Famous Wriggling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Hillside Thaw

...y the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,--
In the confusion of them all aglitter,
And birds that joined in the excited fun
By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,
I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.

It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard
By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.
From the high west she makes a gentle cast
And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,
Sh...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


A Ramble in St. Jamess Park

...god.
But mark what creatures women are:
How infinitely vile, when fair!

Three knights o' the' elbow and the slur
With wriggling tails made up to her.

The first was of your Whitehall baldes,
Near kin t' th' Mother of the Maids;
Graced by whose favor he was able
To bring a friend t' th' Waiters' table,
Where he had heard Sir Edward Sutton
Say how the King loved Banstead mutton;
Since when he'd ne'er be brought to eat
By 's good will any other meat.
In this, as well as all th...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

Britannias Pastorals

...Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch at the worm, and hasting fast away,
He knowing it a fish of stubborn sway,
Pulls up his ...Read more of this...
by Browne, William

from imperfect Eden

...ride home (if we were lucky -
and nothing during the day had caused despair)
trams had a gift about them that was snaky
wriggling their straitened ways from lair to lair
they hissed upon their wires and flashed the air
they swallowed people whole and spewed them out
and most engorged in them became devout

you either believed in trams or thought them heathen
savage contraptions that shook you to your roots
on busy jaunts there was no room for breathing
damn dignity - rapt fle...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Homers Seeing-Eye Dog

...lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked his bladder and stream
of dopey wake-up jokes. The one
about the wine-dark pee I hated instantly.
I stood at the ready, like a god
in an epic, but there was never much
to do. Oh now and then I'd make a sure
intervention, save a life, whatever.
But my exploits don't interest you
and of his life all I can say is that
when he...Read more of this...
by Matthews, William


How Much Earth

...Torn into light, you woke wriggling 
on a woman's palm. Halved, quartered, 
shredded to the wind, you were the life 
that thrilled along the underbelly 
of a stone. Stilled in the frozen pond 
you rinsed heaven with a sigh. 

How much earth is a man. 
A wall fies down and roses 
rush from its teeth; in the fists 
of the hungry, cucumbers sleep 
their lives away, under your nails 
the...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

I Hardly Remember

...at me from far away through your skirt.
My high-tide mark rose to the level of your breasts.

Carpets, like tentacles, wriggling down to the strand,
attracted passers-by to the mouth of the clamor.
With lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.

There are dark moments when our ballast gives out
from so much banging around. Moments, or centuries,
when the flesh revels in its nakedness and reels
to its own destruction, sucking the life fr...Read more of this...
by Graves, Robert

I Hardly Remember

...at me from far away through your skirt.
My high-tide mark rose to the level of your breasts.

Carpets, like tentacles, wriggling down to the strand,
attracted passers-by to the mouth of the clamor.
With lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.

There are dark moments when our ballast gives out
from so much banging around. Moments, or centuries,
when the flesh revels in its nakedness and reels
to its own destruction, sucking the life fr...Read more of this...
by Guillen, Rafael

The Ballad Of One-Eyed Mike

...he sky's port-winey glow;
Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink,
All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink.

'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a *****, hypnotic dream,
Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream;
It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring;
It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing.

In freakish flights strange oily lights came flut...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde

...nd stretched out her arm.
She thought she heard steps, she must be quick.
She darted her hand out, and seized the thick
Wriggling slime,
Only just in time.
The old gardener came muttering down the path,
And his shadow fell like a broad, black swath,
And covered Clotilde and the angry snake.
He bit her, but what difference did that make!
The Virgin should dress
In his loveliness.
The gardener was covering his new-set plants
For the night was chilly, and nothing daunts
Your lov...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

...m all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or w...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Medal

...f, a rebel ere a man, 
So young his hatred to his Prince began. 
Next this, (how wildly will ambition steer!) 
A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear, 
Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, 
He cast himself into the saint-like mould; 
Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, 
The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train. 
But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, 
His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise. 
There split the saint; for hypocritic zeal 
Allo...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

The Minimal

...ves, newts, stone-deaf fishes,
Lice tethered to long limp subterranean weeds,
Squirmers in bogs,
And bacterial creepers
Wriggling through wounds
Like elvers in ponds,
Their wan mouths kissing the warm sutures,
Cleaning and caressing,
Creeping and healing....Read more of this...
by Roethke, Theodore

Thomas Ross Jr

...swallow with swift flutterings
And shrill cries
Fought at the snake,
Blinding him with the beat of her wings,
Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,
Fell backward down the bank
Into Spoon River and was drowned.
Scarcely an hour passed
Until a shrike
Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.
As for myself I overcame my lower nature
Only to be destroyed by my brother's ambition....Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

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