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Famous Sods Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...sical 
 Of many mourners roll'd. 

I among these, I also, in such station 
 As when the pyre was charr'd, and piled the sods. 
 And offering to the dead made, and their gods, 
The old mourners had, standing to make libation, 
 I stand, and to the Gods and to the dead 
 Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed 
Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, 
 And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear, 
 And what I may of fruits in this chill'd air, 
And lay, Orestes...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles



...no time to check - a female whisper or in drag
mosquitoes daren't treat such presence slackly
a wispy whoosh - the poor sods are in the bag

satan's emissaries (the devil's darning needles)
mischief makers - tell lies they stitch you lip to lip
they're elusive (haunting) as the best of riddles
forcing you to sense the eternal as a blip

illusion change - stuff timelessness is made of
beauty allure - life's compulsive invitations
what's wanted's lost - it's always on the move
...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg
...the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to ...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus
...Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it....Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus
...rettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute grey lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!

LOVE.

So, the year's done with
(_Love me for ever!_)
All March begun with,
April's endeavour;
May-wreaths that bound me
Jun...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...n bovine, grim, earth-dank persistence.

Suddenly seizing the ugly ankle as she stretches out to walk,
Roaming over the sods,
Or, if it happen to show, at her pointed, heavy tail
Beneath the low-dropping back-board of her shell.

Their two shells like domed boats bumping,
Hers huge, his small;
Their splay feet rambling and rowing like paddles,
And stumbling mixed up in one another,
In the race of love --
Two tortoises,
She huge, he small.

She seems earthily apathetic,
And he...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.
...eed the earth all new turned
Where I left it in my hurry.
I did a heap o' gardenin'
That mornin'.
I couldn't cut no big sods
Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted 'em fer,
So I got teeny bits o' turf here and ther,
And no one couldn't tell ther'd be'n any diggin'
When I got through.
They was awful days after that, Mis' Priest,
I used ter go every mornin' and poke about them bushes,
An' up and down the fence,
Ter find the body that hand come off of.
But I couldn'...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...hrashing arrows of the rain! 
Pouring and dripping on the roofs and rods, 
Smelling of woods and hills and fresh-turned sods, 
Black on the sidewalks, gray in the far sky, 
Crashing on thirsty panes, on gutters dry, 
Hurrying the crowd to shelter, making fair 
The streets, the houses, and the heat-soaked air, -- 
Merciful, holy, charging, sweeping, flashing, 
It smote the soul with a most iron clashing! . . . 
Like dragons' eyes the street-lamps suddenly gleamed, 
Yellow and ...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.

Once, while he nodded on a chair,
At the moth-hour of eve,
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.

'I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die';
And after cried he, 'God forgive!
My body spake, not I!'

He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars be...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...
And savage in the fight.

"You sing of the young gods easily
In the days when you are young;
But I go smelling yew and sods,
And I know there are gods behind the gods,
Gods that are best unsung.

"And a man grows ugly for women,
And a man grows dull with ale,
Well if he find in his soul at last
Fury, that does not fail.

"The wrath of the gods behind the gods
Who would rend all gods and men,
Well if the old man's heart hath still
Wheels sped of rage and roaring will,
Like ca...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...ll his might;
And again and again he was met by desperate odds,
But he scattered them around him and made them kiss the sods. 

And he killed eleven of the enemy with sword in hand,
Which secured for him the proudest of all honours in the land,
Namely, that coveted honour called the Victoria Cross,
Of which many a deserving hero has known the loss. 

And as for brave Hodson-- he was a warrior born,
And military uniform did his body adorn;
And his voice could be heard in the b...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...eager as well.
Hiding his pain to the sound of the knell,
With strokes of the spade turns round and round
The weary sods of the dried-up ground.


Then—fear-struck dallyings with suicide;
Delays, that conquer hours that would decide:
Again—the terrors of dark crime and sin
Furtively felt with frenzied fingers thin:
The fierce craze and the fervent rage to be
The man who lives of the extremity
Of his own fear:
And then, too, doubt immense and wild affright.
And ...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry