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Famous Jostle Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...e thought (or not)
Of that spectre behind the curtain.

But we haven’t much time to repine or whine,
Or to wound or jostle each other;
And the hour for us each is to-day, I say,
If we mean to assist a brother.
And there is no pleasure that earth gives birth,
But the worry it brings is double;
And all that repays for the strife of life,
Is helping some soul in trouble.

I tell you, if I could go back the track
To my life’s morning hour,
I would not set forth, seeki...Read more of this...



by Levy, Amy
...rinks;
In troop the guests; each man with appetite
Keen-whetted with expectance.
In they troop,
Struggle for seats, jostle and push and seize.
What's this? what's this? There are not seats for all!
Some men must stand without the gates; and some
Must linger by the table, ill-supplied
With broken meats. One man gets meat for two,
The while another hungers. If I stand
Without the portals, seeing others eat
Where I had thought to satiate the pangs
Of mine own hun...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...Canterbury bell;
They cast their shadows for an instant
Over a bed of pansies,
Catch against the spurs of a columbine,
Jostle the quietness from a cluster of monk's-hood.
Pat! Pat! behind them come the little criss-cross shoes,
And the blue and pink sashes stream out in flappings of colour.
Stella sings:
"Hoop, hoop,
Roll along,
Faster bowl along,
Hoop.
Slow, to the turning,
Now go! -- Go!
Quick!
Here's the stick.
Rat-a-tap-tap it,
Pat it, flap it.
Fly li...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...wire. 
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed 
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, 
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. 
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, 
They leave their trenches, going over the top, 
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, 
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, 
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!...Read more of this...

by Ammons, A R
...gods could fly in from

nebulae unknown: but I'm only me: I have 4
interests--money, poetry, sex, death: I guess

I can jostle those. . . ....Read more of this...



by Hecht, Anthony
...o return at once to deep oblivion.
When youth has gone, and the baseless dreams of youth,
What misery does not then jostle man's elbow,
Join him as a companion, share his bread?
Betrayal, envy, calumny and bloodshed
Move in on him, and finally Old Age--
Infirm, despised Old Age--joins in his ruin,
The crowning taunt of his indignities.

So is it with that man, not just with me.
He seems like a frail jetty facing North
Whose pilings the waves batter from all quarte...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...The winter sun, golden and tired, 
settles on the irregular army 
of bottles. Outside the trucks 
jostle toward the open road, 
outside it's Saturday afternoon, 
and young women in black pass by 
arm in arm. This bar 
is the house of silence, and we drink 
to silence without raising our voices 
in the old way. We drink to doors 
that don't open, to the four walls 
that dose their eyes, hands that run, 
fingers that count change, toes 
that add up...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods....Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...d mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel. 


Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic: 
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport; 


Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, 
and courtezans like powdered moths, 
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths 
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads; 


And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes 
In corduroys and Spanish cap...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...South Winds jostle them --
Bumblebees come --
Hover -- hesitate --
Drink, and are gone --

Butterflies pause
On their passage Cashmere --
I -- softly plucking,
Present them here!...Read more of this...

by Levy, Amy
...beat,
Someone strives with the Presence grey;
Ah, is it victory or defeat?

The hurrying people go their way,
Pause and jostle and pass and greet;
For life, for death, are they treading, say
Straw in the street?...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...thread at a blow.
The old man smiled, "It has no sheath,
'Twas a little careless to have it beneath
My cloak, for a jostle to my arm
Would have resulted in serious harm.
But it was so fine, I could not wait,
So I brought it with me despite its state."
"An amateur of arms," I thought,
"Bringing home a prize which he has bought."
"You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?"
"Not in the way which you infer.
I need them in business, that is all."
And he po...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...rce in the infinite sky
where we dwell. For in the spring-
time flowers come in crowds, and the 
busy wings of bees jostle each other.
Our little heaven, where dwell only 
we two immortals, is too absurdly
narrow....Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...boughs cry . . .

And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain,
To mingle among the crowds again,
To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street;
And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream,
With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet.

And one, from his high bright window looking down
On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,
Hearing a sea-like murmur rise,
Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower,
And drown in waves of shou...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...boughs cry . . .

And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain,
To mingle among the crowds again,
To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street;
And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream,
With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet.

And one, from his high bright window looking down
On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,
Hearing a sea-like murmur rise,
Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower,
And drown in waves of shou...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...nd clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.

Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting
To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry,
We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow.
She blinks in the sun, and then steps faintly downward.
We whirl her away, we shout, we spin, we flow.

Where have you been, old lady? We know your secret!—
Voices jangle about her, jeers, and laughter. . . .
She ...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...

Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep,
And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain.
But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain;
Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still.
And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees,
Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please
For to spare him!" and Ham...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...lied the apostle; 
'What George? what Third?' 'The king of England,' said 
The angel. 'Well, he won't find kings to jostle 
Him on his way; but does he wear his head? 
Because the last we saw here had a tussle, 
And ne'er would have got into heaven's good graces, 
Had he not flung his head in all our faces. 

XIX 

'He was, if I remember, king of France; 
That head of his, which could not keep a crown 
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance 
A claim to those of ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
..., 
 With rhymes inflated—stanzas, too, 
 That panted, moving lazily, 
 And heavy Alexandrine lines 
 That seemed to jostle bodily, 
 Like children full of play designs 
 That spring at once from schoolroom's form. 
 Instead of all this angry storm, 
 Another might have thanked you well 
 For saving prey from that grim cell, 
 That hollowed den 'neath journals great, 
 Where editors who poets flout 
 With their demoniac laughter shout. 
 And I have scolded you! Wh...Read more of this...

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