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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The Vanishing Red

by Robert Frost
 He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
'Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
When it's just that...Read more of this...

Kelly Of The Legion

by Robert William Service
 Now Kelly was no fighter;
He loved his pipe and glass;
An easygoing blighter,
Who lived in Montparnasse.
But 'mid the tavern tattle
He heard some guinney say:
"When France goes forth to battle,
The Legion leads the way.

 "The scourings of creation,
 Of every sin and station,
 The men who've known damnation,
 Are picked to lead the way."

Well, Kelly joined the Legion;
They marched him day...Read more of this...

A Pit -- but Heaven over it --

by Emily Dickinson
 A Pit -- but Heaven over it --
And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad,
And yet a Pit --
With Heaven over it.

To stir would be to slip --
To look would be to drop --
To dream -- to sap the Prop
That holds my chances up.
Ah! Pit! With Heaven over it!

The depth is all my thought --
I dare not ask my feet --
'Twould...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Pious Pete

by Robert William Service
 "The North has got him." --Yukonism.


I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could;
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for...Read more of this...

Out from Behind this Mask

by Walt Whitman
 1
OUT from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask, 
(All straighter, liker Masks rejected—this preferr’d,) 
This common curtain of the face, contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in each for
 each,

(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—O heaven! 
The passionate, teeming plays this curtain hid!)
This glaze of God’s serenest, purest sky, 
This film of Satan’s seething pit, 
This heart’s geography’s map—this...Read more of this...

The Book of Thel

by William Blake
 THEL'S MOTTO 

1 Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? 
2 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
3 Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
4 Or Love in a golden bowl? 

I 

1.1 The daughters of the Seraphim led round their sunny flocks, 
1.2 All but the youngest: she in paleness sought the secret air,
1.3 To...Read more of this...

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

by Ted Hughes
 She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over...Read more of this...

Scotland 1941

by Edwin Muir
 We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.
A simple sky roofed in that rustic day,
The busy corn-fields and the haunted holms,
The green road winding up the ferny brae.
But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms
And bundled all...Read more of this...

Translations: Dante - Inferno Canto XXVI

by Alan Seeger
 Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea 
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee 
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. 
So noble were the five I found to dwell 
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me 
And no great praise is thine; but if it be 
That truth unveil in...Read more of this...

On the City Wall

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   We have left Gul Kach behind us,
      Are marching on Apozai,—
   Where pleasure and rest are waiting
      To welcome us by and by.

   We're falling back from the Gomal,
      Across the Gir-dao plain,
   The camping ground...Read more of this...

Psalm 40 Part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-8,5,17 
C. M.
A song of deliverance from great distress.

I waited patient for the Lord,
He bowed to hear my cry;
He saw me resting on his word,
And brought salvation nigh.

He raised me from a horrid pit,
Where mourning long I lay,
And from my bonds released my feet,
Deep bonds of miry clay.

Firm on a rock he made me stand,
And taught my cheerful tongue
To...Read more of this...

The Twa Jocks

by Robert William Service
 Says Bauldy MacGreegor frae Gleska tae Hecky MacCrimmon frae Skye:
"That's whit I hate maist aboot fechtin' -- it makes ye sae deevilish dry;
Noo jist hae a keek at yon ferm-hoose them Gairmans are poundin' sae fine,
Weel, think o' it, doon in the dunnie there's bottles and bottles o' wine.
A' hell's fairly belchin' oot yonner, but oh, lad, I'm ettlin'...Read more of this...

Sonnet XI: In Truth Oh Love

by Sir Philip Sidney
 In truth, oh Love, with what a boyish kind 
Thou doest proceed in thy most serious ways: 
That when the heav'n to thee his best displays, 
Yet of that best thou leav'st the best behind. 

For like a child that some fair book doth find, 
With gilded leaves or colored vellum plays, 
Or at the most on some find...Read more of this...

The Sphinx

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer
While they slumbered and slept:--

"The fate of the man-child,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalion plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?

"Erect as a sunbeam,
Unspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and...Read more of this...

Phoebus with Admetus

by George Meredith
 WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, 
 Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, 
Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, 
 Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod! 
Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe 
 Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, 
How the rustic flute drew the silver...Read more of this...

The Coward

by Robert William Service
 'Ave you seen Bill's mug in the Noos to-day?
'E's gyned the Victoriar Cross, they say;
Little Bill wot would grizzle and run away,
 If you 'it 'im a swipe on the jawr.
'E's slaughtered the Kaiser's men in tons;
'E's captured one of their quick-fire guns,
And 'e 'adn't no practice in killin' 'Uns
 Afore 'e went off to the war.

Little Bill wot...Read more of this...

Sainte-Nitouche

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though not for common praise of him, 
Nor yet for pride or charity, 
Still would I make to Vanderberg 
One tribute for his memory: 

One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass— 
Who neither blamed him in defect 
Nor marveled how it came to pass; 

Or why it ever was that he— 
That Vanderberg,...Read more of this...

The Country Life:

by Robert Herrick
 TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF
THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTY

Sweet country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee.
Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
To seek and bring rough pepper home:
Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove
To bring from thence the scorched clove:
Nor, with the loss of...Read more of this...

The Lost Battle

by Victor Hugo
 ("Allah! qui me rendra-") 
 
 {XVI., May, 1828.} 


 Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array? 
 My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day; 
 My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the sight, 
 Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow of night, 
 Seemed oft unto the sentinel that...Read more of this...

The First Chantey

by Rudyard Kipling
 1896

Mine was the woman to me, darkling I found her:
Haling her dumb from the camp, held her and bound her.
Hot rose her tribe on our track ere I had proved her;
Hearing her laugh in the gloom, greatly I loved her.

Swift through the forest we ran, none stood to guard us,
Few were my people and fa; then the flood barred...Read more of this...

26. John Barleycorn: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 THERE was three kings into the east,
 Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
 John Barleycorn should die.


They took a plough and plough’d him down,
 Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
 John Barleycorn was dead.


But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
 And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up...Read more of this...

Reconciliation

by William Butler Yeats
 Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning, you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you - but now
We'll out, for the...Read more of this...

A Collier's Wife

by D. H. Lawrence
Somebody's knocking at the door
    Mother, come down and see.
--I's think it's nobbut a beggar,
    Say, I'm busy.

Its not a beggar, mother,--hark
    How hard he knocks ...
--Eh, tha'rt a mard-'arsed kid,
    'E'll gi'e thee socks!

Shout an' ax what 'e wants,
    I canna come down.
--'E says...Read more of this...

From The Shore

by Carl Sandburg
 A LONE gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist...Read more of this...

My Mothers Body

by Marge Piercy
 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...Read more of this...

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