged teeth in inch-breadth of his throat,
And blown such hot and savage breath upon him,
That he had tossed great sops of royalty
Unto the clamorous, three-mawed baying beast.
And was not further on his way withal,
And had but changed a snarl into a growl:
How Arnold de Cervolles had ta'en the track
That war had burned along the unhappy land,
Shouting, `since France is th...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...ed with care,
A cubit's length in measure due;
The shaft and limbs were rods of yew,
Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave
Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave,
And, answering Lomond's breezes deep,
Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep.
The Cross thus formed he held on high,
With wasted hand and haggard eye,
And strange and mingled feelings woke,
While his anathema he spoke:—
IX.
'Woe to the clansma...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...o see God with His back
Against a wall, to see Christ hew and hack
Till Lucifer, pressed by the mighty pair,
And losing inch by inch, clawed at the air
With fevered wings; then, lost beyond repair,
He tricked a mass of stars into his hair;
He filled his hands with stars, crying as he fell,
"A star's a star although it burns in hell."
So God was left to His divinity,
Omnipotent at that most costly fee.
There was a lesson here, but still the clod
In me was sycophant unto the r...Read more of this...
by
Cullen, Countee
...love my friend as well as you:
But why should he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post:
Suppose it but an inch at most.
If in battle you should find
One whom you love of all mankind,
Had some heroic action done,
A champion killed, or trophy won;
Rather than thus be overtopped,
Would you not wish his laurels cropped?
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies racked with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
What p...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...ings like that the snow is a white blanket
after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of
snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile....Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
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