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Famous Lash Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Crowley, Aleister
...u would now be here!

But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed,
Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed,
Lash dogs to kennel, trample snakes, put bit
In the mule-mouths that have such need of it,
Until the world there's so much to forgive in
Becomes a little possible to live in.

God alone knows if battle or surrender
Be the true courage; either has its splendour. 
But since we chose the first, God aid the right,
And damn me if I fail you in the fight!
...Read more of this...



by Wilmot, John
...my Muse were fitter for this part,
For I profess I can be very smart
On Wit, which I abhor with all my heart;
I long to lash it in some sharp essay,
But your grand indiscretion bids me stay,
And turns my tide of ink another way.
What rage Torments in your degenerate mind,
To make you rail at reason, and mankind
Blessed glorious man! To whom alone kind heaven
An everlasting soul hath freely given;
Whom his great maker took such care to make,
That from himself he did the im...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...
Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
Hear how Timotheus' vary'd Lays surprize,
And bid Alternate Passions fal...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...must lead beasts' lives! 
Suppose I own at once to tail and claws; 
The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed 
I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes 
To dock their stump and dress their haunches up. 
My business is not to remake myself, 
But make the absolute best of what God made. 
Or--our first simile--though you prove me doomed 
To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, 
The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive 
To make what use of each were poss...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The beech dreams balm, as a dr...Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...
We learn to know the Planks—
That answer to Our feet—
So miserable a sound—at first—
Nor ever now—so sweet—

As plashing in the Pools—
When Memory was a Boy—
But a Demurer Circuit—
A Geometric Joy—

The Posture of the Key
That interrupt the Day
To Our Endeavor—Not so real
The Cheek of Liberty—

As this Phantasm Steel—
Whose features—Day and Night—
Are present to us—as Our Own—
And as escapeless—quite—

The narrow Round—the Stint—
The slow exchange of Ho...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...e cleaved his way
Right onward, with his face set toward the heights,
Nor feared to face the foeman's dread array--
The lash of scorn, the sting of petty spites.
He dared the lightning in the lightning's track,
And answered thunder with his thunder back.

When men maligned him and their torrent wrath
In furious imprecations o'er him broke,
He kept his counsel as he kept his path;
'Twas for his race, not for himself, he spoke.
He knew the import of his Master's cal...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...for Isabel:
She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb,
And all around each eye's sepulchral cell
Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam
With tears, as chilly as a dripping well,
She drench'd away:--and still she comb'd, and kept
Sighing all day--and still she kiss'd, and wept.

LII.
Then in a silken scarf,--sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,--
She wrapp'...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...to the place, though not
That hers might be the winning lot.
Then through my brain the thought did pass 
Even as a flash of lightning there,
That there was something in her air
Which would not doom me to despair; 
And on the thought my words broke forth,
All incoherent as they were -
Their eloquence was little worth,
But yet she listened - 'tis enough -
Who listens once will listen twice;
Her heart, be sure, is not of ice, 
And one refusal no rebuff.

VII

I loved, an...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...s, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows; 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 
And down his querulous challenge sent. 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 
The gray day darkened into night, 
A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dan...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...st steed,
With slackened bit and hoof of speed?
Beneath the clattering iron's sound
The caverned echoes wake around 
In lash for lash, and bound for bound;
The foam that streaks the courser's side
Seems gathered from the ocean-tide:
Though weary waves are sunk to rest,
There's none within his rider's breast;
And though tomorrow's tempest lower,
'Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour!
I know thee not, I loathe thy race,
But in thy lineaments I trace
What time shall strengthe...Read more of this...

by Killigrew, Anne
...shame then rouse thy self as from a Sleep, 
The long neglected Reins let Reason keep, 

The Charret mount, and use both Lash and Bit, 
Nobly resolve, and thou wilt firmly fit:
Fierce Anger, boggling Fear, Pride prauncing still, 
Bounds-hating Hope, Desire which nought can fill, 
Are stubborn all, but thou may'st give them Law; 
Th'are hard-Mouth'd Horses, bu they well can draw. 
Lash on, and the well-govern'd Charret drive, 
Till thou a Victor at the Goal arrive, 
Where t...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...my lips 
I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise 
Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships; 
The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips; 
Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight; 
The hedges are all red with haws and hips, 
The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night. 

October 

My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves, 
Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed; 
I do no boast the harvesting of sheaves, 
O'er orchards and o'er vineyards...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab'...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...y not their hearts, as I well try: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Ah! how they scourge me! yet my tenderness
Doubles each lash: and yet their bitterness
Winds up my grief to a mysteriousness.
Was ever grief like mine? 

They buffet me, and box me as they list, 
Who grasp the earth and heaven with my fist, 
And never yet, whom I would punish, miss'd: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Behold, they spit on me in scornful wise, 
Who by my spittle gave the blind man eyes, 
Leaving hi...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...
that face thick with powder, the warts, the stone lids
like a dinosaur caked with primordial ooze
by the lightning of flashbulbs sinking in wealth,
that I said: "Shabine, this is ****, understand!"
But he get somebody to kick my crutch out his office
like I was some artist! That ***** was so grand,
couldn't get off his high horse and kick me himself.
I have seen things that would make a slave sick
in this Trinidad, the Limers' Republic.

I couldn't shake the sea nois...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...nt fundamental law
Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw.
There with the force of living, hostile hills
Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills,
With greater din contended fierce majestic wills
Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife
For love of what my heart despised, for life
That unto me at dawn was now a prayer
For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear
For day again; for this, these groans
From tangled flesh and interlocked bones.
And no ...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...paringly
That I might eat again, and met thy sneers
With deprecations, and thy blows with tears,—
Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
As if spent passion were a holiday!
And now I go. Nor threat, nor easy vow
Of tardy kindness can avail thee now
With me, whence fear and faith alike are flown;
Lonely I came, and I depart alone,
And know not where nor unto whom I go;
But that thou canst not follow me I know."

Thus I to Life, and ceased; but through my brain...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ght,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.

The water flashed,--like sunlight, by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to heaven;
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven,
The Lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro;
Beneath, the billows, having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.

Or, when the...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...Wisdom's guise,
All fortitude of mind supplies:
For how can stony bowels melt
In those who never pity felt?
When we are lashed, they kiss the rod,
Resigning to the will of God.

The fools, my juniors by a year,
Are tortured with suspense and fear:
Who wisely thought my age a screen
When death approached, to stand between: - 
The screen removed, their hearts are trembling;
They mourn for me without dissembling.

My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learne...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs