Famous Ribs Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ribs poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ribs poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ribs poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...t¡¯s on fire.
Leave it to me.
I¡¯ll pump barrels of tears from my eyes.
I¡¯ll brace myself against my ribs.
I¡¯ll leap out! Out! Out!
They¡¯ve collapsed.
You can¡¯t leap out of a heart!
From the cracks of the lips
upon a smouldering face
a cinder of a kiss rises to leap.
Mamma!
I cannot sing.
In the heart¡¯s chapel the choir loft catches fire!
The scorched figurines of words and numbers
scurry from the skull
like...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...tie,
Then loue is sin, and let me sinfull be.
XV
You that do search for euery purling spring
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flowes,
And euery flower, not sweet perhaps, which growes
Neere thereabouts, into your poesie wring;
Ye that do dictionaries methode bring
Into your rimes, running in rattling rowes;
You that poore Petrarchs long deceased woes
With new-borne sighes and denisen'd wit do sing;
You take wrong wayes; those far-fet helps be such
As d...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...and be never more,
Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of Death. But, oh! ere long
Too well I did perceive it was the voice
Of my most honoured Lady, your dear sister.
Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear;
And RO poor hapless nightingale," thought I,
How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare!"
Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste,
Through paths and turnings often trod by day...Read more of this...
by
O'Hara, Frank
...rical;it's just me.
3
And the other half
of me where I master the root
of my every idiosyncrasy
and fit my ribs like a glove
4
is that me who accepts betrayal
in the abstract as if it were insight?
and draws its knuckles
across the much-lined eyes
in the most knowing manner of our time?
5
The wind that smiles through the wires
isn't vague enough for an assertion
of a personal nature it's not for me
6
I'm not dead. Nothing remai...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...gs, that which housed therein.
High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms,
With white breast-bone, and barren ribs of Death,
And crowned with fleshless laughter--some ten steps--
In the half-light--through the dim dawn--advanced
The monster, and then paused, and spake no word.
But Gareth spake and all indignantly,
'Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength of ten,
Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God hath given,
But must, to make the terror of thee mo...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...finger-balls,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, back-bone, joints of the back-bone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...r mother Earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of fame
And strength, and art, are easily outdone
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more,
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare;
His arms clung to his ribs; his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom: he would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transformed
Alike, to serpents al...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...pon me, and rises out of me?
O the orator’s joys!
To inflate the chest—to roll the thunder of the voice out from the ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.
O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself—receiving identity through
materials,
and loving them—observing characters, and absorbing them;
O my soul, vibrated back to me, from them—from facts, sight, hearing, touch, ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...r their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies;
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the
sun—they do not ask who seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
in the market;
...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...thicket in graveyard gave?
"And was not God my armourer,
All patient and unpaid,
That sealed my skull as a helmet,
And ribs for hauberk made?
"Did not a great grey servant
Of all my sires and me,
Build this pavilion of the pines,
And herd the fowls and fill the vines,
And labour and pass and leave no signs
Save mercy and mystery?
"For God is a great servant,
And rose before the day,
From some primordial slumber torn;
But all we living later born
Sleep on, and rise after th...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...r heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.
I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.
I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on th...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...opes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'T is of the wave and not the rock;
'T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ht 'twould not have hurt a meaner thing.
15
Who builds a ship must first lay down the keel
Of health, whereto the ribs of mirth are wed:
And knit, with beams and knees of strength, a bed
For decks of purity, her floor and ceil.
Upon her masts, Adventure, Pride, and Zeal,
To fortune's wind the sails of purpose spread:
And at the prow make figured maidenhead
O'erride the seas and answer to the wheel.
And let him deep in memory's hold have stor'd
Water of Helicon:...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...d Scottish fir;
Planking from Dantzig.
My! What timber goes into a ship!
Tap! Tap!
Two years they have seasoned her ribs on the ways,
Tapping, tapping.
You can hear, though there's nothing where you gaze.
Through the fog down the reaches of the river,
The tapping goes on like heart-beats in a fever.
The church-bells chime
Hours and hours,
Dropping days in showers.
Bang! Rap! Tap!
Go the hammers all the time.
They have planked up her timbers
And the nai...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
I would the old God of war himself were dead,
Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills,
Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,
Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice,
Not to be molten out.'
And roughly spake
My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls.
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think
That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir!
Man is the hunter; woman is his game:
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase,
We hunt them for the be...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...ortant Charge, the Petticoat.
Oft have we known that sev'nfold Fence to fail;
Tho' stiff with Hoops, and arm'd with Ribs of Whale.
Form a strong Line about the Silver Bound,
And guard the wide Circumference around.
Whatever spirit, careless of his Charge,
His Post neglects, or leaves the Fair at large,
Shall feel sharp Vengeance soon o'ertake his Sins,
Be stopt in Vials, or transfixt with Pins.
Or plung'd in Lakes of bitter Washes lie,
Or wedg'd whole Ages in...Read more of this...
by
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres?
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman's mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
The naked hu...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...rishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm....Read more of this...
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