Famous Tonic Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tonic poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tonic poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tonic poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...was said to be the place where
all aspiring poets went, their poems written
on water, with blanks instead of words, a tonic
of silence in the heart of noise, and a vision of lingerie
in the bright morning -- the lingerie to be worn by a moll
holding a tumbler of gin, with her hair
wet from the shower and her best poems waiting to be written....Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
L.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI.
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...The first time I drank gin
I thought it must be hair tonic.
My brother swiped the bottle
from a guy whose father owned
a drug store that sold booze
in those ancient, honorable days
when we acknowledged the stuff
was a drug. Three of us passed
the bottle around, each tasting
with disbelief. People paid
for this? People had to have
it, the way we had to have
the women we never got near.
(Actually they were girls...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...ough culpable suffering, vanquished desire.
Harsh Reality, dread and ineffable Whole,
Distils her red draught, enough tonic and stern
To intoxicate heads and to make the heart burn.
O clean and pure grain, whence are purged all the tares!
Clear torch, chosen out amid many whose flame;
Though ancient in splendour, is false to its name!
It is good to keep step, though beset with hard cares,
With the life that is real, to the far distant goal,
With no arm save the l...Read more of this...
by
Verhaeren, Emile
...ng Head
Is pungent Evergreens --
His Larder -- terse and Militant --
Unknown -- refreshing things --
His Character -- a Tonic --
His future -- a Dispute --
Unfair an Immortality
That leaves this Neighbor out --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...e divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could n...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...The heart soil ready for their coming, as
The earth spreads carpets for the feet of Spring,
Or, with the strengthening tonic of the frost,
Prepares for Winter. Should a July noon
Burst suddenly upon a frozen world
Small joy would follow, even tho' that world
Were longing for the Summer. Should the sting
Of sharp December pierce the heart of June,
What death and devastation would ensue!
All things are planned. The most majestic sphere
That whirls through space is governed ...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...s burden,
Every heart its load.
Why sit down in gloom and darkness
With your grief to sup?
As you drink Fate’s bitter tonic,
Smile across the cup.
Smile upon the troubled pilgrims
Whom you pass and meet;
Frowns are thorns, and smiles are blossoms
Oft for weary feet.
Do not make the way seem harder
By a sullen face;
Smile a little, smile a little,
Brighten up the place.
Smile upon your undone labour;
Not for one who grieves
O’er his task waits wealth or glory;
He who...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...s land,
Trees, cows and hedges; skipping these, he scanned
Large, friendly names, that change not with the year,
Lung Tonic, Mustard, Liver Pills and Beer....Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...ient Word that will not be erased,
Or, save in incommunicable gleams
Too permanent for dreams,
Be found or known.
No tonic and ambitious irritant
Of increase or of want
Has made an otherwise insensate waste
Of ages overthrown
A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste
Of other ages that are still to be
Depleted and rewarded variously
Because a few, by fate’s economy,
Shall seem to move the world the way it goes;
No soft evangel of equality,
Safe-cradled in a communal...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
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