Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Tug Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Thomas, Dylan
...ever bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...g eased her heart of one more copy—
Legitimately. My demand upon her,
Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.
In time she would be rid of all her books....Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
..." they're shouting, and a rush of the oilskin-clad. 
The lifeboat leaping and swooping, in the wake of the fighting tug, 
And the luggers afloat in Hell's water – Oh, "tourist", with cushion and rug! – 
Think of the freezing fury, without one minute's relief, 
When they stood all night in the blackness by the wreck of the Indian Chief! 

Lashed to their seats, and crouching, to the spray that froze as it flew, 
Twenty-six hours in midwinter! That was the lifeboat's crew.<...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...l not see thy sad, sad sounding shore, 
 France, save my duty, I shall all forget; 
 Amongst the true and tried, I'll tug my oar, 
 And rest proscribed to brand the fawning set. 
 
 O bitter exile, hard, without a term, 
 Thee I accept, nor seek nor care to know 
 Who have down-truckled 'mid the men deemed firm, 
 And who have fled that should have fought the foe. 
 
 If true a thousand stand, with them I stand; 
 A hundred? 'tis enough: we'll Sylla brave; 
 Ten? ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e storm shall dash thy face—the murk of war, and worse than war, shall cover thee
 all
 over; 
(Wert capable of war—its tug and trials? Be capable of peace, its trials; 
For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in peace—not war;)
In many a smiling mask death shall approach, beguiling thee—thou in disease shalt
 swelter;

The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike
 thee
 deep within; 
Consumption of the worst—moral cons...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...t begins within himself, 
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, 
Satan looks up between his feet--both tug-- 
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes 
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! 
Never leave growing till the life to come! 
Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks 
That used to puzzle people wholesomely: 
Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. 
What are the laws of nature, not to bend 
If the Church bid them?--...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...r and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite store-houses by
 the
 docks,

On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on each side by the
 barges—the
 hay-boat, the belated lighter, 
On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly
 into
 the
 night, 
Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops
 of
 houses,
 and down into the clefts of streets. 

4
These, and all els...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...Mammy's in de kitchen, an' de do' is shet;
All de pickaninnies climb an' tug an' sweat,[Pg 242]
Gittin' to de winder, stickin' dah lak flies,
Evah one ermong us des all nose an' eyes.
"Whut's she cookin', Isaac?"
"Whut's she cookin', Jake?"
"Is it sweet pertaters? Is hit pie er cake?"
But we couldn't mek out even whah we stood
Whut was mammy cookin' dat could smell so goo...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...or the stocking, 
for the garter belt, for the call -- 
the curious call 
when you will burrow in arms and breasts 
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair 
and answer the call, the curious call. 
She is so naked and singular 
She is the sum of yourself and your dream. 
Climb her like a monument, step after step. 
She is solid. 
As for me, I am a watercolor. 
I wash off....Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...>

"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him--No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.

"Tell him night finished before we finished
And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended--
What...Read more of this...

by Komunyakaa, Yusef
...
moving toward the interrogation huts,
thin-framed as box kites
of sticks & black silk
anticipating a hard wind
that'll tug & snatch them
out into space. I think
some must be laughing
under their dust-colored hoods,
knowing rockets are aimed
at Chu Lai—that the water's
evaporating & soon the nail
will make contact with metal.
How can anyone anywhere love
these half-broken figures
bent under the sky's brightness?
The weight they carry
is the soil we tread night & day.<...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
..., October, 1840.} 


 A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, 
 Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; 
 And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, 
 Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; 
 Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, 
 And harder in the things they call their hearts than wolfish bands, 
 Perpetuating faults, inventing crimes for paltry ...Read more of this...

by Orlovsky, Peter
...head, blood will soon
 trickle in my ear -
 no choise but the grave, so cat & sheep are daisey
 turned.
Train will tug my grave, my breath hueing gentil vapor
 between weel & track.
So kitten string & ball, jumpe over this mound so
 gently & cutely
So my toe can curl & become a snail & go curiousely
 on its way.

1958 NYC...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...oose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the
 chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, 
The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread wings; 
I see in them and myself the same old law. 

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections; 
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamour’d of growing out-doors, 
Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods, 
...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...horus of calamity - but Casey slumbered on.

Yet oh, that goat was troubled, for his efforts were redoubled;
Now he tugged at Casey's whisker, now he nibbled at his ear;
Now he shook him by the shoulder, and with fear become bolder,
He bellowed like a fog-horn, but the sleeper did not hear.
Then up and down the railway line he scampered for assistance;
But anxiously he hurried back and sought with tug and strain
To pull his master off the track . . . when ...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...spapers gathered around
And offered to give him a pension 
If he lost both his legs and got drowned.

He borrowed a tug from the Navy 
To swim in the shelter alee,
The Wireless folk lent him a wavelength, 
And the Water Board lent him the sea.

His wife strapped a mascot around him, 
The tears to his eyes gently stole;
'Twere some guiness corks she had collected 
And stitched to an old camisole.

He entered the water at daybreak, 
A man with a camera stood near,
H...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...d thee thrown!
     That desperate grasp thy frame might feel
     Through bars of brass and triple steel!
     They tug, they strain! down, down they go,
     The Gael above, Fitz-James below.
     The Chieftain's gripe his throat compressed,
     His knee was planted on his breast;
     His clotted locks he backward threw,
     Across his brow his hand he drew,
     From blood and mist to clear his sight,
     Then gleamed aloft his dagger bright!
     But hate a...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...e excruciating: unless you stiffen into metal, when it is easier to stand stock rigid than to move. 

This is why I tug at them, individually, with my arm round their waist 
The human pillars. 
They are not stronger than I am, blind Samson. 
The house sways. 

I shall be so glad when it comes down. 
I am so tired of the limitations of their Infinite. 
I am so sick of the pretensions of the Spirit. 
I am so weary of pale-face importance. 

Am I ...Read more of this...

by Levertov, Denise
...with its knot about my 
neck, a bridle? Not fear 
but a stirring 
of wonder makes me 
catch my breath when I feel 
the tug of it when I thought 
it had loosened itself and gone....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...
Waiting lies heavy on my lids. It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea. Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind. They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Tug poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs