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Famous Pinch Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Service, Robert William
...orld-way,
 From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
With never a one to say me nay,
 And none to cramp my soul.
In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
 But God! let me be free;
For once I know in the long ago,
 They made a slave of me.

In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
 Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
 Nor seek to understand.
To enjoy is good enough for me;
 The gipsy of God am I;
Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
An...Read more of this...



by Jong, Erica
...in winter,
and looking for the Good Life we have made.

I see myself then: tense, solemn,
in high-heeled shoes that pinch,
not basking in the light of goals fulfilled,
but looking back to now and seeing
a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl
in a bare room, full of promise
and feeling envious.

Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward
into the future--as if, when the room
contains us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us w...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...rot juice,
brewer's yeast (high-potency--
concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez--
deadly in a pinch.And "Yes,
it's work; I want you to bear down,
but enjoy it
while you're doing it."
Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
if you have a rummage sale,
don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
O flashing Orion,
your stars are muscled like the lion....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ds calm just because he feels it writhe. 
Or, if that's too ambitious,--here's my box-- 
I need the excitation of a pinch 
Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose 
Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes. 
"Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk: 
Make it aware of peace by itching-fits, 
Say I--let doubt occasion still more faith! 

You'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child, 
In that dear middle-age these noodles praise. 
How you'd exult if I coul...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...orn a bird. 
Put case, unable to be what I wish, 
I yet could make a live bird out of clay: 
Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban 
Able to fly?--for, there, see, he hath wings, 
And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, 
And there, a sting to do his foes offence, 
There, and I will that he begin to live, 
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns 
Of grigs high up that make the merry din, 
Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not. 
In which feat, if his ...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...o the clover-sward, and she has talk'd
Full soothingly to every nested finch:
Rise, Cupids! or we'll give the blue-bell pinch
To your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin!"
At this, from every side they hurried in,
Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists,
And doubling overhead their little fists
In backward yawns. But all were soon alive:
For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive
In nectar'd clouds and curls through water fair,
So from the arbour roof down sw...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...oul and sense of him grow sharp alike, 
He learns the look of things, and none the less 
For admonition from the hunger-pinch. 
I had a store of such remarks, be sure, 
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use. 
I drew men's faces on my copy-books, 
Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge, 
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes, 
Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's, 
And made a string of pictures of the world 
Betwixt the ins and outs of verb a...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...f bombs 
that will not kill them

into the rock
the sand-claws
the winking eye
and harsh shell
of aden

waiting for the pinch

jagged sun
lumps of heat
bumping on the stunned ship
knuckledustered rock
clenched over steamer point

waiting for the sun to stagger
loaded down the hill
before we bunch ashore

calm
eyes within their windows
we walk
(a town must live
must have its acre of normality
let hate sport
its bright shirt in the shadows)
we shop
collect our duty-murdered goo...Read more of this...

by Ali, Muhammad
...ok one tablespoon of patience,
One teaspoon of generosity,
One pint of kindness.
He took one quart of laughter,
One pinch of concern.
And then, he mixed willingness with happiness.
He added lots of faith,
And he stirred it up well.
Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime,
And he served it to each and every deserving person he met....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...he
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

XVI.
Why were they proud? Because their marble founts
Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears?--
Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts
Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?--
Why were they proud? Because red-lin'd accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?--
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,
...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...ty with the French who are my foes and Moabites because of the Moabitish woman. 

For my Angel is always ready at a pinch to help me out and to keep me up. 

For CHRISTOPHER must slay the Dragon with a PHEON's head. 

For they have seperated me and my bosom, whereas the right comes by setting us together. 

For silly fellow! silly fellow! is against me and belongeth neither to me nor my family. 

For he that scorneth the scorner hath condescended to my low...Read more of this...

by Allingham, William
...t.
I stared at him, he stared at me;
"Servant Sir!" "Humph" says he,
And pull'd a snuff-box out.
He took a long pinch, look'd better pleased,
The ***** little Lepracaun;
Offer'd the box with a whimsical grace, -
Pouf! He flung the dust in my face,
And while I sneezed,
Was gone!...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ther than better. How are we to write
The Russian novel in America
As long as life goes so unterribly?
There is the pinch from which our only outcry 
In literature to date is heard to come.
We get what little misery we can
Out of not having cause for misery.
It makes the guild of novel writers sick
To be expected to be Dostoievskis
On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort.
This is not sorrow, though; it's just the vapors,
And recognized as such in Russi...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...ay on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by....Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...ace is "death itself,"
As Berg said of a phrase in Mahler's Ninth;
Or, to quote Imogen in Cymbeline, "There cannot
Be a pinch in death more sharp than this," for,
Though only exercise or tactic, it carries
The momentum of a conviction that had been building.
Mere forgetfulness cannot remove it
Nor wishing bring it back, as long as it remains
The white precipitate of its dream
In the climate of sighs flung across our world,
A cloth over a birdcage. But it is certain th...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
But the sand---they pinch and pound it like otters;
Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry;
And that other sort, their crowning pride,
With long white threads distinct inside,
Like the lake-flower's fibrous r...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...ts the czar,
The ghost who beckoned men who come no more—
The czar gone to the winds on God’s great dustpan,
The czar a pinch of nothing,
The last of the gibbering Romanoffs.

Out and good-night—
The ghosts of the summer palaces
And the ghosts of the winter palaces!
Out and out, good-night to the kings, the czars, the kaisers.

Another finger will speak,
And the kaiser, the ghost who gestures a hundred million sleeping-waking ghosts,
The kaiser will go onto God’s grea...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...d,
Or if men smote it with a yarde* smart: *staff
And all was conscience and tender heart.
Full seemly her wimple y-pinched was;
Her nose tretis;* her eyen gray as glass; *well-formed
Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red;
But sickerly she had a fair forehead.
It was almost a spanne broad I trow;
For *hardily she was not undergrow*. *certainly she was not small*
Full fetis* was her cloak, as I was ware. *neat
Of small coral about her arm she bare
...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...re gray, and men turn wolves, lean with despair. 
Ah, when we need love most, and weep, when all is dark,
Love is a pinch of ashes gray, with one live spark—
Yet on the hope to keep alive that treasure strange 
Hangs all earth's struggle, strife and scorn, and desperate change.


IV

Love? . . . we will scarcely love our babes full many a time—
Knowing their souls and ours too well, and all our grime—
And there beside our holy hearth we'll hide our eyes—
L...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...
Let it but guess my errand, it will call 
The dangers of the air to wreak upon me, 
Winds to juggle the puny boat and pinch 
The water into unbelievable creases. 
And shall my soul, and God in my soul, drown? 
Or venture drowning? -- But no, no; I am safe. 
Smooth as believing souls over their deaths 
And over agonies shall slide henceforth 
To God, so shall my way be blest amid 
The quiet crouching terrors of the sea, 
Like panthers when a fire weakens their hearts...Read more of this...

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