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Famous Insist Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...


Now, sir, if ye hae friends enow,
Tho’ real friends, I b’lieve, are few;
Yet, if your catalogue be fu’,
 I’se no insist:
But, gif ye want ae friend that’s true,
 I’m on your list.


I winna blaw about mysel,
As ill I like my fauts to tell;
But friends, an’ folk that wish me well,
 They sometimes roose me;
Tho’ I maun own, as mony still
 As far abuse me.


There’s ae wee faut they whiles lay to me,
I like the lasses—Gude forgie me!
For mony a plack they wheedle ...Read more of this...



by Smart, Christopher
...mulation up to heav'n 
 By knowledge and by zeal. 

 XLIX 
O DAVID, highest in the list 
Of worthies, on God's ways insist, 
 The genuine word repeat: 
Vain are the documents of men, 
And vain the flourish of the pen 
 That keeps the fool's conceit. 

 L 
PRAISE above all—for praise prevails; 
Heap up the measure, load the scales, 
 And good to goodness add: 
The gen'rous soul her Saviour aids, 
But peevish obloquy degrades; 
 The Lord is great and glad. 

 LI 
Fo...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...last,
But I say nothing; and you know
At six-fifteen to whom I go— 
Can even love be treated so?

I KNOW, but I do not insist,
Having stealth and tact, thought not enough,
What hour your eye is on your wrist.

No wild appeal, no mild rebuff
Deflates the hour, leaves the wine flat— 

Yet if YOU drop the picked-up book
To intercept my clockward look— 
Tell me, can love go on like that?

Even the bored, insulted heart,
That signed so long and tight a lease,
Can BREAK it CON...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...herefore I have to pause and look at him.
He's not enormous, but one looks at him.
A little on the round if you insist,
For now, God save the mark, he's growing old;
He's five and forty, and to hear him talk
These days you'd call him eighty; then you'd add
More years to that. He's old enough to be
The father of a world, and so he is.
"Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?"
Says he; and there shines out of him again
An aged light that has no age or sta...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...n't like to tell you." "Why?"
Says Susanner. "Well, you see
It would kinder fall on me."
Course I knowed that she 'd insist,—
So I says: "You must be kissed
By the man that heard you whistle;
Everybody says that this 'll
Break the charm and set you free
From the threat'nin' penalty."
She was blushin' fit to kill,
But she answered, kinder still:
"I don't want to have no harm,
Please come, Ben, an' break the charm."
Did I break that charm?—oh, well,
There's some t...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...
Another bell, it is Saint Hilda’s

Tinny tone, one note repeated, tolling

Birth and death and all that lies

Between, insistent, punitive, breaking

The Sabbath’s silence and the bell

Rope like a hangman’s noose, hymnals

Like tawses, incense like choking fog

The procession to the altar a parade

Of the dead and God was over the road

In the pink and blue threaded lupins

Massed behind the rusted padlock of

The gate to the unused path by the

Bridge over the railway....Read more of this...

by Muldoon, Paul
...f this mortal coil—
we've consoled ourselves with the dregs

of a bottle of Redbreast. Had Hawthorne been a Gael,
I insist, the scarlet A on Hester Prynne
would have stood for "Alcohol."

This must be the same truck whose taillights burn
so dimly, as if caked with dirt,
three or four hundred yards along the boreen

(a diminutive form of the Gaelic bóthar, "a road,"
from bó, "a cow," and thar
meaning, in this case, something like "athwart,"

"boreen" has entered Englis...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady's hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps
with exhibi...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...oved to call him Willie),
looked wry at me and went his way -
I think he thought me rather silly.
Maybe I am, but I insist
My point of view will take some beating:
Don't mock this old Externalist -
The pudding's proof is in the eating....Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...
because it is surface,

clear or vague
suggestions of our depths,
Don't we need a word

for the luster
of things which insist
on the fact they're made,

which announce
their maker's bravura?
Favrile, I'd propose,

for the perfect lamp,
too dim and strange
to help us read.

For the kimono woven,
dipped in dyes, unraveled
and loomed again

that the pattern might take on
a subtler shading
For the sonnet's

blown-glass sateen,
for bel canto,
for Faberge

For everything
which...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...with you to pay the rent. 
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; 
And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.” 

“Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying
To be merry while you try to make me hate you?” 

“Think again, 
My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming 
To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, 
If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention—
O...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...ld on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edibl...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
..., trying to cure

Schizophrenia with sticking plaster: "We don’t want 

Carers’ input, we call patients ‘residents’ and insist on chores

Not medication", then the letters of terrible abuse, the finding of a flat,

‘The discharge into the community.’

His ‘keyworker’ was the keyworker from hell: the more

Isaiah’s care fell apart the more she encouraged 

Him to blame us and ‘Make his life his own’, vital signs

Of decline ignored or consigned to files, ‘confidentiality’ ...Read more of this...

by Mueller, Lisel
...what can she do but rise
to your imagined throne?
And what can I, but see
beyond the world that is,
when, faithful, you insist
I have the golden key--
and learn from you once more
the terror and the bliss,
the world as it might be?...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
Towards thee I intend for what I have misdone,
Misguided: only what remains past cure
Bear not too sensibly, nor still insist
To afflict thy self in vain: though sight be lost,
Life yet hath many solaces, enjoy'd
Where other senses want not their delights
At home in leisure and domestic ease,
Exempt from many a care and chance to which
Eye-sight exposes daily men abroad.
I to the Lords will intercede, not doubting 
Thir favourable ear, that I may fetch thee
From forth th...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...urned one way and then another
to catch the light, the light overflowing with smoke.

Go back to the beginning, you insist. Why
is the air filled with smoke? Simple. We had work.
Work was something that thrived on fire, that without
fire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life.

We came out into the morning air, Bernie, Stash,
Williams, and I, it was late March, a new war
was starting up in Asia or closer to home,
one that meant to kill us, but for a...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ave given it all if in return 
There might have been a more sufficient face
To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist 
It is the dower, and always, of our degree 
Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, 
Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, 
Now in his house; and since we are together,
See for yourself and tell me what you see. 
Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise 
Of recognition when you find a book 
That you would not as lief read up...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...e morning, 
we find a morning that comes just after darkness. 
We can break through marriage into marriage. 
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond 
affection and wade mouth-deep into love. 
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. 
But going back toward childhood will not help. 
The village is not better than Pittsburgh. 
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. 
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound 
of raccoon tong...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...r bushes. "Sir," said she, "pray whose
Garden do you suppose you're watching? Why
Do you stand there? I really must insist
Upon your leaving. 'Tis unmannerly
To stay so long." The young man gave a twist
And turned about, and in the amethyst
Moonlight he saw her like a nymph half-risen
From the green bushes which had been her prison.
He swept his hat off in a hurried bow.
"Your pardon, Madam, I had no idea
I was not quite alone, and that is how
I came to st...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ment winked a wicked wink,
Said to Chunder Mookerjee: "Stick to pen and ink.
They are safer implements, but, if you insist,
We will let you carry arms wheresoe'er you list."

Hurree Chunder Mookerjee sought the gunsmith and
Bought the tubes of Lancaster, Ballard, Dean, and Bland,
Bought a shiny bowie-knife, bought a town-made sword,
Jingled like a carriage-horse when he went abroad.

But the Indian Government, always keen to please,
Also gave permission to horrid ...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things