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Famous Pressure Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Carroll, Jim
...assible in time,
As time itself stopped. 

And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the b...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...m end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing dear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and n...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...violence in the air
children bred with ruthlessness
because no one at home cares
Tonight I lay my head down
but the pressure never stops
knawing at my sanity
content when I am dropped
But 2morrow I c change
a chance 2 build a new
Built on spirit intent of Heart
and ideals
based on truth
and tomorrow I wake with second wind
and strong because of pride
2 know I fought with all my heart 2 keep my
dream alive...Read more of this...

by Tessimond, A S J
...s to be walked upon,
The road rewards you for walking
With firm upward contact answering your downward contact
Like the pressure of a hand in yours.
You think - this studious balancing
Of right leg while left leg advances, of left while right,
How splendid
Like somebody-or-other-on-a-peak-in-Darien!
How cleverly that seat shapes the body of the girl who sits there.
How well, how skilfully that man there walks towards you,
Arms hanging, swinging, waiting.
You move ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...crept upon him, he had prest
Peona's busy hand against his lips,
And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips
In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps
A patient watch over the stream that creeps
Windingly by it, so the quiet maid
Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade
Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling
Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling
Among seer leaves and twigs, might all be heard.

 O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,
That broodest o'er ...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...hem to the filled sight
Officiously. Sideway his face repos'd
On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd,
By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth
To slumbery pout; just as the morning south
Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head,
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed
To make a coronal; and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,
Together intertwin'd and trammel'd fresh:
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries;...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ng overmuch and taking less,
And still foreboding `what would Enoch say?'
For more than once, in days of difficulty
And pressure, had she sold her wares for less
Than what she gave in buying what she sold:
She fail'd and sadden'd knowing it; and thus,
Expectant of that news that never came,
Gain'd for here own a scanty sustenance,
And lived a life of silent melancholy. 

Now the third child was sickly-born and grew
Yet sicklier, tho' the mother cared for it
With all a mot...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along t...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...e its transposition to
This difficult and unaccustomed key!—
The room is as you left it; your last touch—
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly—hallows now each simple thing;
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light.

There is your book, just as you laid it down,
Face to the table,—I cannot believe
That you are gone!—Just then it seemed to me
You must be here. I almost laughed to think
How like reality the ...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...y 
To God that she might hear again the voice 
Of Lazarus, whose hands were giving her now 
The recognition of a living pressure 
That was almost a language. When he spoke,
Only one word that she had waited for 
Came from his lips, and that word was her name. 

“I heard them saying, Mary, that he wept 
Before I woke.” The words were low and shaken, 
Yet Mary knew that he who uttered them
Was Lazarus; and that would be enough 
Until there should be more… “Who made ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...th at day-break, and all through the forenoon. 

O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys! 
The saddle—the gallop—the pressure upon the seat—the cool gurgling by the
 ears
 and hair. 

3
O the fireman’s joys! 
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells—shouts!—I pass the crowd—I run! 
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure. 

O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena, in perfect condition,
 conscious of power, thirsting to meet hi...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams 
hurry too rapidly down to the sea, 
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops 
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, 
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. 
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, 
aren't waterfalls yet, 
in a quick age or so, as ages go here, 
they probably will be. 
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...hallway.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.


A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying
for a letter from the class stoner
ten years on but...

Do you remember the way the girls...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...mandates keep:
Yea, all that's lovable, below, above,
That let me love by heart, by heart, because
(Free from the penal pressure of the laws)
I find it fair.

"The tears I weep by day and bitter night,
Opinion! for thy sole salt vintage fall.
-- As morn by morn I rise with fresh delight,
Time through my casement cheerily doth call
`Nature is new, 'tis birthday every day,
Come feast with me, let no man say me nay,
Whate'er befall.'

"So fare I forth to feast: I sit...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...arm to save,
The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.

Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside,
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed,
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And even the bare-worn common is denied.
If to the city sped—what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share;
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury, ...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...and flatters, and still talks of Hope;
Which, sanguine as he is, he does not feel,
And so he cheats the sad and weighty pressure
Of evils present;---- Still, as Men misled
By early prejudice (so hard to break),
I mourn your sorrows; for I too have known
Involuntary exile; and while yet
England had charms for me, have felt how sad
It is to look across the dim cold sea,
That melancholy rolls its refluent tides
Between us and the dear regretted land
We call our own--as now ye pe...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...ersation that night, it was
simply in the feeling Cass gave. She had chosen me and it was as simple as that. No
pressure. She liked her drinks and had a great number of them. She didn't seem quite of
age but they served he anyhow. Perhaps she had forged i.d., I don't know. Anyhow, each
time she came back from the restroom and sat down next to me, I did feel some pride. She
was not only the most beautiful woman in town but also one of the mo...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...t here beside me stands, 
That round me, clasping each in each, 
She might have lock'd her hands. 

"Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet 
As woodbine's fragile hold, 
Or when I feel about my feet 
The berried briony fold." 

O muffle round thy knees with fern, 
And shadow Sumner-chace! 
Long may thy topmost branch discern 
The roofs of Sumner-place! 

But tell me, did she read the name 
I carved with many vows 
When last with throbbing heart I came 
To rest beneat...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...ever change, keep your essense
The power is in the people and politics we address
Always do your best
Don't let the pressure make you panic
And when you get stranded and things don't go the way you planned it
Dreaming of riches in the position of making a difference
Politicians is hypocrites
They don't want to listen
If I'm insane it's the fame
I ain't about to change
It ain't nothing like the game
It's just me against the world ...Read more of this...

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