Famous Snarl Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Monosyllabic

by Carl Sandburg
 LET me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool,
 on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic … a crony of old men
 who wash sunlight in their fingers and
 enjoy slow-pacing clocks....Read more of this...

Theres a Regret

by William Ernest Henley
 There's a regret
So grinding, so immitigably sad,
Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. ...
Do you not know it yet?

For deeds undone
Rnakle and snarl and hunger for their due,
Till there seems naught so despicable as you
In all the grin o' the sun.

Like an old shoe
The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie
About the beach of Time, till by and by
Death,...Read more of this...

To a Lady with an Unruly and Ill-mannered Dog Who Bit several Persons of Importance

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Your dog is not a dog of grace; 
He does not wag the tail or beg;
He bit Miss Dickson in the face;
He bit a Bailie in the leg.

What tragic choices such a dog
Presents to visitor or friend!
Outside there is the Glasgow fog;
Within, a hydrophobic end.

Yet some relief even terror brings,
For when our life is cold and gray
We waste our...Read more of this...

The LORD and the BRAMBLE

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 To view his stately Walks and Groves, 
A Man of Pow'r and Place
Was hast'ning on; but as he roves,
His Foe the slighted Bramble proves, 
And stops his eager Pace. 
That Shrub was qualify'd to Bite;
And now there went a Tale, 
That this injurious partial Wight
Had bid his Gard'ner rid it quite, 
And throw it o'er the Pail. 

Often the...Read more of this...

Limitations

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ef you's only got de powah fe' to blow a little whistle,
Keep ermong de people wid de whistles.
Ef you don't, you'll fin' out sho'tly dat you's th'owed yo' fines' feelin'
In a place dat's all a bed o' thistles.
'Tain't no use a-goin' now, ez sho's you bo'n,
A-squeakin' of yo' whistle 'g'inst a gread big ho'n.
Ef you ain't got but a teenchy...Read more of this...

The Transparent Man

by Anthony Hecht
 I'm mighty glad to see you, Mrs. Curtis,
And thank you very kindly for this visit--
Especially now when all the others here
Are having holiday visitors, and I feel
A little conspicuous and in the way.
It's mainly because of Thanksgiving. All these mothers
And wives and husbands gaze at me soulfully
And feel they should break up their box of chocolates
For a donation, or...Read more of this...

A Prayer in Darkness

by G K Chesterton
 This much, O heaven—if I should brood or rave, 
Pity me not; but let the world be fed, 
Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead, 
Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave. 

If I dare snarl between this sun and sod, 
Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own, 
In sun and rain and fruit...Read more of this...

What The Thunder Said

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
  After the frosty silence in the gardens
  After the agony in stony places
  The shouting and the crying
  Prison and palace and reverberation
  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  He who was living is now dead
  We who were living are now dying
  With...Read more of this...

The Parabolic Ballad

by Andrei Voznesensky
  My life, like a rocket, makes a parabola 
 flying in darkness, -- no rainbow for traveler. 

 There once lived an artist, red-haired Gauguin, 
 he was a bohemian, a former tradesman. 
 To get to the Louvre 
 from the lanes of Montmartre 
 he circled around 
 as far as Sumatra! 

 He had to...Read more of this...

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

by Vachel Lindsay
 I asked the old *****, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."


I. IN WHICH A RACING AUTO COMES FROM THE EAST

This is the order of the music of the morning: —
First, from the far East comes but a crooning.
The...Read more of this...

Stuffed

by Carol Ann Duffy
 I put two yellow peepers in an owl.
Wow. I fix the grin of Crocodile.
Spiv. I sew the slither of an eel. 
I jerk, kick-start, the back hooves of a mule.
Wild. I hold the red rag to a bull.
Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.

I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.
Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.
Splayed....Read more of this...

A Winter Daybreak Above Vence

by James Wright
 The night's drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.
In the valley below me,
Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet,
The road lamps glow.
They are so cold, they might as well be dark.
Trucks and cars
Cough and drone down there between the golden
Coffins of greenhouses,...Read more of this...

The End Of March

by Elizabeth Bishop
 For John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read: Duxbury


It was cold and windy, scarcely the day 
to take a walk on that long beach 
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, 
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, 
seabirds in ones or twos. 
The rackety, icy, offshore wind 
numbed our faces on one side; 
disrupted the formation 
of a...Read more of this...

A Day Like Any Other

by Lisel Mueller
 Such insignificance: a glance
at your record on the doctor's desk
or a letter not meant for you.
How could you have known? It's not true
that your life passes before you
in rapid motion, but your watch
suddenly ticks like an amplified heart,
the hands freezing against a white
that is a judgment. Otherwise nothing.
The face in the mirror is still yours.
Two men pass on the...Read more of this...

The Song of the Sons

by Rudyard Kipling
 One from the ends of the earth -- gifts at an open door --
Treason has much, but we, Mother, thy sons have more!
From the whine of a dying man, from the snarl of a wolf-pack freed,
Turn, and the world is thine. Mother, be proud of thy seed!
Count, are we feeble or few? Hear, is our speech so rude?
Look, are...Read more of this...

Examples (August 27)

by David Lehman
 The last Campbell's tomato soup can 
of the twentieth century is going to 
the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh 
That is an example of a sentence 
Another is this from a CEO in Fortune 
"You die in either case, but this way you get 
to do it proactively," where the adverb 
makes the sentence I'm walking amid 
the tourists...Read more of this...

Eating Poetry

by Mark Strand
 Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian...Read more of this...

The Dog And His Master

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 NO better Dog e'er kept his Master's Door 
Than honest Snarl, who spar'd nor Rich nor Poor; 
But gave the Alarm, when any one drew nigh, 
Nor let pretended Friends pass fearless by: 
For which reprov'd, as better Fed than Taught, 
He rightly thus expostulates the Fault. 

To keep the House from Rascals was my Charge; 
The Task was...Read more of this...

A Case Of Murder

by Vernon Scannell
 They should not have left him there alone, 
Alone that is except for the cat. 
He was only nine, not old enough 
To be left alone in a basement flat, 
Alone, that is, except for the cat. 
A dog would have been a different thing, 
A big gruff dog with slashing jaws, 
But a cat with round eyes mad...Read more of this...

Wilderness

by Carl Sandburg
 THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess …...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin

by Robert William Service
 I

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame,
When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name;
Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam when the brown spring freshets flow;
Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow;
They knew...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 05: Retrospect

by Conrad Aiken
 Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.

And one old man looks down from a dusty window
And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain
And desires once more to walk...Read more of this...

Poem

by Frank O'Hara
The clouds ache bleakly
and when they can manage it 
crush someone's head in
without a sound of anger.
This is a brutal mystery.

We meet in the streets
with our hands in our pockets
and snarl guiltily at each other
as if we had flayed a cloud
or two in our salad days.

Lots of things do blame us;
and in moments when I forget
how cruel we really should...Read more of this...

My Foe

by Robert William Service
 A Belgian Priest-Soldier Speaks;

GURR! You cochon! Stand and fight!
Show your mettle! Snarl and bite!
Spawn of an accursed race,
Turn and meet me face to face!
Here amid the wreck and rout
Let us grip and have it out!
Here where ruins rock and reel
Let us settle, steel to steel!
Look! Our houses, how they spit
Sparks from brands your friends have lit.
See! Our gutters running...Read more of this...

The Man From Eldorado

by Robert William Service
 He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
 In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
 He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;
 Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;
He slops along the...Read more of this...

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