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Famous Marrow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sexton, Anne
...In my dream, 
drilling into the marrow 
of my entire bone, 
my real dream, 
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill 
searching for a street sign -- 
namely MERCY STREET. 
Not there. 

I try the Back Bay. 
Not there. 
Not there. 
And yet I know the number. 
45 Mercy Street. 
I know the stained-glass window 
of the foyer, 
the three flights of the house 
with its parq...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...of those which it admire;
Therewith thou pointest thy son's poison'd arrow,
That wounds the life, and wastes the inmost marrow.

How vainly then do idle wits invent,
That beauty is nought else but mixture made
Of colours fair, and goodly temp'rament
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And pass away, like to a summer's shade;
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measur'd, with meet disposition.

Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,
That ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...s
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains....Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...oat, 
Who answer an insult with a note, 
Whose way is the easy way in all, 
And, seeing that polished arms appal 
Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, 
Would tell you menace does not exist? 
Are these, in the world's great parliament, 
The men you would choose to represent 
Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, 
And the virtues your fathers dignified? 
Oh, bury them deeper than the sea 
In universal obloquy; 
Forget the ground where they lie, or write 
For epitaph: "Too pro...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray -- for word is out
And prayer comes round again --
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...es. 

(Old, commonplace, and rusty saws, 
The rich, the gay, the supercilious, smiled at long,
Now, piercing to the marrow in my bones, 
Fused with each drop my heart’s blood jets, 
Swim in ineffable meaning.) 

Lo, Soul, the sphere requireth, portioneth, 
To each his share, his measure,
The moderate to the moderate, the ample to the ample. 

Lo, Soul, see’st thou not, plain as the sun, 
The only real wealth of wealth in generosity, 
The only life of life in goodn...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...it began as a secret desire (an itch
in the marrow too vague to get through
to the bone) an idea that never could
make it as flesh - there wasn't a part of me
sane i could tell that would have spared
it a breath to get started
   so i slept

one midday i woke up with a bang - light
was bashing in through the windows
and suddenly out of my pores
sprang this fully-fledged practical paeon
this triumphant...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...he swollen billow-ridge, and drave
Large froth before me, while there yet remain'd
Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drain'd.

 "Young lover, I must weep--such hellish spite
With dry cheek who can tell? While thus my might
Proving upon this element, dismay'd,
Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid;
I look'd--'twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!
O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?
Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,
But thou must nip this tender ...Read more of this...

by Harjo, Joy
...broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead

and made songs of the blood, the marrow....Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...vow
to let each poet speak uncluttered
from establishment's traditions
and conditions where passions rippling
from the marrow can choose a space
to innocent themselves and long-held
tastes for carlos williams gurney
poems to siva (to name a few)

can surface in a side-attempt 
to show unexpected lineage from
the source to present patterns
of the poet - but at the core
of every poem read and comment made
it's not the poem or the poet
being sifted to the seed but
poetry itself...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..., 
And the pike, the Maskenozha, 
Caught and cooked by old Nokomis; 
Then on pemican they feasted, 
Pemican and buffalo marrow, 
Haunch of deer and hump of bison, 
Yellow cakes of the Mondamin, 
And the wild rice of the river.
But the gracious Hiawatha, 
And the lovely Laughing Water, 
And the careful old Nokomis, 
Tasted not the food before them, 
Only waited on the others
Only served their guests in silence.
And when all the guests had finished, 
Old Nokomis, brisk ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ce of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, 
The thin red jellies within you, or within me—the bones, and the marrow in the bones, 
The exquisite realization of health; 
O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul, 
O I say now these are the Soul!...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...grow for His joy.

 There he might wander bare
With the spirits of the horseshoe bay
 Or the stars' seashore dead,
Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales
 And wishbones of wild geese,
With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost,
 And every soul His priest,
Gulled and chanter in young Heaven's fold
 Be at cloud quaking peace,

 But dark is a long way.
He, on the earth of the night, alone
 With all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow
 The bones out of t...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...ht,
3.85 That yet my bed in darkness is not made,
3.86 And I in black oblivion's den long laid.
3.87 Of Marrow full my bones, of Milk my breasts,
3.88 Ceas'd by the gripes of Serjeant Death's Arrests:
3.89 Thus I have said, and what I've said you see,
3.90 Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.

Middle Age. 


4.1 Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I've seen,
4.2 And now am grown more staid that have been green,
4.3 What th...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ve a mantle royally y-bore.

A COOK they hadde with them for the nones*, *occasion
To boil the chickens and the marrow bones,
And powder merchant tart and galingale.
Well could he know a draught of London ale.
He could roast, and stew, and broil, and fry,
Make mortrewes, and well bake a pie.
But great harm was it, as it thoughte me,
That, on his shin a mormal* hadde he. *ulcer
For blanc manger, that made he with the best 

A SHIPMAN was there, *won...Read more of this...

by Kizer, Carolyn
...My mother-- preferring the strange to the tame:
Dove-note, bone marrow, deer dung,
Frog's belly distended with finny young,
Leaf-mould wilderness, hare-bell, toadstool,
Odd, small snakes loving through the leaves,
Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all
Wild and natural -flashed out her instinctive love,
and quick, she
Picked up the fluttering. bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,
And held the little horror to t...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...up against our breathing salt 
Of blown dried dung, till the taste eat like fires 
Of a wild vinegar into our sheathèd marrows; 
And a sudden decay thicken'd all our bloods 
As rotten leaves in fall will baulk a stream; 
Then my kill'd life the muncht food of jackals. -- 
The wind of vision died in my brain; and lo, 
The jangling of the caravan's long gait 
Was small as the luting of a breeze in grass 
Upon my ears. Into the waiting thirst 
Camels and merchants all w...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise she...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin ha...Read more of this...

by Wylie, Elinor
...rample bright persimmons, while you kill 
Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.

4

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones 
There's something in this richness that I hate. 
I love the look, austere, immaculate, 
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. 
There's something in my very blood that owns 
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, 
A thread of water, churned to milky spate 
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love th...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs