Famous Jumping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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185. The Humble Petition of Bruar Water

by Robert Burns
 MY lord, I know your noble ear
 Woe ne’er assails in vain;
Embolden’d thus, I beg you’ll hear
 Your humble slave complain,
How saucy Phoebus’ scorching beams,
 In flaming summer-pride,
Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,
 And drink my crystal tide. 1


The lightly-jumping, glowrin’ trouts,
 That thro’ my waters play,
If, in their random, wanton spouts,
 They near the margin stray;
If, hapless chance! they...Read more of this...

Rondeau

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and welth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me....Read more of this...

Pauls Wife

by Robert Frost
 To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
"How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife,
And hated to be twitted on the subject;
Others because he'd come within a day
Or so of having one, and then been Jilted;
Others because he'd had one once, a good one,
Who'd...Read more of this...

Sleep

by John Gould Fletcher
 she was a short one
getting fat and she had once been
beautiful and
she drank the wine
she drank the wine in bed and
talked and screamed and cursed at
me
and i told her 
please, I need some
sleep. 
-sleep? sleep? ya son of a
*****, ya never sleep, ya
don't need any
sleep! 
I buried her one morning early
I carried her down the sides of the Hollywood...Read more of this...

Jenny Kiss'd Me

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and welth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me....Read more of this...

The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor

by Robert William Service
 Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall:
"We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew's Ball.
Yon squakin' saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes.
I'm sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes."
"Alas! it's true," said Tam MacCall. "The young folk of to-day
Are fox-trot mad and dinna ken a reel from Strathspey.
Now, what we want's a...Read more of this...

The Long Boat

by Stanley Kunitz
 When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with...Read more of this...

Somebody

by Charles Bukowski
 god I got the sad blue blues,
this woman sat there and she
said
are you really Charles



 Bukowski?




and I said

 forget that


I do not feel good
I've got the sad sads
all I want to do is
**** you
and she laughed
she thought I was being
clever
and O I just looked up her long slim legs of heaven
I saw her liver and her quivering intestine
I saw...Read more of this...

Noctambule

by Robert William Service
 Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Steamer Storm Queen

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye landsmen, all pray list to me,
While I relate a terrible tale of the sea,
Concerning the screw steamer "Storm Queen"
Which was wrecked, alas! a most heast-rending scene. 

From Sebastopol, with a cargo of grain, she was on her way,
And soon after entering the Bay of Biscay,
On the 21st of December, they experienced a fearful storm
Such as they never experienced...Read more of this...

Overflowing

by Du Fu
 River moon go person only few feet Lantern shine night approach third watch Sand head overnight egret join curl peaceful Boat stern jump fish splash noise The moon's reflected on the river a few feet away, A lantern shines in the night near the third watch. On the sand, egrets sleep, peacefully curled together, Behind the...Read more of this...

Remembrances

by John Clare
 Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I...Read more of this...

Old Pardon the Son of Reprieve

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 You never heard tell of the story? 
Well, now, I can hardly believe! 
Never heard of the honour and glory 
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve? 
But maybe you're only a Johnnie 
And don't know a horse from a hoe? 
Well, well, don't get angry, my sonny, 
But, really, a young un should know. 
They bred him out back...Read more of this...

The Death Baby

by Anne Sexton
 1. DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How...Read more of this...

When Gassy Thompson Struck It Rich

by Vachel Lindsay
 He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour 
Just to invent a fancy style
To spread the celebration paint
So it would show at least a mile.

Some things they did I will not tell.
They're not quite proper for a rhyme.
But I will say Yim Yonson Swede
Did sure invent a sunflower time.

One thing they did that I can tell 
And not offend...Read more of this...

Angels Of The Love Affair

by Anne Sexton
 "Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that...Read more of this...

The Cambaroora Star

by Henry Lawson
 So you're writing for a paper? Well, it's nothing very new 
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; 
You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, 
But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. 
Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, 
I myself -- you mayn't...Read more of this...

Robin Hood A Child

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 It was the pleasant season yet,
When the stones at cottage doors
Dry quickly, while the roads are wet,
After the silver showers.

The green leaves they looked greener still,
And the thrush, renewing his tune,
Shook a loud note from his gladsome bill
Into the bright blue noon.

Robin Hood's mother looked out, and said
"It were a shame and a sin
For fear of getting a wet...Read more of this...

I Remember Galileo

by Gerald Stern
 I remember Galileo describing the mind
as a piece of paper blown around by the wind,
and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree,
or jumping into the backseat of a car, 
and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;
but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing
Route 80 between the wheels of a giant...Read more of this...

Voyages

by Philip Levine
 Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart -- 
I walk by sedge and brown river rot 
to where the old lake boats went daily out. 
All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen 
in upon itself. Even the channel's 
grown over. Once we set sail here 
for Bob-Lo, the Brewery Isles, Cleveland. 
We would have gone as far...Read more of this...

The old pond

by Matsuo Basho
 Following are several translations
of the 'Old Pond' poem, which may be
the most famous of all haiku:

Furuike ya 
kawazu tobikomu 
mizu no oto

 -- Basho



Literal Translation

Fu-ru (old) i-ke (pond) ya, 
ka-wa-zu (frog) to-bi-ko-mu (jumping into) 
mi-zu (water) no o-to (sound)






 The old pond--
a frog jumps in,
 sound of water.


Translated by Robert Hass



Old pond...
a frog jumps in
water's sound.


Translated by William J....Read more of this...

Little Jumping Joan

by Mother Goose
    Here am I, little jumping Joan,
When nobody's with me
    I'm always alone....Read more of this...

Untitled

by Quincy Troupe
 in brussels, eye sat in the grand place cafe & heard
duke's place, played after salsa
between the old majestic architecture, jazz bouncing off
all that gilded gold history snoring complacently there
flowers all over the ground, up inside the sound
the old white band jammin the music
tight & heavy, like some food
pushin pedal to the metal
gettin all the way down
under the scaffolding surrounding
l'hotel...Read more of this...

Authors Prologue

by Dylan Thomas
 This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons,...Read more of this...

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

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