Famous Jelly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Fish

by Marianne Moore
 wade
through black jade.
 Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
 adjusting the ash-heaps;
 opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
 The barnacles which encrust the side
 of the wave, cannot hide
 there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
 glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
 into the crevices—
 in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
 of bodies. The water drives a wedge
...Read more of this...

Security

by Robert William Service
 There once was a limpet puffed with pride
Who said to the ribald sea:
"It isn't I who cling to the rock,
It's the rock that clings to me;
It's the silly old rock who hugs me tight,
Because he loves me so;
And though I struggle with all my might,
He will not let me go."

Then said the sea, who hates the rock
That defies him...Read more of this...

Greedy Richard

by Jane Taylor
 "I think I want some pies this morning," 
Said Dick, stretching himself and yawning; 
So down he threw his slate and books,
And saunter'd to the pastry-cook's. 

And there he cast his greedy eyes
Round on the jellies and the pies,
So to select, with anxious care,
The very nicest that was there. 

At last the point was thus decided:
As his opinion was...Read more of this...

The Sharks Parlor

by James Dickey
 Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island 
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first 
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night 
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling 
Under the bedroom floor. In...Read more of this...

Over The Parapet

by Robert William Service
 All day long when the shells sail over
 I stand at the sandbags and take my chance;
But at night, at night I'm a reckless rover,
 And over the parapet gleams Romance.
Romance! Romance! How I've dreamed it, writing
 Dreary old records of money and mart,
Me with my head chuckful of fighting
 And the blood of vikings to thrill my heart.

But...Read more of this...

Willie Metcalf

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
Or sometimes in a stall.
I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
Without getting kicked -- we knew each other.
On spring...Read more of this...

Bessies Boil

by Robert William Service
 Says I to my Missis: "Ba goom, lass! you've something I see, on your mind."
Says she: "You are right, Sam, I've something. It 'appens it's on me be'ind.
A Boil as 'ud make Job jealous. It 'urts me no end when I sit."
Says I: "Go to 'ospittel, Missis. They might 'ave to coot it a bit."
Says she: "I just 'ate...Read more of this...

The Smoking Frog

by Robert William Service
 Three men I saw beside a bar,
Regarding o'er their bottle,
A frog who smoked a rank cigar
They'd jammed within its throttle.

A Pasha frog it must have been
So big it as and bloated;
And from its lips the nicotine
In graceful festoon floated.

And while the trio jeered and joked,
As if it quite enjoyed it,
Impassively it smoked and smoked,
(It could now well avoid it).

A...Read more of this...

The Onion Memory

by Craig Raine
 Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears--
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust--the old flag...Read more of this...

Nature that Washed Her Hands in Milk

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Nature, that washed her hands in milk, 
And had forgot to dry them, 
Instead of earth took snow and silk, 
At love's request to try them, 
If she a mistress could compose 
To please love's fancy out of those.

Her eyes he would should be of light, 
A violet breath, and lips of jelly; 
Her hair not black, nor overbright,...Read more of this...

The Odyssey Of Erbert Iggins

by Robert William Service
 Me and Ed and a stretcher
 Out on the nootral ground.
(If there's one dead corpse, I'll betcher
 There's a 'undred smellin' around.)
Me and Eddie O'Brian,
 Both of the R. A. M. C.
"It'as a 'ell of a night
For a soul to take flight,"
 As Eddie remarks to me.
Me and Ed crawlin' 'omeward,
 Thinkin' our job is done,
When sudden and clear,
Wot...Read more of this...

Funk

by Robert William Service
 When your marrer bone seems 'oller,
And you're glad you ain't no taller,
 And you're all a-shakin' like you 'ad the chills;
When your skin creeps like a pullet's,
And you're duckin' all the bullets,
 And you're green as gorgonzola round the gills;
When your legs seem made of jelly,
And you're squeamish in the belly,
 And you want to turn about and do...Read more of this...

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok

by Amy Lowell
 But why did I kill him? Why? Why?
In the small, gilded room, near the stair?
My ears rack and throb with his cry,
And his eyes goggle under his hair,
As my fingers sink into the fair
White skin of his throat. It was I!
I killed him! My God! Don't you hear?
I shook him until his red tongue
Hung flapping out through the black,...Read more of this...

The Captain of the Push

by Henry Lawson
 As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush, 
From a slum in Jones's Alley sloped the Captain of the Push; 
And he scowled towards the North, and he scowled towards the South, 
As he hooked his little finger in the corners of his mouth. 
Then his whistle, loud and shrill, woke the echoes of the...Read more of this...

Colors Passing Through Us

by Marge Piercy
 Purple as tulips in May, mauve 
into lush velvet, purple 
as the stain blackberries leave 
on the lips, on the hands, 
the purple of ripe grapes 
sunlit and warm as flesh. 
Every day I will give you a color, 
like a new flower in a bud vase 
on your desk. Every day 
I will paint you, as women 
color...Read more of this...

The Death Of Santa Claus

by Charles Webb
 He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,

he's let his Blue Cross lapse,
blood tests make him faint,
hospital gown always flap

open, waiting rooms upset
his stomach, and it's only
indigestion anyway, he thinks,

until, feeding the reindeer,
he feels as if a monster fist
has grabbed his heart and won't

stop squeezing. He can't
breathe, and the beautiful white
world he...Read more of this...

The Sightseers

by Paul Muldoon
 My father and mother, my brother and sister
and I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle,
had set out that Sunday afternoon in July
in his broken-down Ford

not to visit some graveyard—one died of shingles,
one of fever, another's knees turned to jelly—
but the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley,
the first in mid-Ulster.

Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials
had stopped him one night...Read more of this...

The Double Image

by Anne Sexton
 1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never...Read more of this...

Account Of A Visit From St. Nicholas

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, 
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,

And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my...Read more of this...

Irony

by Amy Lowell
 An arid daylight shines along the beach
Dried to a grey monotony of tone,
And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon
The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach
Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach
The skeletons of fishes, every bone
Polished and stark, like traceries of stone,
The joints and knuckles hardened each to each.
And they are dead while waiting for the sea,
The moon-pursuing sea, to...Read more of this...

Berck-Plage

by Sylvia Plath
(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The...Read more of this...

Going Home

by Robert William Service
 I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty -- ain't I glad to 'ave the chance!
I'm loaded up wiv fightin', and I've 'ad my fill o' France;
I'm feelin' so excited-like, I want to sing and dance,
 For I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'.

I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty: can you wonder as I'm gay?
I've got a wound I wouldn't sell for...Read more of this...

A Visit From St. Nicholas

by Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled...Read more of this...

I Remember

by Anne Sexton
 By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color--no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

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