Famous Sour Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sour poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sour poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sour poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Butler Yeats
'Love is all
Unsatisfied
That cannot take the whole
Body and soul';
And that is what Jane said.
'Take the sour
If you take me
I can scoff and lour
And scold for an hour.'
"That's certainly the case,' said he.
'Naked I lay,
The grass my bed;
Naked and hidden away,
That black day';
And that is what Jane said.
'What can be shown?
What true love be?
All could be known or shown
If Time...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
I
I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.
These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in...Read more of this...
by
Horace
O lovelier than the lovely dame
That bore you, sentence as you please
Those scurril verses, be it flame
Your vengeance craves, or Hadrian seas.
Not Cybele, nor he that haunts
...Read more of this...
by
Louise Bogan
I've come to give you fruit from out my orchard,
Of wide report.
I have trees there that bear me many apples.
Of every sort:
Clear, streaked; red and russet; green and golden;
Sour and sweet.
This apple's from a tree yet unbeholden,
Where two kinds meet,—
So that this side is red without a dapple,
And this side's hue
Is clear and snowy. It's a lovely apple.
It is...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers
that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,
suffering the consumers
who won't...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour 'prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
SMALL is the trust when love is green
In sap of early years;
A little thing steps in between
And kisses turn to tears.
Awhile - and see how love be grown
In loveliness and power!
Awhile, it loves the sweets alone,
But next it loves the sour.
A little love is none at all
That wanders or that fears;
A hearty love dwells still at call
To kisses or...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Say that the men of the old black tower,
Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds,
Their money spent, their wine gone sour,
Lack nothing that a soldier needs,
That all are oath-bound men:
Those banners come not in.
There in the tomb stand the dead upright,
But winds come up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.
Those banners...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’d been,
With stories of the glories that they’d seen.
But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well
In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell,
Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,
Endured experience in your *****, kind face,
Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes,
And both your brothers killed to make you wise;...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Beyond the Rocking Bridge it lies, the burg of evil fame,
The huts where hive and swarm and thrive the sisterhood of shame.
Through all the night each cabin light goes out and then goes in,
A blood-red heliograph of lust, a semaphore of sin.
From Dawson Town, soft skulking down, each lewdster seeks his mate;
And glad and bad, kimono clad, the wanton...Read more of this...
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...
by
Robert Herrick
Since shed or cottage I have none,
I sing the more, that thou hast one;
To whose glad threshold, and free door
I may a Poet come, though poor;
And eat with thee a savoury bit,
Paying but common thanks for it.
--Yet should I chance, my Wicks, to see
An over-leaven look in thee,
To sour the bread, and turn the beer
To an exalted vinegar;
Or should'st...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Sitting in the dentist's chair,
Wishing that I wasn't there,
To forget and pass the time
I have made this bit of rhyme.
I had a rendez-vous at ten;
I rushed to get in line,
But found a lot of dames and men
Had waited there since nine;
I stared at them, then in an hour
Was blandly ushered in;
But though my face was grim and sour
He met...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Can I, my friend, with thee condole?--
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?--
Poor martyr,--most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;--
A faithless wife,--I grant the curse,--
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting...Read more of this...
by
Laurie Lee
Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
AULD chuckie Reekie’s 1 sair distrest,
Down droops her ance weel burnish’d crest,
Nae joy her bonie buskit nest
Can yield ava,
Her darling bird that she lo’es best—
Willie’s awa!
O Willie was a witty wight,
And had o’ things an unco’ sleight,
Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight,
And trig an’ braw:
But now they’ll busk her like a fright,—
Willie’s awa!
The stiffest o’...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Tramp, tramp, the grim road, the road from Mons to Wipers
(I've 'ammered out this ditty with me bruised and bleedin' feet);
Tramp, tramp, the dim road -- we didn't 'ave no pipers,
And bellies that was 'oller was the drums we 'ad to beat.
Tramp, tramp, the bad road, the bits o' kiddies cryin' there,
The fell birds a-flyin' there,...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?)
Outside fair costume—within ashes and filth,
No more a flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice or springy step;
Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos'd of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev'ry Corporation.
The humble soul compos'd of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,
And you're cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn't cool and shady -- and there wasn't whips of beer,
And the looney bullock snorted when you first came into view...Read more of this...
by
Robert Lowell
(for Elizabeth Bishop)
Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.
Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore
and lets them fall.
The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire
who seemed to leap from an L....Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
O DULL cold northern sky,
O brawling sabbath bells,
O feebly twittering Autumn bird that tells
The year is like to die!
O still, spoiled trees, O city ways,
O sun desired in vain,
O dread presentiment of coming rain
That cloys the sullen days!
Thee, heart of mine, I greet.
In what hard mountain pass
Striv'st thou? In what importunate morass
Sink now thy weary feet?
Thou run'st a hopeless...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
In o'er-strict calyx lingering,
Lay music's bud too long unblown,
Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.
O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,
O Troubadour of love and strife,
Co-Litanist of right and wrong,
Sole Hymner of the whole of life,
I know not how, I care not why, --
Thy music sets my world at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
And Betty otherwise employed,
Stole in and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the...Read more of this...
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