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Famous Insects Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Carroll, Jim
...d instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds 

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration

4/
Here's s...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Mary Darby
...ffoonery, 
The buzzing hornets swarm about the great, 
The poor appendages of pamper'd state; 
The trifling, flutt'ring insects of a day, 
Flit near the sun, and glitter in its ray; 
Whose subtle fires with charms magnetic burn, 
Where every servile fool may have his turn. 
Lull'd in the lap of indolence, they boast 
Who best can fawn­and who can flatter most; 
While with a cunning arrogance they blend 
Sound without sense­and wit that stabs a friend; 
Slanders oblique­th...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e yellow butterflies, shuffling between each
 other,
 ascending high in the air; 
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall traveler southward, but
 returning
 northward early in the spring; 
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as
 they
 loiter to browse by the road-side; 
The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San
 Francisco, 
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ks pass,
As heavy Mules are neither Horse or Ass.
Those half-learn'd Witlings, num'rous in our Isle,
As half-form'd Insects on the Banks of Nile:
Unfinish'd Things, one knows now what to call,
Their Generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em, wou'd a hundred Tongues require,
Or one vain Wit's, that might a hundred tire.

But you who seek to give and merit Fame,
And justly bear a Critick's noble Name,
Be sure your self and your own Reach to know.
How far your Genius, T...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...sing; 
I say that works made here in the spirit of other lands, are so much poison in The States.


(How dare such insects as we see assume to write poems for America? 
For our victorious armies, and the offspring following the armies?)

Piety and conformity to them that like! 
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like! 
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, 
Crying, Leap from your seats, and contend for your lives! 

I am he who walks the States with a...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...stunned and still on the green, laid veil
Sand with legends in its virgin laps

And prophets loud on the burned dunes;
Insects and valleys hold her thighs hard,
Times and places grip her breast bone,
She is breaking with seasons and clouds;

Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves,
with moving fish and rounded stones
Up and down the greater waves
A separate river breathes and runs;

Strike and sing his catch of fields
For the surge is sown with barley,
The cattle graze on...Read more of this...

by Aldington, Richard
...hollow sound 
With their hoofs 
Through the silent rain. 

And there was a grey museum 
Full of dead birds and dead insects and dead animals 
And a few relics of the Romans -- dead also. 
There was a sea-front, 
A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it, 
Three piers, a row of houses, 
And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour. 

I was like a moth -- 
Like one of those grey Emperor moths 
Which flutter through the vines at Capri. 
And that damned li...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...>
31 The morn doth usher thee with smiles and blushes.
32 The Earth reflects her glances in thy face.
33 Birds, insects, Animals with Vegative,
34 Thy heat from death and dullness doth revive
35 And in the darksome womb of fruitful nature dive. 

6 

36 Thy swift Annual and diurnal Course,
37 Thy daily straight and yearly oblique path,
38 Thy pleasing fervour, and thy scorching force,
39 All mortals here the feeling knowledge hath.
40 Thy presence makes it day...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...s with her dirty smock; 
Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, 
With Sappho fragrant at an evening Masque: 
So morning Insects that in muck begun, 
Shine, buzz, and flyblow in the setting sun. 

How soft is Silia! fearful to offend; 
The Frail one's advocate, the Weak one's friend: 
To her, Calista prov'd her conduct nice; 
And good Simplicius asks of her advice. 
Sudden, she storms! she raves! You tip the wink, 
But spare your censure; Silia does not drink. 
All...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...e rigavan lor di sangue il volto, 
che, mischiato di lagrime, a' lor piedi 
da fastidiosi vermi era ricolto . 

The insects streaked their faces with their blood, 
which, mingled with their tears, fell at their feet, 
where it was gathered up by sickening worms. 


E poi ch'a riguardar oltre mi diedi, 
vidi genti a la riva d'un gran fiume; 
per ch'io dissi: «Maestro, or mi concedi 

And then, looking beyond them, I could see 
a crowd along the bank of a great river; 
...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...motest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which from those secret chas...Read more of this...

by Anonymous,
...s.
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels -- visions of God's throne,
To insects -- sensual lust. ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...terfalls separately of course, and

 the trees and birds, flowers grass and ferns we're also sell-

 ing extra. The insects we're giving away free with a mini-

 mum purchase of ten feet of stream. "

 "How much are you selling the stream for?" I asked.

 "Six dollars and fifty-cents a foot, " he said. "That's for

 the first hundred feet. After that it's five dollars a foot."

 "How much are the birds?" I asked.

 "Thirty-five cents apiece, " he s...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...t. 
103 Into a savage color he went on. 

104 How greatly had he grown in his demesne, 
105 This auditor of insects! He that saw 
106 The stride of vanishing autumn in a park 
107 By way of decorous melancholy; he 
108 That wrote his couplet yearly to the spring, 
109 As dissertation of profound delight, 
110 Stopping, on voyage, in a land of snakes, 
111 Found his vicissitudes had much enlarged 
112 His apprehension, made him intricate 
113 In moody rucks...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...g them. The night
Was white and still with moonlight, and a sigh
Of blowing leaves was there, and the dim flight
Of insects, and the smell of aconite,
And stocks, and Marvel of Peru. She flitted
Along the path, where blocks of shadow pitted
The even flags. She let herself go dreaming
Of Theodore her husband, and the tune
From `Orfeo' swam through her mind, but seeming
Changed -- shriller. Of a sudden, the clear moon
Showed her a passer-by, inopportune
Indeed, ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...f the ground,
And nowhere else, I take it, are found
With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:
Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on
The very fruit they are meant to feed on.
For the earth---not a use to which they don't turn it,
The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,
They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it---
Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle
With side-bars never a brute can baffle;
Or a lock that'...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...d pinion soar
From rose to tulip as before?
Or beauty, blighted in an hour,
Find joy within her broken bower?
No: gayer insects fluttering by
Ne’er droop the wing o’er those that die,
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister’s shame.


The mind that broods o’er guilty woes,
Is like the scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close,
Till inly s...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
About me leap'd and laugh'd 
The modish Cupid of the day, 
And shrill'd his tinsel shaft. 

"I swear (and else may insects prick 
Each leaf into a gall) 
This girl, for whom your heart is sick, 
Is three times worth them all. 

"For those and theirs, by Nature's law, 
Have faded long ago; 
But in these latter springs I saw 
Your own Olivia blow, 

"From when she gamboll'd on the greens 
A baby-germ, to when 
The maiden blossoms of her teens 
Could number five from te...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...m this land!

Deadly marshes,
Steaming mists of October
Here interweave their currents,
Blending for ever.

Noisome insects
Here are engender'd;
Fatal darkness
Veils their malice.

The fiery-tongued serpent,
Hard by the sedgy bank,
Stretches his pamper'd body,
Caress'd by the sun's bright beams.

Tempt no gentle night-rambles
Under the moon's cold twilight!
Loathsome toads hold their meetings
Yonder at every crossway.

Injuring not,
Fear will they cause thee.<...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...an I do? Shall I read books, 
 Or write more verse—or turn fond looks 
 Upon enamels blue, sea-green, 
 And white—on insects rare as seen 
 Upon my Dresden china ware? 
 Or shall I touch the globe, and care 
 To make the heavens turn upon 
 Its axis? No, not one—not one 
 Of all these things care I to do; 
 All wearies me—I think of you. 
 In truth with you my sunshine fled, 
 And gayety with your light tread— 
 Glad noise that set me dreaming still. 
 'Twas my d...Read more of this...

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