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).

See also:

Rio Grande

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Now this was what Macpherson told 
While waiting in the stand; 
A reckless rider, over-bold, 
The only man with hands to hold 
The rushing Rio Grande. 
He said, “This day I bid good-bye 
To bit and bridle rein, 
To ditches deep and fences high, 
For I have dreamed a dream, and I 
Shall never ride again. 

“I dreamt last...Read more of this...

Waves

by Katherine Mansfield
 I saw a tiny God
Sitting
Under a bright blue umbrella
That had white tassels
And forked ribs of gold.
Below him His little world
Lay open to the sun.
The shadow of His hat
Lay upon a city.
When he stretched forth His hand
A lake became a dark tremble.
When he kicked up His foot
It became night in the mountain passes.

But thou art small!
There are gods far greater...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 2

by Alexander Pope
 Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain, 
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively...Read more of this...

Here Is A Wound That Never Will Heal I Know

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
Its friendly weathers down, far Underneath
Shall be such bitterness of an old...Read more of this...

Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer

by Jack Gilbert
 I'd walk her home after work
buying roses and talking of Bechsteins.
She was full of soul.
Her small room was gorged with heat
and there were no windows.
She'd take off everything
but her pants
and take the pins from her hair
throwing them on the floor
with a great noise.
Like Crete.
We wouldn't make love.
She'd get on the bed
with those nipples
and we'd lie
sweating
and talking of my best...Read more of this...

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg
 Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I...Read more of this...

A Panegyric To Sir Lewis Pemberton

by Robert Herrick
 Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but...Read more of this...

The Bight

by Elizabeth Bishop
 [On my birthday]


At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one...Read more of this...

Planetarium

by Adrienne Rich
 Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), 
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman 'in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles'

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the...Read more of this...

I like to see it lap the Miles --

by Emily Dickinson
 I like to see it lap the Miles --
And lick the Valleys up --
And stop to feed itself at Tanks --
And then -- prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains --
And supercilious peer
In Shanties -- by the sides of Roads --
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its Ribs
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid -- hooting stanza --
Then chase itself...Read more of this...

Day of These Days

by Laurie Lee
 Such a morning it is when love
leans through geranium windows
and calls with a cockerel's tongue.

When red-haired girls scamper like roses
over the rain-green grass;
and the sun drips honey.

When hedgerows grow venerable,
berries dry black as blood,
and holes suck in their bees.

Such a morning it is when mice
run whispering from the church,
dragging dropped ears of harvest.

When the partridge draws back his spring
and...Read more of this...

The Power of the Dog

by Rudyard Kipling
 There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie --
Perfect passion and worship fed
By...Read more of this...

Names Of Horses

by Donald Hall
All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Fishing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, 
On the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
With his fishing-line of cedar, 
Of the twisted bark of cedar, 
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, 
In his birch canoe exulting 
All alone went Hiawatha.
Through the clear, transparent water 
He could see the fishes swimming 
Far down in the depths below him; 
See the yellow...Read more of this...

Notes For The Legend Of Salad Woman

by Michael Ondaatje
 Since my wife was born
she must have eaten
the equivalent of two-thirds
of the original garden of Eden.
Not the dripping lush fruit
or the meat in the ribs of animals
but the green salad gardens of that place.
The whole arena of green
would have been eradicated
as if the right filter had been removed
leaving only the skeleton of coarse brightness.

All green ends up eventually
churning in...Read more of this...

Garden Wireless

by Carl Sandburg
 HOW many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman’s mouth of passion kisses, a nun’s mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?—nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of...Read more of this...

The Ballad of G. R. Dibbs

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 This is the story of G.R.D., 
Who went on a mission across the sea 
To borrow some money for you and me. 

This G. R. Dibbs was a stalwart man 
Who was built on a most extensive plan, 
And a regular staunch Republican. 

But he fell in the hands of the Tory crew 
Who said, "It's a shame that...Read more of this...

In the Wilderness

by Robert Graves
 Christ of His gentleness 
Thirsting and hungering, 
Walked in the wilderness; 
Soft words of grace He spoke 
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering. 
He heard the bitterns call 
From ruined palace-wall, 
Answered them brotherly. 
He held communion
With the she-pelican 
Of lonely piety. 
Basilisk, cockatrice, 
Flocked to his homilies, 
With mail of dread device,
With monstrous barb?d slings, 
With eager dragon-eyes; 
Great...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Lenins Tomb

by Robert William Service
 This is the yarn he told me
 As we sat in Casey's Bar,
 That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug
 In the Land of the Crimson Star;
 That Soviet guy with the single eye,
 And the face like a flaming scar.

Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb,...Read more of this...

Little Sleeps-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

by Galway Kinnell
1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go...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...

Smoke and Steel

by Carl Sandburg
 SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.

If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the...Read more of this...

Name of Horses

by Donald Hall
 All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding 
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul 
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, 
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields, 
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with...Read more of this...

In the Stable

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 What! you don't like him; well, maybe -- we all have our fancies, of course: 
Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he's a thoroughbred horse; 
Sired by a son of old Panic -- look at his ears and his head -- 
Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain't he? -- well, that's how the Panics are bred. 
Gluttonous, ugly and...Read more of this...

The Cumberland

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
AT anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, 
On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war; 
And at times from the fortress across the bay 
The alarum of drums swept past, 
Or a bugle blast 5 
From the camp on the shore. 

Then far away to the south uprose 
A little feather of snow-white smoke, 
And we knew that the iron ship of...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Ribs poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace