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Famous The Pit Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilmot, John
...and lives, and loves by rote,
In an old tawdry birthday coat.

The second was a Grays Inn wit,
A great inhabiter of the pit,
Where critic-like he sits and squints,
Steals pocket handkerchiefs, and hints
From 's neighbor, and the comedy,
To court, and pay, his landlady.

The third, a lady's eldest son
Within few years of twenty-one
Who hopes from his propitious fate,
Against he comes to his estate,
By these two worthies to be made
A most accomplished tearing blade....Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...as he raised her feet; 
 Her dainty ankles thus their gaze to meet. 
 And while the mystic sleep was all profound, 
 The pit gaped wide like grave in burial ground. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 WHAT THEY ATTEMPT BECOMES DIFFICULT. 
 
 Bearing the sleeping Mahaud they moved now 
 Silent and bent with heavy step and slow. 
 Zeno faced darkness—Joss turned towards the light— 
 So that the hall to Joss was quite in sight. 
 Sudden he stopped—and Zeno, "What now!" called, 
 But Joss...Read more of this...

by Paz, Octavio
...The page
has become an ants’ nest.
                           The void
has settled at the pit of my stomach.
                                       I fall
endlessly through that void.
                              I fall without falling.
My hands are cold,
                    my feet cold –
but the alphabets are burning, burning.
                                         Space
makes and unmakes itself.
                           The n...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...play,
The silly bard grows fat, or falls away.


There still remains, to mortify a wit,
The many-headed monster of the pit:
A senseless, worthless, and unhonour'd crowd;
Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,
Clatt'ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke,
Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke.
What dear delight to Britons farce affords!
Farce once the taste of mobs, but now of lords;
(For taste, eternal wanderer, now flies
From heads to ears, and ...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...iver, or wand,
Nor chaplet on his head or hand:
Leave his weeds and heed his eyes,
All the rest he can disguise.
In the pit of his eyes a spark
Would bring back day if it were dark,
And,—if I tell you all my thought,
Though I comprehend it not,—
In those unfathomable orbs
Every function he absorbs;
He doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot,
And write, and reason, and compute,
And ride, and run, and have, and hold,
And whine, and flatter, and regret,
And kiss, and couple...Read more of this...



by Henley, William Ernest
...Out of the night that covers me, 
 Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
 For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
 Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years 
 Finds, an...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...et gentle George in triumph tread the stage,
Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And in their folly show the writer's wit.
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,
And justify their author's want of sense.
Let 'em be all by thy own model made
Of dullness, and desire no foreign aid:
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.
Nay let thy men of wit too be the same,
All full of...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach,
I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach.
Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound,
You couldn't even call out my name.
You were helpless and so was I,
But unfortunately throughout history
You've worn a badge of shame.

I say...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...1. 

The dark socket of the year 
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down 
and threatens never to rise, 
when despair descends softly as the snow 
covering all paths and choking roads: 

then hawkfaced pain seized you 
threw you so you fell with a sharp 
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. 
My father heard the crash but paid 
no mind, napping after lunch 

yet fifteen hundred miles no...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ingly where he stood on the bare strand, 
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof? 
 The chief were those who, from the pit of Hell 
Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix 
Their seats, long after, next the seat of God, 
Their altars by his altar, gods adored 
Among the nations round, and durst abide 
Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned 
Between the Cherubim; yea, often placed 
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, 
Abominations; and with cursed things 
H...Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...nas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit;
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls.

God knows what I did he should seek to be rid of one who would save him from shame.
God knows what I bore that night when he swore and bade me make tracks from his claim.
I star...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ss the deed.

And as ye have given your hand for gain,
 So must ye give in loss;
And as ye ha' come to the brink of the pit,
 So must ye loup across.

For some be rogues in grain, Red Earl,
 And some be rogues in fact,
And rogues direct and rogues elect;
 But all be rogues in pact.

Ye have cast your lot with these, Red Earl;
 Take heed to where ye stand.
Ye have tied a knot with your tongue, Red Earl,
 That ye cannot loose with your hand.

Ye have travell...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...these circumstances, would you now? 
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, 
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, 
Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!' 
Thinks I, D'ye mean it? 'What was that you said?' 
I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake, 
'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.' 
He said it over, but he said it softer. 
Never you say a thing like that to a man, 
Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as soon 
Murdered him...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...I wonder." 
"The Indians had a myth of Chicamoztoc, 
Which means The Seven Caves that We Came out of. 
This is the pit from which we Starks were digged." 
"You must be learned. That's what you see in it?" 
"And what do you see?" 
"Yes, what do I see? 
First let me look. I see raspberry vines----" 
"Oh, if you're going to use your eyes, just hear 
What I see. It's a little, little boy, 
As pale and dim as a match flame in the sun; 
He's groping in the ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ole in the wire-work
Across it, and dropped there a firework,
And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;
A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled,
The blackness and silence so utter,
By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter;
Then earth in a sudden contortion
Gave out to our gaze her abortion.
Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot
(Whose experience of nature's but narrow,
And whose faculties move in no small mist
When he versifies David the Psalmist)
I should st...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...ger,
Seen for the first time
Splendid and golden;
On they come fluctuant,
Seething and breaking,
Weltering like fire
In the pit of the earthquake,
Bursting in heaps
With the sudden intractable
Lust of the hunger:
Then when they see them-
The miles of the harvest
White in the sunshine,
Rushing and stumbling,
With the mighty and clamorous
Cry of a people
Starved from creation,
Hurl themselves onward,
Deep in the wheat-fields,
Weeping like children,
After ages and ages,
Back at ...Read more of this...

by Wakoski, Diane
...clean historical
ugliness of men dying at work.

If you imagine, friend, that I do not have those
black serpents in the pit of my body,
that I am not crushed in fragments by the tough 
butterfly wing
broken and crumpled like a black silk stocking,
if you imagine that my body is not
blackened
burned wood,
then you imagine a false woman.

This marriage could not change me.
Could not change my life.
Not is it that different from any other marriage.
They are a...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...untain ride the fierce horsemen.

 III

Come gather round me, players all:
Come praise Nineteen-Sixteen,
Those from the pit and gallery
Or from the painted scene
That fought in the Post Office
Or round the City Hall,
praise every man that came again,
Praise every man that fell.

From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

Who was the first man shot that day?
The player Connolly,
Close to the City Hall he died;
Catriage and voice had he;
He lacked those ye...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...ort
of company, and Wordsworth's opposite.
That's two peers already, of a sort,
and we'll all be thrown together if the pit,

whose galleries once ran beneath this plot,
causes the distinguished dead to drop 
into the rabblement of bone and rot,
shored slack, crushed shale, smashed prop.

Wordsworth built church organs, Byron tanned
luggage cowhide in the age of steam,
and knew their place of rest before the land
caves in on the lowest worked-out seam.

This grave...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs