Famous To Boot Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Reasonable Interest

by Ellis Parker Butler
 I want to know how Bernard Shaw
Likes beefsteak—fairly done, or raw?
I want to know what kinds of shoes
M. Maeterlinck and Howells use.

I have great curiosity
Regarding George Ade’s new boot tree.
Has Carolyn Wells of late employed
Hairpins of wire or celluliod?

What kind of soap does London like?
Does Robert Chambers ever “hike”?
Or did he ever? Or, if not,
Does he like cabbage, cheese,...Read more of this...

Novel

by Arthur Rimbaud
 I.

No one's serious at seventeen.
--On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need
--You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.

Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds--the town is near--
And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .

II.

--Over there, framed...Read more of this...

Is Bliss then such Abyss

by Emily Dickinson
 Is Bliss then, such Abyss,
I must not put my foot amiss
For fear I spoil my shoe?

I'd rather suit my foot
Than save my Boot --
For yet to buy another Pair
Is possible,
At any store --

But Bliss, is sold just once.
The Patent lost
None buy it any more --
Say, Foot, decide the point --
The Lady cross, or not?
Verdict for Boot!...Read more of this...

James Simmons R.i.p

by Barry Tebb
 You were the one I wanted most to know

So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,

The casual voice, the sharp invective,

The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant

Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms

Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt

For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry

Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.



You wrote from the heart,...Read more of this...

Sonnet 135: Whoever hath her wish thou hast thy will

by William Shakespeare
 Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all...Read more of this...

Cavalier Tunes: Boot and Saddle

by Robert Browning
 Boot, saddle, to horse and away!
Rescue my Castle, before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray,
(Chorus)
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--
(Chorus)
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"
Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
Flouts Castle Brancepeth...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Gum-Boot Ben

by Robert William Service
 He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
 He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him.
 He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold
 To question his veracity, this is the tale he told.

"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust;
I am not...Read more of this...

On Boot Hill

by Badger Clark
  Up from the prairie and through the pines,
  Over your straggling headboard lines
    Winds of the West go by.
  You must love them, you booted dead,
  More than the dreamers who died in bed--
  You old-timers who took your lead
    Under the open sky!

  Leathery knights of...Read more of this...

Boot And Saddle

by Robert Browning
 Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my Castle, before the hot day
Brightens the blue from its silvery grey,

(Chorus) "Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay,

(Chorus) "Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
Flouts...Read more of this...

White

by Charles Simic
 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard...Read more of this...

The Errand

by Anne Sexton
 I've been going right on, page by page,
since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage,
two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out,
double-crossing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.

But then I've told my readers what I think
and scrubbed out the remainder with my shrink,
have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
have pasted...Read more of this...

A Flower will not trouble her it has so small a Foot

by Emily Dickinson
 A Flower will not trouble her, it has so small a Foot,
And yet if you compare the Lasts,
Hers is the smallest Boot --...Read more of this...

The Third Epigram. (On an ATHEIST)

by Anne Killigrew
 POsthumus boasts he does not Thunder fear, 
And for this cause would Innocent appear; 
That in his Soul no Terrour he does feel, 
At threatn'd Vultures, or Ixion's Wheel, 
Which fright the Guilty: But when Fabius told
What Acts 'gainst Murder lately were enrol'd, 
'Gainst Incest, Rapine, ---- straight upon the Tale
His Colour chang'd, and Posthumus grew pale. 
 His...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

The Sergeants Weddin

by Rudyard Kipling
 'E was warned agin' 'er --
 That's what made 'im look;
She was warned agin' 'im --
 That is why she took.
'Wouldn't 'ear no reason,
 'Went an' done it blind;
We know all about 'em,
 They've got all to find!

Cheer for the Sergeant's weddin' --
Give 'em one cheer more!
Grey gun-'orses in the lando,
An' a rogue is married to, etc.

What's the use...Read more of this...

Loot

by Rudyard Kipling
 If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
 If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
 You will understand this little song o' mine.
But the service rules are 'ard, an' from such we are debarred,
 For the same with English morals does not suit.
 (Cornet: Toot! toot!)
W'y,...Read more of this...

The Supreme Moment

by Charles Simic
 As an ant is powerless 
Against a raised boot, 
And only has an instant 
To have a bright idea or two. 
The black boot so polished, 
He can see himself 
Reflected in it, distorted, 
Perhaps made larger 
Into a huge monster ant 
Shaking his arms and legs 
Threateningly? 

The boot may be hesitating, 
Demurring, having misgivings, 
Gathering cobwebs, 
Dew?...Read more of this...

The Battle of Sheriffmuir

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1715, and on the 10th of November,
Which the people of Scotland have cause to remember;
On that day the Earl of Mar left Perth bound for Sheriffmuir,
At the same time leaving behind a garrison under Colonel Balfour. 

Besides leaving a force of about three thousand men quartered in different parts of Fife,
To protect the people's property,...Read more of this...

Godolphin Horne

by Hilaire Belloc
 Who was cursed with the Sin of Pride, and Became a Boot-Black. 

Godolphin Horne was Nobly Born;
He held the Human Race in Scorn,
And lived with all his Sisters where
His father lived, in Berkeley Square.
And oh! The Lad was Deathly Proud!
He never shook your Hand or Bowed,
But merely smirked and nodded thus:
How perfectly ridiculous!
Alas! That such Affected Tricks
Should flourish in...Read more of this...

Free Verse

by Robert Graves
 I now delight 
In spite 
Of the might 
And the right 
Of classic tradition, 
In writing 
And reciting 
Straight ahead, 
Without let or omission, 
Just any little rhyme
In any little time 
That runs in my head; 
Because, I’ve said, 
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march, 
Stiff as starch, 
Foot to foot, 
Boot to...Read more of this...

Sez You

by Henry Lawson
 When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet, 
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat; 
When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide, 
And it's fifteen miles to water in the scrub the other side -- 
Don't give up, don't be down-hearted, to a man's strong heart...Read more of this...

More Light! More Light!

by Anthony Hecht
 For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt
Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses, and being brought at that time
Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
"I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."

Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,
The sack of gunpowder failing to ignite.
His legs were blistered sticks on which...Read more of this...

My Cross

by Robert William Service
 I wrote a poem to the moon
But no one noticed it;
Although I hoped that late or soon
Someone would praise a bit
Its purity and grace forlone,
Its beauty tulip-cool...
But as my poem died still-born,
I felt a fool.

I wrote a verse of vulgar trend
Spiced with an oath or two;
I tacked a snapper at the end
And called it Dan McGrew.
I spouted it to...Read more of this...

Bein' Back Home

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Home agin, an' home to stay—
Yes, it's nice to be away.
Plenty things to do an' see,
But the old place seems to me
Jest about the proper thing.
Mebbe 'ts 'cause the mem'ries cling
Closer 'round yore place o' birth
'N ary other spot on earth.
W'y it's nice jest settin' here,
Lookin' out an' seein' clear,
'Thout no smoke, ner dust, ner haze
In these sweet October days.
What's...Read more of this...

Ah Moon -- and Star!

by Emily Dickinson
 Ah, Moon -- and Star!
You are very far --
But were no one
Farther than you --
Do you think I'd stop
For a Firmament --
Or a Cubit -- or so?

I could borrow a Bonnet
Of the Lark --
And a Chamois' Silver Boot --
And a stirrup of an Antelope --
And be with you -- Tonight!

But, Moon, and Star,
Though you're very far --
There is one...Read more of this...

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