Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Hilaire Belloc

I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten ’em.

Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts | 1896

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Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

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