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Famous Soak Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Murray, Les
...rkets;
the Lycra-bulging surf drips from non-swimmers
miles from shore, and somehow includes soil.
Skins, touching, soak each other. Skin touching
any surface wets that and itself
in a kind of mutual digestion.
Throbbing heads grow lianas of nonsense. 

It's our annual visit to the latitudes
of rice, kerosene and resignation,
an averted, temporary visit
unrelated, for most, to the attitudes
of festive northbound jets gaining height -
closer, for some few, to t...Read more of this...



by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...ent to mamma - 
the steel of words corrodes,
 the brass of the brass tarnishes.
Why,
 beneath foreign rains,
must I soak,
 rot,
 and rust?
Here I recline,
 having gone oversea,
in my idleness
 barely moving
 my machine parts.
I myself
 feel like a Soviet
 factory,
manufacturing happiness.
I object
 to being torn up,
like a flower of the fields,
 after a long day’s work.
I want
 the Gosplan to sweat
 in debate,
assignning me
 goals a year ahead.
I want
 a c...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...the back precarious bathrooms
Jutting out from upper floors;

And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...ows the yellow button with a black button one
inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
to us?...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
....
Touches the clasp with trembling fingers, and tries
To put her ear to the painful sob of my blood,
While her tears soak through to my breast,
      Where they burn and cauterise.


III

  The moon lies back and reddens.
  In the valley, a corncrake calls
        Monotonously,
  With a piteous, unalterable plaint, that deadens
        My confident activity:
  With a hoarse, insistent request that falls
        Unweariedly, unweariedly,
        Asking somethin...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...ginners in the hills.
Tumble, Oh cubs—to-morrow belongs to you.

The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.

The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.

Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...we know most distant and most dear,
Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,
 Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?
When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters
 And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing on the aching white-washed ceiling,
 Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
 We are dropping down the ladder rung by...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...h to be witnesses of
large cool sponges, large cool fishes, large cool valleys
and ridges of coral spread silent in the soak of
the ocean floor thousands of years.

A naked swimmer dives. A knife in his right hand
shoots a streak at the throat of a shark. The tail
of the shark lashes. One swing would kill the swimmer. . .
Soon the knife goes into the soft under-
neck of the veering fish. . . Its mouthful of teeth,
each tooth a dagger it...Read more of this...

by Fu, Du
... Boy draw water well shining Agile container rise hand Wet sprinkle not soak earth Sweep surpass like without broom Bright rosy clouds shining again pavilion Clear mist lift high window Lean fill cover path flower Dance end steps willow Difficulty world affair compel Hide away right time after Meet talk agree deep heart How can all restrain mouth Offer goodbye return cane riding crop T...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...man is always child)—Stay, here's a brow 
 Split by the Zouaves' bullets! This one, now, 
 With the bright curly hair soaked so in blood, 
 Was yours, ma donna!—sweet and fair and good. 
 
 The spirit sat upon his fearless face 
 Before they murdered it, in all the grace 
 Of manhood's dawn. Sisters, here's yours! his lips, 
 Over whose bloom the bloody death-foam slips, 
 Lisped house-songs after you, and said your name 
 In loving prattle once. That hand, the same...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...tle booze if the boys are feeling good.

They'll jeer at me, and they'll sneer at me, and they'll call me a whiskey soak;
 ("Have a drink? Well, thankee kindly, sir, I don't mind if I do.")
A drivelling, dirty, gin-joint fiend, the butt of the bar-room joke;
 Sunk and sodden and hopeless -- "Another? Well, here's to you!"

McGuffy is showing a bunch of the boys how Bob Fitzsimmons hit;
 The barman is talking of Tammany Hall, and why the ward boss got fired.
I'll j...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart like so many working folk
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
 wing
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring


When jumping time away on old cross berry way
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day
On the rolly polly up and downs ...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread, 
Every day and every night, 
Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white. 

Do not chew the hemlock rank,
Growing on the weedy bank; 
But the yellow cowslips eat; 
They perhaps will make it sweet. 

Where the purple violet grows,
Where the bubbling water flows, 
Where the grass is fresh and fine, 
Pretty cow, go there to dine....Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...ing through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,
Gently and slowly washing life away.

He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
But someone was beside him; soon he lay
Shuddering because that evil thing had ...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...t and sing the whole day long;
I would fill my lungs with the strongest brine,
And squirt it up in a spray of song,
And soak my head in my liquid voice;
I'd curl my tail in curves divine,
And let each curve in a kink rejoice.
I'd tackle the mermaids under the sea,
And yank 'em around till they yanked me,
Sportively, sportively;
And then we would wiggle away, away,
To the pea-green groves on the coast of day,
Chasing each other sportively.

III

There would be neither ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em clean
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine.
It worked all right. She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd do
With all that bucket load of high explosive residue.
She knew that it was dangerous to scatter it around,
For Grandpa liked to throw his lighted matches on the ground.
Somehow she didn't dare to pour it down the kitchen sink, 
And what the heck...Read more of this...

by Villani, Luisa
...et it sit for a day,
 you will have water
that can bring brightness to anything.
 If you take that water,
and in it soak your husband's shirts,
 he'll pause at dawn when he puts one on,
its softness like a haunting afterthought.
 And if he works all day in the selva,
he'll divine his way home
 in shirtsleeves aglow with torchlight....Read more of this...

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