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Famous Pig Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Masefield, John
...seas around us and the pale moon overhead, 
And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red. 

Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played, 
All have since been put a stop to by the naughty Board of Trade; 
The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest, 
A little south the sunset in the islands of the Blest....Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...
to the widows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job until the windows
pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
with light, her foolish words transformed
into song, I would like to arm each one
with a quiver of arrows so that they might
rush like w...Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...on a par
 with the bayonet;
and Stalin
 to deliver his Politbureau
reports
 about verse in the making
as he would about pig iron
 and the smelting of steel.
“That’s how it is,
 the way it goes …
 We’ve attained
the topmost level,
 climbing from the workers’ bunks:
in the Union
 of Republics
 the understanding of verse
now tops
 the prewar norm …”


Transcribed: by Mitch Abidor....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...
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 possible; 
And as this cabin gets upholstery, 
That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw. 

But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast 
I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes 


Enumerated so complacently, 
On the mere ground that you forsooth can find 
In this particular life I choose ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...mathematical equality;

And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme;

Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual fire.

III

The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its atrowy shaft upon...Read more of this...



by Masefield, John
...a salt-caked smoke stack, 
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, 
With a cargo of Tyne coal, 
Road-rails, pig-lead, 
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...urnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at
 last—the
 rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean-shaped T-rail for railroads;

Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and
 factories;
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door-lintels—the
 mallet,
 the
 tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, 
Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...r to walk again.

That was the winter
that my mother died,
half mad on morphine,
blown up, at last,
like a pregnant pig.
I was her dreamy evil eye.
In fact,
I carried a knife in my pocketbook—
my husband's good L. L. Bean hunting knife.
I wasn't sure if I should slash a tire
or scrape the guts out of some dream.

You taught me
to believe in dreams;
thus I was the dredger.
I held them like an old woman with arthritic fingers,
carefully straining...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at th...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...and Martin Johnson 
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.Read more of this...

by Lux, Thomas
...ry,
family heirlooms, or were status symbols
bought with a piece of the first paycheck
from a sweatshop,
which beat the pig farm in Bohemia,
handed down from my grandparents
to my parents
to be someday mine,
then my child's?
They were beautiful
and, if I never ate one,
it was because I knew it might be missed
or because I knew it would not be replaced
and because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...w, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the
 mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of
 these, be
 put on a perfect equality with man and woman!
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the
 most
 filthy of diseases! 
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools! 
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women! and let women amo...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...y is a liar; this is a free country, like hell.”
One: “I got a girl, a peach; we save up and go on a farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves.”
And the others were roughneck singers a long ways from home.
Look for them back of a steel vault door.

They laugh at the cost.
They lift the birdmen into the blue.
It is steel a motor sings and zooms.

In the subway plugs and drums,
In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel,
Under dynamo shafts...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...e the Devil combs his lice. 
He turn’d the devils into swine 
That He might tempt the Jews to dine; 
Since which, a pig has got a look 
That for a Jew may be mistook. 
“Obey your parents.”—What says He? 
“Woman, what have I to do with thee? 
No earthly parents I confess: 
I am doing my Father’s business.” 
He scorn’d Earth’s parents, scorn’d Earth’s God, 
And mock’d the one and the other’s rod; 
His seventy Disciples sent 
Against Religion and Government— 
The...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...e stood in a shadowy Court,
 Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
 On the charge of deserting its sty.

The Witnesses proved, without error or flaw,
 That the sty was deserted when found:
And the Judge kept explaining the state of the law
 In a soft under-current of sound.

The indictment had never been clearly expressed,
 And it seemed that the Snark had begun,
And had spoken three hours, before any one guesse...Read more of this...

by Lear, Edward
...l, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
  And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
  And no end of Stilton Cheese.
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

And in twenty years they all came back...Read more of this...

by Lear, Edward
...o for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
  To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
          His nose,
          His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.   

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
  Your ring?"  Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
  By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and s...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...all suspense, 
And silence gagg'd the audience. 
He hid his head behind his wig, 
With with such truth took off* a Pig, [imitated] 
All swore 'twas serious, and no joke, 
For doubtless underneath his cloak, 
He had conceal'd some grunting elf, 
Or was a real hog himself. 
A search was made, no pig was found-- 
With thund'ring claps the seats resound, 
And pit and box and galleries roar, 
With--"O rare! bravo!" and "Encore!" 
Old Roger Grouse, a country clown, 
Who ye...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...r>
 The flies are behind the plaster
 Like the lost score of a jig.
 Sparrows are in the ivy-clump
 Like money in a pig. 

Such a frost
 The flimsy moon
 Has lost her wits. 

 A star falls. 

The sweating farmers
 Turn in their sleep
 Like oxen on spits....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...ield. One of the pheasants didn't

even bother to fly. He ran across the field in front of us like a feathered

pig. When we got back to my friend's house the ceremony began. To him

the making of Kool-Aid was a romance and a ceremony. It had to be

performed in an exact manner and with dignity.

 First he got a gallon jar and we went around to the side of the

house where the water spigot thrust itself out of the ground like the finger

of a saint, su...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things