Famous Limped Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Ungrateful Garden

by Carolyn Kizer
 Midas watched the golden crust
That formed over his steaming sores,
Hugged his agues, loved his lust,
But damned to hell the out-of-doors

Where blazing motes of sun impaled
The serrid roses, metal-bright.
"Those famous flowers," Midas wailed,
"Have scorched my retina with light."

This gift, he'd thought, would gild his joys,
Silt up the waters of his grief;
His lawns a wilderness of noise,
The heavy clang of leaf...Read more of this...

The Willow

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Who shall sing a simple ditty about the Willow, 
Dainty-fine and delicate as any bending spray 
That dandles high the dainty bird that flutters there to trill a 
Tremulously tender song of greeting to the May.

Bravest, too, of all the trees! -- none to match your daring,-- 
First of greens to greet the Spring and lead in leafy sheen;--...Read more of this...

Dulce Et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen
 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick,...Read more of this...

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling
 1919

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

Ne were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,...Read more of this...

Shadrach OLeary

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 O’Leary was a poet—for a while: 
He sang of many ladies frail and fair, 
The rolling glory of their golden hair, 
And emperors extinguished with a smile. 
They foiled his years with many an ancient wile,
And if they limped, O’Leary didn’t care: 
He turned them loose and had them everywhere, 
Undoing saints and senates with their guile. 

But this...Read more of this...

The Bough of Nonsense

by Robert Graves
 AN IDYLL


Back from the Somme two Fusiliers 
Limped painfully home; the elder said, 
S. “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years 
This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.” 
R. “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now,
Through these great oaks and see the famous bough 

”Where once a nonsense built her nest 
With skulls and flowers and all things...Read more of this...

The Last Parade

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 With never a sound of trumpet, 
With never a flag displayed, 
The last of the old campaigners 
Lined up for the last parade. 

Weary they were and battered, 
Shoeless, and knocked about; 
From under their ragged forelocks 
Their hungry eyes looked out. 

And they watched as the old commander 
Read out to the cheering men 
The Nation's thanks, and...Read more of this...

Wolf Knife

by Donald Hall
 In the mid August, in the second year
of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter
almost upon us, Kantiuk and I
attempted to dash the sledge
along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics
of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew,
and we turned back, and we struggled slowly
in snow, lest we depart land and venture onto ice
from which a sudden...Read more of this...

To Leonardo

by Mary Darby Robinson
 "Yes, LAURA, yes, pure as the virgin snow's 
"That on the bosom of the whirlwind move,,
"For thee my faithful endless passion glows." 

- LEONARDO TO LAURA.


COLD blows the wind upon the mountain's brow;
In murmuring cadence wave the leafless woods;
The feath'ry tribe mope on the frozen bough,
And icy fetters hold the silent floods;
But endless spring the POET'S breast shall prove,
Whose...Read more of this...

Ephemera

by William Butler Yeats
 'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.'
 And then She:
'Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first...Read more of this...

Blessing The Cornfields

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin,
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields!
Buried was the bloody hatchet,
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten.
There was peace among the nations;
Unmolested roved the hunters,
Built the birch canoe for sailing,
Caught the...Read more of this...

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