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Famous Medicine Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bradstreet, Anne
...land. 

23 And thus, alas, your state you much deplore
24 In general terms, but will not say wherefore.
25 What Medicine shall I seek to cure this woe,
26 If th' wound's so dangerous, I may not know?
27 But you, perhaps, would have me guess it out.
28 What, hath some Hengist like that Saxon stout
29 By fraud and force usurp'd thy flow'ring crown,
30 Or by tempestuous Wars thy fields trod down?
31 Or hath Canutus, that brave valiant Dane,
32 The regal peaceful Scep...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...ooks on the bright side of everything, 
Including me. He thinks I'll be all right 
With doctoring. But it's not medicine-- 
Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so-- 
It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- 
From cooking meals for hungry hired men 
And washing dishes after them--from doing 
Things over and over that just won't stay done. 
By good rights I ought not to have so much 
Put on me, but there seems no other way. 
Len says one steady pull more...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...way,
Him shall not dread in soule to be lame;
Now, Queen of comfort! since thou art the same
To whom I seeke for my medicine,
Let not my foe no more my wound entame;*                 *injure, molest
My heal into thy hand all I resign.

                               L.

Lady, thy sorrow can I not portray
Under that cross, nor his grievous penance;
But, for your bothe's pain, I you do pray,
Let not our *aller foe* make his boastance,        *the foe of us ...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...
 my days are all the same
 like the six sides of a wood cube.
My head is full of sharp smells
 like the shelf of a medicine cabinet.


20 March

I admire those Flemish painters:
is it easy to give the air of a naked goddess
 to the plump ladies
of milk and sausage merchants?
But
 even if you wear silk panties,
cow + silk panties = cow.

Last night
 a window 
 was left open.
The naked Flemish goddesses caught cold.
All day
today,
 turning their bare
mounta...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...g went the Wawonaissa,
"Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
He is dead, the sweet musician!
He the sweetest of all singers!"
Then the Medicine-men, the Medas,
The magicians, the Wabenos,
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
Came to visit Hiawatha;
Built a Sacred Lodge beside him,
To appease him, to console him,
Walked in silent, grave procession,
Bearing each a pouch of healing,
Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter,
Filled with magic roots and simples,
Filled with very potent medicines.
When he...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...d with poxied welts, 
head pains fading back of the neck, right eyebrow cheek 
mouth paralyzed--from taking the wrong medicine, sweated 
too much in the forehead helpless, covered my rage from 
gorge to prostate with grinding jaw and tightening anus 
not released the weeping scream of horror at robot Mayaguez 
World self ton billions metal grief unloaded 
Pnom Penh to Nakon Thanom, Santiago & Tehran. 
Fresh warm breeze in the window, day's release 
>from pain, ca...Read more of this...

by Ali, Muhammad
...il.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man,
I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali....Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...?
And were they not mere earthly struggles,
That raised up Murray, say, and Ruggles?
Did heaven send down, our pains to medicine,
That old simplicity of Edson,
Or by election pick out from us
That Marshfield blunderer, Nat. Ray Thomas;
Or had it any hand in serving
A Loring, Pepperell, Browne or Irving?


"Yet we've some saints, the very thing,
To pit against the best you'll bring;
For can the strongest fancy paint,
Than Hutchinson, a greater saint?
Was there a parson use...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...age
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You
Be the medicine....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...pts to the San Francisco Chronicle

thrown all over the bed and the children's toothbrushes were

still in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

 Behind the place was an old outhouse and to get down to it,

you had to follow the path down past some apple trees and a

patch of strange plants that we thought were either a good

spice that would certainly enhance our cooking or the plants

were deadly nightshade that would cause our cooking to be

less.

 We carried the garbag...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...His studies had been interrupted by the

Depression and two wars. He told me that he would give up

the practice of medicine if it became socialized in America.

 "I've never turned away a patient in my life, and I've

never known another doctor who has. Last year I wrote off

six thousand dollars worth of bad debts, " he said.

 I was going to say that a sick person should never under

any conditions be abad debt, but I decided to forget it. Noth-

ing wa...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise a...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...said the kindly wife to comfort him,
`You raised your arm, you tumbled down and broke
The glass with little Margaret's medicine it it;
And, breaking that, you made and broke your dream:
A trifle makes a dream, a trifle breaks.' 

`No trifle,' groan'd the husband; `yesterday
I met him suddenly in the street, and ask'd
That which I ask'd the woman in my dream.
Like her, he shook his head. "Show me the books!"
He dodged me with a long and loose account.
"The boo...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...the jets fly overhead
a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation
of various cold medicine commercial sets
(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).

I know these recurring news articles are clues,
flaws in the design though I haven't figured out
how to string them together yet,
but I've begun to notice that the same people
are dying over and over again,
for instance Minnie Pearl
who died this year
for the fourth time in fo...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...th Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this **** flood foul'd lair?
Millions of c...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...flower
That clung with pain and stung with power,
Yea, nettled me, body and mind.'
`'Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine;
No need nor seed of it here Above;
In dreams of hate true loves begin.'
`True,' quoth Love.

"`Now strange,' quoth Sense, and `Strange,' quoth Mind,
`We saw it, and yet 'tis hard to find,
-- But we saw it,' quoth Sense and Mind.
Stretched on the ground, beautiful-crowned
Of the piteous willow that wreathed above,
`But I cannot find wher...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e couch, 
Or through the parted silks the tender face 
Peeped, shining in upon the wounded man 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain; nor seemed it strange that soon 
He rose up whole, and those fair charities 
Joined at her side; nor stranger seemed that hears 
So gentle, so employed, should close in love, 
Than when two dewdrops on the petals shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper d...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...falling around
As it fell when the world began:
Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground,
Or the cloak of a medicine man.
A deep-crumpled gossamer web,
Fringed with the fangs of a snake.
The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs.
It shimmers on clay-hill and lake,
With the gleam of great bubbles of blood,
Or coiled like a rainbow shell....
I feast on the stem of the Leaf as I march.
I am burning with Heaven and Hell.


II...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...winds--
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
Of glorious dreams--or, if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight--
She in her crystal phials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear phials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.

Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange d...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ear before me, 
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms,
 clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; 
I whisper with my lips close to your ear, 
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. 

O I have been dilatory and dumb; 
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have b...Read more of this...

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