Famous Plod Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Time to Talk

...hat is it?'
No, not as there is a time talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit....Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


At Home

...ested, and they laughed,
For each was loved of each.

I listened to thier honest chat:
Said one: "To-morrow we shall be
Plod plod along the featureless sands,
And coasting miles and miles of sea."
Said one: "Before the turn of tide
We will achieve the eyrie-seat."
Said one: "To-morrow shall be like
To-day, but much more sweet."

"To-morrow," said they, strong with hope,
And dwelt upon the pleasant way:
"To-morrow," cried they, one and all,
While no one spoke of yesterday.
The...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina

Babi Yar

...rude gravestone. 
I am afraid.
 Today I am as old in years 
as all the Jewish people. 
Now I seem to be
 a Jew. 
Here I plod through ancient Egypt. 
Here I perish crucified, on the cross, 
and to this day I bear the scars of nails. 
I seem to be
 Dreyfus. 
The Philistine 
 is both informer and judge. 
I am behind bars.
 Beset on every side. 
Hounded, 
 spat on,
 slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
...Read more of this...
by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

Behind the Arras

...e teeth and hideous grins, who race 
From place to place; 

They build great temples to their John-a-nod, 
And fume and plod 
To deck themselves with gold, 
And paint themselves like chattels to be sold, 
Then turn to mould. 

Sometimes they seem almost as real as I; 
I hear them sigh; 
I see them bow with grief, 
Or dance for joy like any aspen leaf; 
But that is brief. 

They have mad wars and phantom marriages; 
Nor seem to guess 
There are dimensions still, 
Beyond though...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss

Bring In This Timeless Grave To Throw

...er yew
His leaves that live December through;
Break no rosemary, bright with rime
And sparkling to the cruel crime;
Nor plod the winter land to look
For willows in the icy brook
To cast them leafless round him: bring
To spray that ever buds in spring.


 But if the Christmas field has kept
Awns the last gleaner overstept,
Or shrivelled flax, whose flower is blue
A single season, never two;
Or if one haulm whose year is o'er
Shivers on the upland frore,
--Oh, bring from hill a...Read more of this...
by Housman, A E


Follower

...in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod. 

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm. 

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today 
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away....Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus

Freethinker

...r how it always makes me glad
To turn from Ingersoll and see
My little girls Communion-clad.
And as to church my people plod
I cry to them with simple glee:
"Say, folks, if you should talk to God,
 Put in a word for me."...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Honors - Part I

...me to grow and ripen free:
No judgment past withdraws that boon from you,
      Nor granteth it to me.
"Still must I plod, and still in cities moil;
  From precious leisure, learned leisure far,
Dull my best self with handling common soil;
      Yet mine those honors are.
"Mine they are called; they are a name which means,
  'This man had steady pulses, tranquil nerves:
Here, as in other fields, the most he gleans
      Who works and never swerves.
"We measure not ...Read more of this...
by Ingelow, Jean

I am bound to this Land by blood

...urred
I am rooted in its soil
And its streams flood my veins
I smell the sweat of its men
And the million feet that plod
The dust of its streets
Leave their prints on my soul
I have walked the footpaths of this land
Climbed the snake-routes of its hills
I have known the heat of its noon
And that in the fields where men toil till dusk
I have known the faces their creases
I have seen pain engraved on the foreheads of many
I have heard their agony

I have cried so...Read more of this...
by Oguibe, Olu

Light Between the Trees

...room
Where the light of life has fled,
And the jealous curtains close
Round the passionless repose
Of the silent dead.

Plod, plod, plod away,
Step by step in mouldering moss;
Thick branches bar the day
Over languid streams that cross
Softly, slowly, with a sound
In their aimless creeping
Like a smothered weeping,
Through the enchanted ground.

"Yield, yield, yield thy quest,"
Whispers through the woodland deep;
"Come to me and be at rest;
"I am slumber, I am sleep."
Then the...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van

May

...way
And be the weather chill or warm
Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm
Holding each prize their search has won
They plod bare headed to the sun
Now dames oft bustle from their wheels
Wi childern scampering at their heels
To watch the bees that hang and swive
In clumps about each thronging hive
And flit and thicken in the light
While the old dame enjoys the sight
And raps the while their warming pans
A spell that superstition plans
To coax them in the garden bounds
As if t...Read more of this...
by Clare, John

Night

...ules
of flesh that do not know they glow, they draw.

Let's give him one dream-memory,
a zebra wish fulfilled in dazing plod,
some sheer green wall of sugarcane.
And look - he's made it through

into the bleach and blaze, rose curdling
over indigo and lard, this granult scar
of dawn. One more dawn nearer the water.
Sky blood-taggled, blood-tufted,

rushes over him like a white bowl
at the end of things, the little safe horizon
of a pilot's dial,
an inventory of therapeutic ge...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth

Rosy-Kins

...As home from church we two did plod,
"Grandpa," said Rosy, "What is God?"
Seeking an answer to her mind,
This is the best that I could find. . . .

God is the Iz-ness of our Cosmic Biz;
The high, the low, the near, the far,
The atom and the evening star;
The lark, the shark, the cloud, the clod,
The whole darned Universe - that's God.

Some deem that others there be,
And to them humbly be...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Thanatopsis

...rture? All that breathe 60 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone the solemn brood of care 
Plod on and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments and shall come 65 
And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
Of ages glide away the sons of men  
The youth in life's green spring and he who goes 
In the full strength of years matron and maid  
The speechless babe and ...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen

The Break Away

...s starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
a...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Everlasting Mercy

...sinner's soul. 
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep 
To plough my living man from sleep.

Slow up the hill the plough team plod, 
Old Callow at the task of God, 
Helped by man's wit, helped by the brute, 
Turning a stubborn clay to fruit, 
His eyes forever on some sign 
To help him plough a perfect line. 
At top of rise the plough team stopped, 
The fore-horse bent his head and cropped. 
Then the chains chack, the brasses jingle, 
The lean reins gather through the cringle, 
The ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Hard Times In Elfland

...Poor Santa Claus burst into tears,
Then calmed again: "my reindeer fleet,
I gave them up: on foot, my dears,
I now must plod through snow and sleet.

"Retrenchment rules in Elfland, now;
Yes, every luxury is cut off.
-- Which, by the way, reminds me how
I caught this dreadful hacking cough:

"I cut off the tail of my Ulster furred
To make young Kris a coat of state.
That very night the storm occurred!
Thus we became the sport of Fate.

"For I was out till after one,
Surveying...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

...he prude -horn, bleak and squeaking: —
(Some of them from Kansas, some of themn from Kansas.)
Here comes the hod -horn, plod -horn, sod -horn,
Nevermore-to-roam -horn, loam -horn, home -horn.

(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.)
Far away the Rachel-Jane 
Not defeated by the horns 
Sings amid a hedge of thorns:—
"Love and life,
Eternal youth—
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
Dew and glory,
Love and truth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet."
WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

The World

...wn decree.
If we search Truth, we make it more obscure;
And when it shines, we can't the Light endure;
For most men who plod on, and eat, and drink,
Have nothing less their business then to think;
And those few that enquire, how small a share
Of Truth they fine! how dark their notions are!
That serious evenness that calmes the Brest,
And in a Tempest can bestow a rest,
We either not attempt, or elce [sic] decline,
By every triffle snatch'd from our design.
(Others he must in ...Read more of this...
by Philips, Katherine

Triumph

...ill,
 I'd holed in one.

Say that my score is eighty odd,
 And though I won't give up,--
Say that as round the course I plod,
 I never win a cup.
Say that my handicap's nineteen,
 And of my game make fun,
But holler: 'On the seventh green
 HE HOLED IN ONE.'...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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