Famous Spitting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Childs Christmas In Wales

...callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of th...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan


Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Coming Of Arthur

...t a heathen horde, 
Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood, 
And on the spike that split the mother's heart 
Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed, 
He knew not whither he should turn for aid. 

But--for he heard of Arthur newly crowned, 
Though not without an uproar made by those 
Who cried, `He is not Uther's son'--the King 
Sent to him, saying, `Arise, and help us thou! 
For here between the man and beast we die.' 

And Arthur yet had done no deed of ar...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Ash Wednesday

...en the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI 
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
Fr...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Flounder

...is how you hold the pole
to cast the line out straight.
Now put that worm on your hook,
throw it out and wait.
She sat spitting tobacco juice
into a coffee cup.
Hunkered down when she felt the bite,
jerked the pole straight up
reeling and tugging hard at the fish
that wriggled and tried to fight back.
A flounder, she said, and you can tell
'cause one of its sides is black.
The other is white, she said.
It landed with a thump.
I stood there watching that fish flip-flop,
switc...Read more of this...
by Trethewey, Natasha

Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur (excerpt)

...he west,
And with him many of thy people, and knights
Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown
Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee.
Right well in heart they know thee for the King.
Arise, go forth and conquer as of old."

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Far other is this battle in the west
Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth,
And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome,
Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall,
And shook him thro' ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord


Jubilate Agno: Fragment C

...ermannia. 

Let Elasah rejoice with Olibanum White or Male Frankinsense from an Arabian tree, good against Catarrhs and Spitting blood from which Christ Jesus deliver me. 

Let Adna rejoice with Gum Opopanax from the wounded root of a species of panace Heracleum a tall plant growing to be two or three yards high with many large wings of a yellowish green -- good for old coughs and asthmas. 

Let Bedeiah rejoice with Gum Sagapenum flowing from a species of Ferula which grows i...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Jubilate Agno: Fragment D

...ed be the name of the Lord Jesus Emanuel. 

Let Arnold, house of Arnold rejoice with Leucographis a simple good against spitting of blood. 

Let Morris, house of Morris rejoice with Lepidium a Simple of the Cress kind. 

Let Crane, house of Crane rejoice with Libanotis an herb that smells like Frankinsense. 

Let Arden, house of Arden rejoice with Mew an herb with the stalk and leaves like Anise. 

Let Joram, house of Joram rejoice with Meliphylla Balm Gentle God be gracious ...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Lines Written In Recapitulation

...vail To slay one purple giant four feet high and distribute arms 
among his tall attendants, who spit at his name 
when spitting on the ground:
They will be found one day Prone where they fell, or dead sitting 
—and pock-marked wall
Supporting the beautiful back straight as an oak
before it is old. 

I have learned to fail. And I have had my say.
Yet shall I sing until my voice crack
(this being my leisure, this my holiday)
That man was a special thing, and no commodity, 
a t...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

My Great Great Etc. Uncle Patrick Henry

...nvented poverty and bad taste
and getting by and taking it from the boss.
O my mother goes around chewing her nails and
spitting them in a jar: You shouldn't be ashamed
of yourself she says, think of your family.
My family I say what have they ever done but
paint by numbers the most absurd and disgusting scenes
of plastic squalor and human degradation.
Well then think of your great great etc. Uncle
Patrick Henry....Read more of this...
by Tate, James

Reading Moby-Dick at 30000 Feet

...ist.

Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?...Read more of this...
by Hoagland, Tony

The Ballad Of Pious Pete

...hey mounted and hissed like scorpions dim in the dark;
If you'd seen them rebound with a horrible sound, and spitefully spitting a spark;
If you'd watched IT with dread, as it hissed by your bed, that thing with the feelers that crawls--
You'd have settled the brute that attempted to shoot electricity into your walls.

Oh, some they were blue, and they slithered right through; they were silent and squashy and round;
And some they were green; they were wriggly and lean; they w...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Cremona Violin

...stuff waned thinner, but still it bore 
it.
Then a wide rent
Split the arching tent,
And balls of fire spurted through,
Spitting yellow, and mauve, and blue.
One by one they were quenched as they fell,
Only the blue burned steadily.
Paler and paler it grew, and -- faded -- away.
Herr Altgelt 
stopped.
"Well, Lottachen, my Dear, what do you say?
I think I'm in good trim. Now let's have dinner.
What's this, my Love, you're very sweet to-day.
I wonder how it happens I'm the winn...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life

...hlight-beam, its holy-water-tinted air,
down into the open eyes, the lampblack open mouth.
Oh listen to these words I'm spitting out for you.
My distance from you makes them louder.
Are we all waiting for the phone to ring?
Who should it be? What fountain is expected to
thrash forth mysteries of morning joy? What quail-like giant tail of 
promises, pleiades, psalters, plane-trees,
what parapets petalling-forth the invisible
into the world of things,
turning the list into its ...Read more of this...
by Graham, Jorie

The Intruder

...ost, betrayed and secret life
Among its dens and burrows, its clean stones,
Whose denizens can turn upon the world
With spitting tongue, an odor, talon, claw
To sting or soil benevolence, alien
As our clumsy traps, our random scatter of shot,
She swept to the kitchen. Turning on the tap,
She washed and washed the pity from her hands....Read more of this...
by Kizer, Carolyn

The Passing Of Arthur

...west, 
And with him many of thy people, and knights 
Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown 
Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee. 
Right well in heart they know thee for the King. 
Arise, go forth and conquer as of old.' 

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 
'Far other is this battle in the west 
Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth, 
And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome, 
Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall, 
And shook hi...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Shroud of Color

...t on my face I lay defying pain,
Glad of the blood in my smallest vein,
And in my hands I clutched a loyal dream,
Still spitting fire, bright twist and coil and gleam,
And chiseled like a hound's white tooth.
"Oh, I will match you yet," I cried, "to truth."

Right glad I was to stoop to what I once had spurned.
Glad even unto tears; I laughed aloud; I turned
Upon my back, and though the tears for joy would run,
My sight was clear; I looked and saw the rising sun....Read more of this...
by Cullen, Countee

The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

...ots to call
The plot-hatching prince of the tigers,
To your throne by the red-clay wall.

Thus came that genius insane:
Spitting and slinking,
Sneering and vain,
He sprawled to your grassy throne, drunk on The Leaf,
The drug that was cunning and splendor and grief.
He had fled from the mammoth by day,
He had blasted the mammoth by night,
War was his drunkenness,
War was his dreaming,
War was his love and his play.
And he hissed at your heavenly glory
While his councillors sna...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

The Wanderer

...ed her by. 

She passed us close, her seamen paid no heed 
To what was called: they stood, a sullen group, 
Smoking and spitting, careless of her need, 
Mocking the orders given from the poop. 

Her mates and boys were working her; we stared. 
What was the reason of this strange return, 
This third annulling of the thing prepared? 
No outward evil could our eyes discern. 

Only like one who having formed a plan 
Beyond the pitch of common minds, she sailed, 
Mocked and desert...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

When The Year Grows Old

...ut her
 That I wish I could forget—
The look of a scared thing
 Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
 The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
 Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
 And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
 Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
 When the year grows old —
October — November —
 How she disliked the cold!...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Who dares to take this life from me Knows no better

...kampong
For the ripe season has pricked many a sole.

II
la la la tham'-pong
Let's go running intermittent
To the spitting, clucking rubber fruit
And bamboo lashes through the silent graves,
Fresh sod, red mounds, knee stuck, incensing joss sticks
All night long burning, exhuming, expelling the spirit.
Let's scour, hiding behind the lowing boughs of the hibiscus
Skirting the school-green parapet thorny fields.
Let us now squawk, piercing the sultry, humid blanket
...Read more of this...
by Wignesan, T

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