Famous Pull Through Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Everything That Acts Is Actual

by Denise Levertov
 From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me

into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?

The flawed moon acts on...Read more of this...

Having it Out with Melancholy

by Jane Kenyon
 1FROM THE NURSERY


When I was born, you waited 
behind a pile of linen in the nursery, 
and when we were alone, you lay down 
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.


And from that day on 
everything under the sun and moon 
made me sad -- even the yellow 
wooden beads that slid and spun 
along...Read more of this...

To a Contemporary Bunkshooter

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he...Read more of this...

Each One, Pull One

by Alice Walker
(Thinking of Lorraine Hansberry)


We must say it all, and as clearly
Trying to bury us.
As we can. For, even before we are dead,


Were we black? Were we women? Were we gay?
Were we the wrong shade of black? Were we yellow?
Did we, God forbid, love the wrong person, country?
Or politics? Were we Agnes Smedley or John Brown?


But, most of all, did we...Read more of this...

The Rovers Adieu

by Sir Walter Scott
 weary lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine!
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine.
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green—
No more of me ye knew,
My Love!
No more of me ye knew.
'This morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain;
But she shall...Read more of this...

Off the Turnpike

by Amy Lowell
 Good ev'nin', Mis' Priest.
I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye.
Yes, it's all over.
All my things is packed
An' every last one o' them boxes
Is on Bradley's team
Bein' hauled over to th' depot.
No, I ain't goin' back agin.
I'm stoppin' over to French's fer to-night,
And goin' down first train in th' mornin'.
Yes, it do seem kinder *****
Not to be goin' to...Read more of this...

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

by Denise Levertov
 Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the...Read more of this...

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin
 That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday 
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran 
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began, 
Where sky and Lincolnshire and...Read more of this...

Pull A String A Puppet Moves

by Charles Bukowski
 each man must realize
that it can all disappear very 
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand - 
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the 
kitchen...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Brand

by Robert William Service
 'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him...Read more of this...

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

by Ted Hughes
 She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over...Read more of this...

Snap-Dragon

by D. H. Lawrence
 She bade me follow to her garden where 
The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup 
Between the old grey walls; I did not dare 
To raise my face, I did not dare look up 
Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in 
My windows of discovery and shrill 'Sin!' 

So with a downcast mien and laughing voice...Read more of this...

Wisdom of Hafiz: the Philosopher Takes to Racing

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo, 
Remember, it's seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow; 
Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow. 
If ever an owner should tell you, "Back mine" -- don't you be such a flat. 
He knows his own...Read more of this...

Song of the Wagons

by Du Fu
 Wagons rumble rumble Hhorses whinny whinny Foot person bow arrow each at waist Father mother wife children go mutual see off Dust dust not see Xianyang bridge Pull clothes stamp foot bar way weep Weep sound directly up strike clouds clouds Road side passerby ask foot person Foot person only say mark down often Some from ten...Read more of this...

Fate

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Fate is above me. Why should I browse? 
 Sleeping in dosses, an outcast, I rove. 
 Grief is a cellar, 
 that opens in every old house. 
 A ditch is below me and fate is above. 

 What did I want? Well, a life of contentment. 
 What did I get? Just a coffin and wreath... 
...Read more of this...

Villages and Plains the Streams Flow Through

by Jonas Mekas
 You too return, along with days gone,
and flow again, my blue rivers,

to carry on the songs of washerwomen,
fishermen's nets and grey wooden bridges.
Clear blue nights, smelling warm,
streams of thin mist off the meadow drift in
with distinct hoof-stomps from a fettered horse.

To carry off rioting spring thaws,
willows torn loose and yellow lily cups,
with children's shrill riots.
The summer heat, its midday...Read more of this...

Fear

by Raymond Carver
 Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't...Read more of this...

Life doesn't frighten me at all

by Maya Angelou
Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all
 
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all
 
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don't frighten me at all
 
Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn't frighten me at all.
 
I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I...Read more of this...

LEnvoi

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
 And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing: -- "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
 And your English summer's done."
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
 You have heard the song...Read more of this...

To Elizabeth Ward Perkins

by Amy Lowell
 Dear Bessie, would my tired rhyme
Had force to rise from apathy,
And shaking off its lethargy
Ring word-tones like a Christmas chime.
But in my soul's high belfry, chill
The bitter wind of doubt has blown,
The summer swallows all have flown,
The bells are frost-bound, mute and still.
Upon the crumbling boards the snow
Has drifted deep, the clappers hang
Prismed with icicles, their clang
Unheard since ages...Read more of this...

Ford o Kabul River

by Rudyard Kipling
 Kabul town's by Kabul river --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
There I lef' my mate for ever,
 Wet an' drippin' by the ford.
 Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
 Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
 There's the river up and brimmin', an' there's 'arf a squadron swimmin'
 'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul...Read more of this...

Up At A Villa— Down In The City

by Robert Browning
 (As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a...Read more of this...

To Be of Use

by Marge Piercy
 The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the...Read more of this...

So I pull my Stockings off

by Emily Dickinson
 So I pull my Stockings off
Wading in the Water
For the Disobedience' Sake
Boy that lived for "or'ter"

Went to Heaven perhaps at Death
And perhaps he didn't
Moses wasn't fairly used --
Ananias wasn't --...Read more of this...

The Flour Bin

by Henry Lawson
 By Lawson's Hill, near Mudgee, 
On old Eurunderee – 
The place they called "New Pipeclay", 
Where the diggers used to be – 
On a dreary old selection, 
Where times were dry and thin, 
In a slab and shingle kitchen 
There stood a flour bin. 

'Twas "ploorer" with the cattle, 
'Twas rust and smut in wheat, 
'Twas blight in eyes...Read more of this...

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