Famous Inert Poems by Famous Poets

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

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a man who had fallen among thieves

...nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)


Egypt Tobago

...alm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helm-
et of a dead warrior.

Numb Antony, in the torpor
stretching her inert
sex near him like a sleeping cat,
knows his heart is the real desert.

Over the dunes
of her heaving,
to his heart's drumming
fades the mirage of the legions,

across love-tousled sheets,
the triremes fading.
Ar the carved door of her temple
a fly wrings its message.

He brushes a damp hair
away from an ear
as perfect as a sleeping child's.
He stares, ...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

Imagining you'd come to say goodbye..

...eye
I stitched thick lashes. Such a touching thing
she was! That even you could not debate –
impassive, undemanding and inert.
Yes, surely she’d cause you yourself to sigh.
Around her breast, I sewed a loden ring
to guard her cotton heart from being hurt,
then sat down in the fabric scraps to wait,
between the rafters and the furnace grate,
needle in hand, and never so aware
no craft on earth is master to despair....Read more of this...
by Reeser, Jennifer

Lightning

...lightning flew across her face,
And I saw her for the flaring space
    Of a second, afraid of the clips
Of my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear of my kiss.

A moment, like a wavering spark,
    Her face lay there before my breast,
Pale love lost in a snow of fear,
And guarded by a glittering tear,
    And lips apart with dumb cries;
A moment, and she was taken again in the merciful dark.

I heard the thunder, and felt the rain,
    And my arms fell loose, a...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Magica

...Behold the hour for your clairvoyant eyes to shine,
Intent Pythoness, inert in the silent heart of evening!
Your spirit has departed, lost amid the soul of the world,
Seeking the treasure, as your desire weaves its magic.

The sacred flame, which reabsorbs your fleshly being,
Will soon tranform the chasms of life into blazing pyres,
As the powers summon you to most secret sabbaths,
Reality of the firmament or infernal n...Read more of this...
by Delville, Jean


On A Flemish Window-pane

...
 Appealing by a crevice fine and rare, 
 As of a door oped in "th' incorporal air." 
 She comes! o'er drowsy roofs, inert and dull, 
 Shaking her lap, of silv'ry music full, 
 Rousing without remorse the drones abed, 
 Tripping like joyous bird with tiniest tread, 
 Quiv'ring like dart that trembles in the targe, 
 By a frail crystal stair, whose viewless marge 
 Bears her slight footfall, tim'rous half, yet free, 
 In innocent extravagance of glee 
 The graceful ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Plutonian Ode

...binets and baths of lathe oil,
My voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ignot 
 cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmo-
 sphere,
I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums
 underground on soundless thrones and beds of
 lead
O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent 
 through hidden chambers and breaks through 
 iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony 
 floats audible, these jubilant tones ar...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

The Book of Annandale

...e glad? 

Yet how could he be glad, or reconciled, 
Or anything but wretched and undone? 
How could he be so frigid and inert— 
So like a man with water in his veins
Where blood had been a little while before? 
How could he sit shut in there like a snail? 
What ailed him? What was on him? Was he glad? 
Over and over again the question came, 
Unanswered and unchanged,—and there he was.
But what in heaven’s name did it all mean? 
If he had lived as other men had lived, 
If home...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Coal Picker

...He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock's eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Grave-digger

...that to himself he made
Are here—for he hath scored and cancelled them,
As one may cut and notch a diadem;
And here, inert and prone, his will is laid,
Whose gestures flashed like lightning keen before.
But that he now can raise in strength no more.


The grave-digger digs to the sound of the knell
'Mid the yews and the deaths in yonder dell.
Since ages longer than he can tell.


Here is his dream—born in the radiant glow.
Of joy and young oblivion, long ago—
T...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile

The Lesson Of The Patriot Dead

...hearts droop, and courtiers play the worm, 
 Our martyrs of Democracy the Truth sublime affirm! 
 And when all seems inert upon this seething, troublous round, 
 And when the rashest knows not best to flee ar stand his ground, 
 When not a single war-cry from the sombre mass will rush, 
 When o'er the universe is spread by Doubting utter hush, 
 Then he who searches well within the walls that close immure 
 Our teachers, leaders, heroes slain because they lived too pu...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Thesaurus

...c basket and thermos;
hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy
all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,
inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile
standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire and brother close
to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.
And every group has its odd cousin, the one
who traveled the farthest to be here:
astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven
syllable, unpronounceable substitut...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy

Tortoise Family Connections

...little substance,
To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:
Basta!
To be a tortoise!
Think of it, in a garden of inert clods
A brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself --
Adam!

In a garden of pebbles and insects
To roam, and feel the slow heart beat
Tortoise-wise, the first bell sounding
From the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning.

Moving, and being himself,
Slow, and unquestioned,
And inordinately there, O stoic!
Wandering in the slow triumph of his own...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Two Octaves

...looks down 
Upon a stagnant earth where listless men 
Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat, 
Disqualified, unsatisfied, inert, -- 
It seems to me somehow that God himself 
Scans with a close reproach what I have done, 
Counts with an unphrased patience my arrears, 
And fathoms my unprofitable thoughts....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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