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Famous Wrestling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...division,
We pluck the fruit and eat;
And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet.

We strive with time at wrestling
Till time be on our side
And hope, our plumeless nestling,
A full-fledged eaglet ride
Down the loud length of storm its windward wings divide.

We are girt with our belief,
Clothed with our will and crowned;
Hope, fear, delight, and grief,
Before our will give ground;
Their calls are in our ears as shadows of dead sound.

All but the heart ...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...ts her did entertaine.
For both in deeds and words he nourtred was,
Both wise and hardie (too hardie alas).

In wrestling nimble, and in renning swift,
In shooting steddie, and in swimming strong: 
Well made to strike, to throw, to leape, to lift,
And all the sports that shepheards are emong. 
In euery one he vanquisht euery one,
He vanquist all, and vanquisht was of none.

Besides, in hunting such felicitie,
Or rather infelicitie he found:
That euery field an...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...ts her did entertaine.
For both in deeds and words he nourtred was,
Both wise and hardie (too hardie alas).

In wrestling nimble, and in renning swift,
In shooting steddie, and in swimming strong: 
Well made to strike, to throw, to leape, to lift,
And all the sports that shepheards are emong. 
In euery one he vanquisht euery one,
He vanquist all, and vanquisht was of none.

Besides, in hunting such felicitie,
Or rather infelicitie he found:
That euery field an...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...ot tr?d
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God....Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...e advances, 
Shaking the hills with power, 
Slaying the hidden demons, 
The lions that devour. 
No bloodshed in the wrestling, — 
But souls new-born arise — 
The nations growing kinder, 
The child-hearts growing wise. 

What is the final ending? 
The issue, can we know? 
Will Christ outlive Mohammed? 
Will Kali's altar go? 
This is our faith tremendous, — 
Our wild hope, who shall scorn, — 
That in the name of Jesus 
The world shall be reborn!...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...mis 
And Iagoo, the great boaster, 
Showed them where the maize was growing, 
Told them of his wondrous vision, 
Of his wrestling and his triumph, 
Of this new gift to the nations, 
Which should be their food forever.
And still later, when the Autumn 
Changed the long, green leaves to yellow, 
And the soft and juicy kernels 
Grew like wampum hard and yellow, 
Then the ripened ears he gathered, 
Stripped the withered husks from off them, 
As he once had stripped the wrestl...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...the nights of storm
I love to listen to.

I have some friends, some good, good friends,
Who faithful are to me:
My wrestling partner when I rise,
The big and burly sea;
My little boat that's riding there
So saucy and so free.

I have some friends, some golden friends,
Whose worth will not decline:
A tawny Irish terrier, a purple shading pine,
A little red-roofed cottage that
So proudly I call mine.

All other friends may come and go,
All other friendships fail;
B...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...Cape Ann.

The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;
Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.

What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day
When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
How, side by side with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men
Encountered Tarleto...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...ah! a fatal shaft from Phoebus' hand
Smites thro' thy neck, and sinks thee on the sand.

Two other brothers were at wrestling found,
And in their pastime claspt each other round:
A shaft that instant from Apollo's hand
Transfixt them both, and stretcht them on the sand:
Together they their cruel fate bemoan'd,
Together languish'd, and together groan'd:
Together too th' unbodied spirits fled,
And sought the gloomy mansions of the dead.
Alphenor saw, and trembling at th...Read more of this...

by Nesbitt, Kenn
...t taekwondo
And table tennis too.
She dominates the diving board.
She tromps the trampoline.
At lifting weights and wrestling
She’s the best you’ve ever seen.
She speeds across the swimming pool
To slake the summer heat.
On BMX and mountain bike
She simply can’t be beat.
She’s highest in the high jump,
And a champ at hammer throwing,
Magnificent in marathons,
Remarkable at rowing.
She beats the best at boxing.
At the pole vault she is peerless.
Her fencing is ...Read more of this...

by Hunt, James Henry Leigh
...dy wrinkles laugh at him
Between his locks so white:

For Robin already let him see
He should beat his playmates all
At wrestling, running, and archery,
Yet he cared not for a fall.

Merriest he was of merry boys,
And would set the old helmets bobbing;
If his uncle asked about the noise,
'Twas "If you please, Sir, Robin."

And yet if the old man wished no noise,
He'd come and sit at his knee,
And be the gravest of grave-eyed boys;
And not a word spoke he.

So when...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...d in the lights under the leaves crested with
orange flame has forgotten its flute

gommiers peeling from sunburn still wrestling to escape the sea

the dead lizard turning blue as stone

those rivers, threads of spittle, that forgot the old music

that dry, brief esplanade under the drier sea almonds
where the dry old men sat

watching a white schooner stuck in the branches
and playing draughts with the moving frigate birds

those hillsides like broken pots

those ferns that...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...hands a-cold, 
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 
From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curi...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...oing? My breath is tight in its throat; 
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me. 

29
Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheath’d, hooded, sharp-tooth’d touch!

Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

Parting, track’d by arriving—perpetual payment of perpetual loan; 
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. 

Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital: 
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized and golden. 
...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...the nones,
Full big he was of brawn, and eke of bones;
That proved well, for *ov'r all where* he came, *wheresoever*
At wrestling he would bear away the ram.
He was short-shouldered, broad, a thicke gnarr*, *stump of wood
There was no door, that he n'old* heave off bar, *could not
Or break it at a running with his head.
His beard as any sow or fox was red,
And thereto broad, as though it were a spade.
Upon the cop* right of his nose he had *head 
A wart, a...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...Larbert lame;
     Scarce better John of Alloa's fare,
     Whom senseless home his comrades bare.
     Prize of the wrestling match, the King
     To Douglas gave a golden ring,
     While coldly glanced his eye of blue,
     As frozen drop of wintry dew.
     Douglas would speak, but in his breast
     His struggling soul his words suppressed;
     Indignant then he turned him where
     Their arms the brawny yeomen bare,
     To hurl the massive bar in air.
   ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...s liker must they grow; 
The man be more of woman, she of man; 
He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; 
Till at the last she set herself to man, 
Like perfect music unto noble words; 
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
Self-revere...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...,
And all the day and half the night
You'll find me writing, writing, writing.

Now, it was in the month of May
As, wrestling with a rhyme rheumatic,
I chanced to look across the way,
And lo! within a neighbor attic,
A hand drew back the window shade,
And there, a picture glad and glowing,
I saw a sweet and slender maid,
And she was sewing, sewing, sewing.

So poor the room, so small, so scant,
Yet somehow oh, so bright and airy.
There was a pink geranium plant,
L...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...made ?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death ?...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...What guts he had, the Dago lad
Who fought that Frenchman grim with guile;
For nigh an hour they milled like mad,
And mauled the mat in rare old style.
Then up and launched like catapults,
And tangled, twisted, clinched and clung,
Then tossed in savage somersaults,
And hacked and hammered, ducked and swung;
And groaned and grunted, sighed and cried,
Now...Read more of this...

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