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Famous Whips Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...roars make the grand-stand shake, 
They come down the straignt together. 

Trident slowly forges ahead, 
The fierce whips cut and the spurs are red, 
The pace is undiminished 
Now for the Panics that never fail! 
But many a backer's face grows pale 
As old Commotion swings his tail 
And swerves -- and the Cup is finished. 

* * * * * 

And now in my dream it all comes back: 
I bet my coin on the Sydney crack, 
A million I've won, no question! 
"Give me my money, you h...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...y all get driven in: 
The fields are stripped to lawn, the garden patches 
Stripped to bare ground, the apple trees 
To whips and poles. There's nobody about. 
The chimney, though, keeps up a good brisk smoking. 
And I lie back and ride. I take the reins 
Only when someone's coming, and the mare 
Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go. 
I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. 
She's got so she turns in at every house 
As if she had some sort of...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...the world— 
Though God knows he would have been safe enough—
Than Rome for strayed Americans to live in, 
And when the whips of their itineraries 
Hurry them north again. I took my time,
Since I was paying for it, and leisurely 
Went where I would—though never again to move 
Without him at my elbow or behind me. 
My shadow of him, wherever I found myself, 
Might horribly as well have been the man—
Although I should have been afraid of him 
No more than of a large wor...Read more of this...

by Estep, Maggie
...dancing club."

"What?"

"Baby, let me tell you, the boys are gonna like a bald go go dancer."

That said, she whips out some clippers, shaves my head smooth and insists
I'm gonna love getting naked for a living.

None of this sounds like my idea of a good time, but I'm broke and I'm
bald so I go home and get my best panties. Suzee lends me some 6 inch pumps,
paints my lips bright red, and gives me 7 shots of Jack Daniels to relax
me. 

8pm that night I t...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree 
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s 
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously. 

Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound 
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned 
The other voice in a silence of blood,...Read more of this...



by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...faces draw unto this feast: 
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips, 
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East 
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, 
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased, 

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-frettin...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Langston
...ica.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.

Labor...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway 
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled ...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...n vessel's side.
But though his body lack'd physician,
His spirit was in worse condition.
He found his fears of whips and ropes
By many a drachm outweigh'd his hopes.
As men in jail without mainprize
View every thing with other eyes,
And all goes wrong in church and state,
Seen through perspective of the grate:
So now M'Fingal's Second-sight
Beheld all things in gloomier light;
His visual nerve, well purged with tar,
Saw all the coming scenes of war.
As his pr...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...f of his house full of bullet holes.

 Pard tells a story about waking one morning in Naco, all

hungover, with the whips and jingles. A friend of his was sit-

ting at the table with a bottle of whisky beside him.

 Pard reached over and picked up a gun off a chair and

took aim at the whisky bottle and fired. His friend was then

sitting there, covered with flecks of glass, blood and whisky.

"What the **** you do that for?" he said.

 Now in his lat...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...felt her beating 
heart, and with his lips
Sought solace for her and himself. She 
started As one sharp lashed with whips,
And pushed him from her, moaning, his dumb quest
Denied and shuddered from. And he, distrest,
Loosened his wife, and long they sat there, parted.

L
Eunice was very quiet all that day, A little 
dazed, and yet she seemed content.
At candle-time, he asked if she would play Upon her harpsichord, 
at once she went
And tinkled airs from Lully'...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
That the high gods love tragedy;
For Saadi sat in the sun,
And thanks was his contrition;
For haircloth and for bloody whips,
Had active hands and smiling lips;
And yet his runes he rightly read,
And to his folk his message sped.
Sunshine in his heart transferred
Lighted each transparent word;
And well could honoring Persia learn
What Saadi wished to say;
For Saadi's nightly stars did burn
Brighter than Dschami's day.

Whispered the muse in Saadi's cot;
O gentle Saad...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...You saw perched on a cliff a maid,
Her raiment white above the breakers,
When the mad sea reared up and played
Its whips of spray on coastal acres
And now and then the lightnings flush,
And purple gleams upon her hover,
And fluttering up in swirling rush,
The wind rides in her airy cover?
Fair is the sea in gales arrayed,
The heavens drained of blue and flashing,
But fairer on her cliff the maid
Than storms and skies and breakers crashing....Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...he party is so loud downstairs, bristling with souvenirs.
It's a philosophy of life, of course,
drinks fluorescent, whips of syntax in the air
above the heads -- how small they seem from here,
the bobbing universal heads, stuffing the void with eloquence,
and also tiny merciless darts
of truth. It's pulled on tight, the air they breathe and rip.
It's like a prize the way it's stretched on tight
over the voices, keeping them intermingling, forcing the breaths to

 ...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her an...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...half a mile, 
And blunders into every blind old ditch. 
Hell was the coldest scenting land I’ve known,
And both my whips were always lost, and hounds 
Would never get their heads down; and a man 
On a great yawing chestnut trying to cast ’em 
While I was in a corner pounded by 
The ugliest hog-backed stile you’ve clapped your eyes on.
There was an iron-spiked fence round all the coverts, 
And civil-spoken keepers I couldn’t trust, 
And the main earth unstopp’d. T...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...with its stress and noise 
Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships; 
The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips; 
Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight; 
The hedges are all red with haws and hips, 
The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night. 

October 

My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves, 
Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed; 
I do no boast the harvesting of sheaves, 
O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside. 
Though on ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...pale as dew. . .
And round me and round me ye go!
O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe.

III.
And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where I knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar;
And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.

IV.
I am black, I am black;
And ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...vour won us place,
 Got between greed of gold and dread of drouth,
Loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race
 That whips our harbour-mouth!


 SYDNEY

Greeting! My birth-stain have I turned to good;
 Forcing strong wills perverse to steadfastness:
The first flush of the tropics in my blood,
 And at my feet Success!


 BRISBANE

The northern stirp beneath the southern skies --
 I build a Nation for an Empire's need,
Suffer a little, and my land shall rise,
 Queen over lan...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...sed puttee's trailing as you run;
 You feel you'd sell your soul to have a drink.
The acrid air is full of cracking whips.
 You wonder how it is you're going still.
You foam with rage. Oh, God! to be at grips
 With someone you can rush and crush and kill.
Your sleeve is dripping blood; you're seeing red;
 You're battle-mad; your turn is coming now.
See! there's the jagged barbed wire straight ahead,
 And there's the trench -- you'll get there anyhow.Read more of this...

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