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Famous Snaps Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...rve!
The grave, sage hern thus easy picks his frog,
And thinks the mallard a sad worthless dog.
When disappointment snaps the thread of Hope,
When, thro’ disastrous night, they darkling grope,
With deaf endurance sluggishly they bear,
And just conclude that “fools are Fortune’s care:”
So, heavy, passive to the tempest’s shocks,
Strong on the sign-post stands the stupid ox.
 Not so the idle Muses’ mad-cap train,
Not such the workings of their moon-struck brain;
In equa...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...before my friend be wholly hers,
 How easy to prove to him, I said,
An eagle's the game her pride prefers,
 Though she snaps at a wren instead!

 V.

So, I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,
 My hand sought hers as in earnest need,
And round she turned for my noble sake,
 And gave me herself indeed.

 VI.

The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,
 The wren is he, with his maiden face.
—You look away and your lip is curled?
 Patience, a moment's space!

 VII...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...him after you.
He is a famous fisher; hour by hour
He ruffles with his bill the minnowed streams.
Ah! there he snaps my rice. I told you so.
Now cuff him off. He's off! A kiss for you,
Because you saved my rice. Have you no thanks?

Vijaya [sings]. Sing you of her, O first few stars,
Whom Brahma, touching with his finger, praises, for you hold
The van of wandering quiet; ere you be too calm and old,
Sing, turning in your cars,
Sing, till you raise...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 In how short a span doth all Nature change, 
 How quickly she smoothes with her hand serene— 
 And how rarely she snaps, in her ceaseless range, 
 The links that bound our hearts to the scene. 
 
 Our beautiful bowers are all laid waste; 
 The fir is felled that our names once bore; 
 Our rows of roses, by urchins' haste, 
 Are destroyed where they leap the barrier o'er. 
 The fount is walled in where, at noonday pride, 
 She so gayly drank, from the wood descen...Read more of this...

by Graves, Robert
...rore land: 
Legs wobble and go wingle, 
You scarce can stand. 

The skies are jewelled all around, 
The ploughshare snaps in the iron ground, 
The Finn with face like paper 
And eyes like a lighted taper 
Hurls his rough rune 
At the wintry moon 
And stamps to mark the tune....Read more of this...



by Tolkien, J R R
..., freedom, escape;
Of changing and of shifting shape
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling and foundering, as ever more strong
The chanting swelled, Felagund fought,
And all the magic and might he brought
Of Elvenesse into his words.
Softly in the gloom they heard the birds
Singing afar in Nargothrond,
The sighing of the Sea beyond,
Beyond the western world, on sand,
On sand of p...Read more of this...

by Kenyon, Jane
...earth are overrated."


I only appeared to belong to my mother, 
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts 
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases. 
I was already yours -- the anti-urge, 
the mutilator of souls.



2BOTTLES


Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, 
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, 
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. 
The coated ones smell sweet or have 
no smell; the powdery ones smell 
like the chemistry lab...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...think he's a homosexual."
"Are you still reading Freud?"
"Page 299."
She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one
arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the
snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h've
time and the dog.
About church: the trouble with a mask is it 
never changes.
So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.
So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs
and belly and arm and neck...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...did you keep the vow you made to Mark
More than I mine? Lied, say ye? Nay, but learnt,
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself--
My knighthood taught me this--ay, being snapt--
We run more counter to the soul thereof
Than had we never sworn. I swear no more.
I swore to the great King, and am forsworn.
For once--ev'n to the height--I honour'd him.
'Man, is he man at all?' methought, when first
I rode from our rough Lyonnesse, and beheld
That victor of the...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...ies up, striding reared on long uncanny legs
When food is going.
Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes.
She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great mouthfuls,
Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, pristine face
Into an enormously wide-beaked mouth
Like sudden curved scissors,
And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue,
And having the bread hanging over her chin.

O Mistress, Mistress,
Reptile mistress,
Your eye is ver...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...to his soft caress, Half-gasping 
with her gladness. And her pledge
She whispers, melting with delight. A 
twig Snaps in the hornbeam hedge.
A cackling laugh tears through the quietness.
Eunice starts up in terrible distress.
"My God! What's that?" Her 
staring eyes are big.

XXXIV
Revulsed emotion set her body shaking As though 
she had an ague. Gervase swore,
Jumped to his feet in such a dreadful taking His face was ghastly 
with the look it wore...Read more of this...

by Harcombe, Dale
...The hushed dark hugs the streets.
  Somewhere a cat snaps the silence.
  Dogs begin to bark, like a pack
  moving in for the kill.
  Women shrink in their homes.
  Shadows slip
  through the night and
  stars dim their lights
  as cars flash past.
  When they disappear,
  silence, heavy as hate, descends.
  Hours stretch like elastic
  that finally snaps.
  Dawn spreads its stain 
  ov...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ike something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps---
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

IV.

_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
---Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)

V.

When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he neve...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...like deadly beetles, 
Whose fangs are carved with runnels, that the blood 
May run down easily to the blind mouth 
That snaps and gapes; and high above them there, 
My master's pride, a cobwebbed, yellow pot 
Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees 
Still moan among the low sweet purple clover, 
Endlessly many? Still in deep-hushed woods, 
When the incredible silver of the moon 
Comes like a living wind through sleep-bowed branches, 
Still steal dark shapes from the enchan...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...id you keep the vow you made to Mark 
More than I mine? Lied, say ye? Nay, but learnt, 
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself-- 
My knighthood taught me this--ay, being snapt-- 
We run more counter to the soul thereof 
Than had we never sworn. I swear no more. 
I swore to the great King, and am forsworn. 
For once--even to the height--I honoured him. 
"Man, is he man at all?" methought, when first 
I rode from our rough Lyonnesse, and beheld 
That victo...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...lley of the Wye." 

Strange, that the rancor of hatred hid in that dream 
of slow rivers and lily-like parasols, in snaps 
of fine old colonial families, curled at the edge 
not from age of from fire or the chemicals, no, not at all, 
but because, off at its edges, innocently excluded 
stood the groom, the cattle boy, the housemaid, the gardeners, 
the tenants, the good ******* down in the village, 
their mouth in the locked jaw of a silent scream. 
A scream which wou...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...pelled
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain,--the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps . . . ere the shock cease to tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
Past over them; nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore.--Behind,
Old men, and women foully disarrayed
Shake their grey hair in ...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...more wearily looks another way still,
Each with the utmost apathy,
Incognisant,
Unaware,
Nothing.

As for papa,
He snaps when I offer him his offspring,
Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,
Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoise
Being touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness.

Father and mother,
And three little brothers,
And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,
Not knowing each othe...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...pretext enough
To kerchiefwise unfurl his sash
Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no gash?
Waring, in Moscow, to those rough
Cold northern natures borne, perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings,
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian's fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With t...Read more of this...

by Goose, Mother
...What are little boys made of, made of?What are little boys made of?"Snaps and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails;And that's what little boys are made of."What are little girls made of, made of?What are little girls made of?"Sugar and spice, and all that's nice;And that's what little girls are made of."...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things