Famous Plodding Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Pi

by Wislawa Szymborska
 The admirable number pi: 
three point one four one. 
All the following digits are also just a start, 
five nine two because it never ends. 
It can't be grasped, six five three five , at a glance, 
eight nine, by calculation, 
seven nine, through imagination, 
or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison 
four six to...Read more of this...

The Men That Dont Fit In

by Robert William Service
 There's a race of men that don't fit in,
 A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
 And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
 And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
 And they don't know how to rest.

If they...Read more of this...

The Town Down by the River

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Said the Watcher by the Way 
To the young and the unladen, 
To the boy and to the maiden, 
"God be with you both to-day. 
First your song came ringing, 
Now you come, you two-- 
Knowing naught of what you do, 
Or of what your dreams are bringing.

"O you children who go singing 
To the Town down the River,...Read more of this...

Apology

by Amy Lowell
 Be not angry with me that I bear
Your colours everywhere,
All through each crowded street,
And meet
The wonder-light in every eye,
As I go by.
Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,
Blinded by rainbow haze,
The stuff of happiness,
No less,
Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds
Of peacock golds.
Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way
Flushes beneath its gray.
My steps fall ringed with light,
So bright,
It seems...Read more of this...

231. Epistle to Robert Graham Esq. of Fintry

by Robert Burns
 WHEN Nature her great master-piece design’d,
And fram’d her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She form’d of various parts the various Man.


 Then first she calls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding Industry, and sober Worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

Nest Eggs

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Birds all the summer day 
Flutter and quarrel 
Here in the arbour-like 
Tent of the laurel. 

Here in the fork 
The brown nest is seated; 
For little blue eggs 
The mother keeps heated. 

While we stand watching her 
Staring like gabies, 
Safe in each egg are the 
Bird's little babies. 

Soon the frail eggs they shall 
Chip, and upspringing...Read more of this...

Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life

by Henry David Thoreau
 Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the...Read more of this...

Spring Day

by Amy Lowell
 Bath
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is 
a smell of tulips and narcissus
in the air.
The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and 
bores through the water
in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It 
cleaves the water
into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.
Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of...Read more of this...

The Gods Of Greece

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful...Read more of this...

O Me! O Life!

by Walt Whitman
 O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; 
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; 
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more
 faithless?) 
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever
 renew’d; 
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding...Read more of this...

Stanzas Written under an Oak in Windsor Forest

by Mary Darby Robinson
 "HERE POPE FIRST SUNG!" O, hallow'd Tree !
Such is the boast thy bark displays;
Thy branches, like thy Patron's lays,
Shall ever, ever, sacred be; 
Nor with'ring storm, nor woodman's stroke, 
Shall harm the POET'S favourite Oak. 

'Twas HERE, he woo'd his MUSE of fire,
While Inspiration's wond'rous art,
Sublimely stealing thro' his heart
Did Fancy's proudest themes inspire: 
'Twas HERE he wisely learnt...Read more of this...

Like Brooms of Steel

by Emily Dickinson
 Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street --
The House was hooked
The Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of Heat --
Where rode the Bird
The Silence tied
His ample -- plodding Steed
The Apple in the Cellar snug
Was all the one that played....Read more of this...

On the Trek

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, the weary, weary journey on the trek, day after day, 
With sun above and silent veldt below; 
And our hearts keep turning homeward to the youngsters far away, 
And the homestead where the climbing roses grow. 
Shall we see the flats grow golden with the ripening of the grain? 
Shall we hear the parrots calling on the bough?...Read more of this...

The Little Dell

by William Allingham
 Doleful was the land, 
Dull on, every side, 
Neither soft n'or grand, 
Barren, bleak, and wide; 
Nothing look'd with love; 
All was dingy brown; 
The very skies above 
Seem'd to sulk and frown.

Plodding sick and sad, 
Weary day on day; 
Searching, never glad, 
Many a miry way; 
Poor existence lagg'd 
In this barren place; 
While the seasons dragg'd 
Slowly...Read more of this...

The Army Mules

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh the airman's game is a showman's game, for we all of us watch him go 
With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below, 
Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk, 
You'll hear him mutter, "What ho, she bumps," when the Archies get to work. 
But not of him...Read more of this...

snail and spiral

by Rg Gregory
 i take my property with me says the snail
slow-moving (yes) but packed with sublime thought
the house upon its back some kind of grail
vulnerable to brute boot - and wisdom bought

by barely making it through life’s dull crawl
the pace of it denies technology’s demand
that speed be safety (that getting there is all)
the snail enjoys being aeon’s ampersand

the snail goes round...Read more of this...

Winter

by Walter de la Mare
 A wrinkled crabbed man they picture thee, 
Old Winter, with a rugged beard as grey 
As the long moss upon the apple-tree; 
Blue-lipt, an icedrop at thy sharp blue nose, 
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way 
Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows. 
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth, 
Old Winter! seated in thy...Read more of this...

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