Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Sweats Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Mueller, Lisel
...lace 
waits for its liberation, 
and the match on the table packs its head 
with anticipation of light. 
The faucet sweats out a bead of water, 
which gathers strength for the free fall, 
while the lettuce in the refrigerator 
succumbs to its brown killer. 
And in the novel I put down 
before I fall asleep, 
the paneled walls of a room 
are condemned to stand and wait 
for tomorrow, when I'll get to the page 
where the prisoner finds the secret door 
and steps into ai...Read more of this...



by de la Mare, Walter
...ney. Nine o'clock.
You are alone for the first time
today. Boys asleep. Husband out.

A beer bottle sweats in your hand,
and sea lavender clogs the air
with perfume. Think of yourself.
Your arms rest with nothing to do

after weeks spent attending to others.
Your thoughts turn to whether
butter will last the week, how much
longer the car can run on its partial tank of gas....Read more of this...

by Lee, Laurie
...blue, the sky wraps round 
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod 
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world 
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud. 

If ever I heard blessing it is there 
Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are 
Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound 
Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air. 

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates, 
The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones, 
While white as water by the la...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...d Gardens.
Night moths fly and fix their feet in the leaves and eat and are seen by the eaters.
The jazz outfit sweats and the drums and the saxophones reach for the ears of the eaters.
The chorus brought from Broadway works at the fun and the slouch of their shoulders, the kick of their ankles, reach for the eyes of the eaters.
These girls from Kokomo and Peoria, these hungry girls, since they are paid-for, let us look on and listen, let us get their number.<...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...n
trumpets, one more gesture
war. His glare,

a shield
reflecting fires,
a brass brow that cannot frown
at carnage, sweats the sun's force.

It is not the turmoil
of autumnal lust,
its treacheries, that drove
him, fired and grimed with dust,

this far, not even love,
but a great rage without
clamor, that grew great
because its depth is quiet;

it hears the river
of her young brown blood,
it feels the whole sky quiver
with her blue eyelid.

She sleeps with the soft...Read more of this...



by Donne, John
...t swol'n, doth thee embrace;
To try if thou long, doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushing, sighs, and sweats;
And politicly will to thee confess
The sins of her own youth's rank lustiness;
Yet love these sorceries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like faery sprites
Oft skipped into our chamber, those sweet nights,
And kissed, and ingled on thy father's knee,
Were bribed next day to tell what they ...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...t renew'd. 
The waining Wretch, each day become more faint, 
In like proportion doubles his Complaint;
Now swooning Sweats he begs him to allay,
Now give his Lungs more liberty to play, 
And take from empty'd Veins these scorching Heats away:
Or if he saw the Danger did increase, 
To warn him fair, and let him part in Peace. 
My Life for yours, no Hazard in your Case 
The Quack replies; your Voice, your Pulse, your Face, 

Good Signs afford, and what you seem to feel
...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...nto nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a 
 trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic 
 City Hall, 
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- 
 ings and migraines of China under junk-with- 
 drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, 
who wandered around and around at midnight in the 
 railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, 
 leaving no broken hearts, 
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing 
 through snow toward lonesome farms in grand- 
 fat...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...e with Balsam of Tolu. 

Let Tabeel rejoice with the Carob-Tree. 

Let Ariel rejoice with Balsam of Peru, which sweats from a tree, that flowers like the Foxglove. 

Let Ebed rejoice with Balsam of Gilead. God be gracious to Stede. 

Let Jarib rejoice with Balsam of Capivi. The Lord strengthen my reins. 

Let Shimshai rejoice with Stelis Missletoe on Fir. 

Let Joiarib rejoice with Veronica Fluellen or Speedwell. 

Let Tatnai rejoice with t...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...it sits outside my window now
like and old woman going to market;
it sits and watches me,
it sweats nevously
through wire and fog and dog-bark
until suddenly
I slam the screen with a newspaper
like slapping at a fly
and you could hear the scream
over this plain city,
and then it left.

the way to end a poem
like this
is to become suddenly
quiet....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...he sea

Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...begun—how the white sails
 sparkle! 
The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that would stray; 
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the
 odd cent;) 
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype;
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly; 
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips; 
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hot hand seeking to repress what would master
 him; 
The mystic amorous night—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats, 
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers—the young man all
 color’d, red, ashamed, angry; 
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never
 turning her vigilant eyes from them, 
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and th...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was—mock. O I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I c?n scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, O the woeful word! Then what,
What have we se...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...nto a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.


IV


There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they r...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...n: where the walls
  Of Magnus Martyr hold
  Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

       The river sweats
       Oil and tar
       The barges drift
       With the turning tide
       Red sails                                                          270
       Wide
       To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
       The barges wash
       Drifting logs
       Down Greenwich reach
       Past the Isle of Dogs.
            Weialala leia
...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...en a working day in 1944. 
For Baharozian at seventeen the present 
was a gift. Seeing my ashen face, 
the cold sweats starting, he seated me 
in a corner of the boxcar and did 
both our jobs, stacking the full cases 
neatly row upon row and whistling 
the songs of Kate Smith. In the bathroom 
that night I posed naked before the mirror, 
the new cross of hair staining my chest, 
plunging to my groin. That was Wednesday, 
for every Wednesday ended in darkness.<...Read more of this...

by Cowper, William
...but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful ev'ning in.
Not such his ev'ning, who with shining face
Sweats in the crowded theatre, and, squeez'd
And bor'd with elbow-points through both his sides,
Out-scolds the ranting actor on the stage:
Nor his, who patient stands till his feet throb,
And his head thumps, to feed upon the breath
Of patriots, bursting with heroic rage,
Or placemen, all tranquility and smiles.
This folio of four pages, happy work!
Whi...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Mine? I likes their cheek.
 Me mud-bespattered by the cars they drive,
Wot makes my measly thirty bob a week,
 And sweats red blood to keep meself alive!
Fight for the right to slave that they may spend,
 Them in their mansions, me 'ere in my slum?
No, let 'em fight wot's something to defend:
 But me, I've nothin' -- let the Kaiser come.
 And so I cusses 'ard and well,
 But . . . wot the 'ell, Bill? Wot the 'ell?

Sez I: If they would do the decent thing,...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...n lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
 The river sweats
 Oil and tar
 The barges drift
 With the turning tide
 Red sails 
 Wide
 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
 The barges wash
 Drifting logs
 Down Greenwich reach
 Past the Isle of Dogs.
 Weialala leia
 Wallala leialala
 Elizabeth and Leicester
 Beating oars 
 The stern was formed
 A gilded shell
 Red and gold
 The brisk swell
 Rippled both s...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Sweats poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs