Famous Pitchy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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From Snow-Bound 11:1-40 116-154

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein,...Read more of this...

A March in the Ranks Hard-prest

by Walt Whitman
 A MARCH in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown; 
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; 
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating; 
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building; 
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted...Read more of this...

The Story of Mongrel Grey

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 This is the story the stockman told 
On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright; 
The moon rose up like a globe of gold 
And flooded the plain with her mellow light. 
We watched the cattle till dawn of day 
And he told me the story of Mongrel Grey. 
He was a knock-about station hack, 
Spurred and walloped, and...Read more of this...

Mummia

by Rupert Brooke
 As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;

Drunk on the dead, and medicined
With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.

So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,
Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time
To rarify ecstasy.

Helen's the hair shuts out from...Read more of this...

The Man Bitten By Fleas

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Peevish Fellow laid his Head 
On Pillows, stuff'd with Down; 
But was no sooner warm in Bed, 
With hopes to rest his Crown, 

But Animals of slender size, 
That feast on humane Gore, 
From secret Ambushes arise, 
Nor suffer him to snore; 

Who starts, and scrubs, and frets, and swears, 
'Till, finding all in vain, 
He for Relief...Read more of this...

The Bonfire

by Robert Frost
 “OH, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
As reckless as the best of them to-night,
By setting fire to all the brush we piled
With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow.
Oh, let’s not wait for rain to make it safe.
The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough
Down dark converging paths between the pines.
Let’s not care what...Read more of this...

Thief of the Moon

by Kenneth Slessor
 Thief of the moon, thou robber of old delight, 
Thy charms have stolen the star-gold, quenched the moon- 
Cold, cold are the birds that, bubbling out of night, 
Cried once to my ears their unremembered tune- 
Dark are those orchards, their leaves no longer shine, 
No orange's gold is globed like moonrise there- 
O thief of the earth's old...Read more of this...

Duello

by Robert William Service
 A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
They each would fire a single shot
In room of darkness pitchy,
And who was killed and who was not
Would hang on fingers twitchy.

The room was bare and dark as death,
And each ferocious fighter
Could hear his fierce opponent's breath
And clutched his pistol tighter.
The Gaston...Read more of this...

His Boys

by Robert William Service
 "I'm going, Billy, old fellow. Hist, lad! Don't make any noise.
There's Boches to beat all creation, the pitch of a bomb away.
I've fixed the note to your collar, you've got to get back to my Boys,
You've got to get back to warn 'em before it's the break of day."

The order came to go forward to a trench-line traced on...Read more of this...

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