Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Shooting Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Ammons, A R
...n these
fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how he’s shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who
were the rumored fathers of cousins
who whispered of them as of great, if
troubled, presences, and school

teachers, just about everybody older
(and some younger) collected in one place
waiting, particularly, but not f...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...arkled on a vein of gold,
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,
With all its lines abrupt and angular:
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,
Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss
Fancy into belief: anon it leads
Through winding passages, where sameness breeds
Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;
Whether to silver gr...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...iness do you have being way up there?
 Christ, man, what do you think you are-a stork? 
 N.H.]

Oops, now we're shooting sky-high --
 my head splits the clouds.
Oops, now we're sinking to the bottom --
 my fingers comb the ocean floor.
We're learning to the left, we're leaning to the right --
that is, we're leaning larboard and starboard.
My God, we just sank!
 Oh no! This time we're sure to go under!
The waves
leap over my head
 like Bengal tigers.
Fe...Read more of this...

by Nesbitt, Kenn
...eled at the sight.
His path was bright and colorful.
It sparkled, shimmered, shined,
as he arced across the heavens
shooting rainbows from behind.

 --Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2016. All Rights Reserved....Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes.  Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impre...Read more of this...



by Collins, Billy
...,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--som...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...damn thing-
and
leveling the luger while I was 
working
while "The March to the Gallows" was playing over
the Muzak
and shooting me in the ass first and
my poor brain
later.

"an intruder," I could hear him telling them,
"ravishing one of my helpless x-wives."

I see him published in some of the magazines
now. not very good stuff.

a poem about me
too: the Polack.

the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his
country, other countries, all co...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...cel that needs invoicing,
To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard,
We shall begin by way of rejoicing;
None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge),
Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer,
Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge
Over Morello with squib and cracker.

XXXIII.

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot---
No mere display at the stone of Dante,
But a kind of sober Witanagemot
(Ex: ``Casa Guidi,'' _quod videas ante_)
Shall ponder, once F...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...high with diamond flaming, and with gold. 
Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even 
On a sun-beam, swift as a shooting star 
In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired 
Impress the air, and shows the mariner 
From what point of his compass to beware 
Impetuous winds: He thus began in haste. 
Gabriel, to thee thy course by lot hath given 
Charge and strict watch, that to this happy place 
No evil thing approach or enter in. 
This day at highth of noon ca...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding! 
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle, shooting arrows to the mark! 
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary! 
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks! 
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah! 
You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you pe...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., though I do not know
 him;) 
The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race; 
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young—some lean on their rifles,
 some sit on logs, 
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee; 
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his
 saddle; 
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota; 
Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equi-distant, 
Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all. 

4In the Year 80 of The States,
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, 
Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the
 same, 
I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin, 
Hoping to cease not till death. 

Creeds and schools in...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...eighbours too;
Right in the forefront, Millie, close to the Christmas Tree.
While Billie, her brother, recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew."

I reckon you've heard the opus, a ballad of guts and gore;
Of a Yukon frail and a frozen trail and a fight in a dringing dive,
It's on a par, I figger, with "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor,"
And the boys who wrote them pieces ought to be skinned alive.

Picture that scene of gladness; the honest faces aglow;
The kiddies gapi...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...t which was of woman born, 
In the absence of the morn, 
When the Soul fell into sleep, 
And Archangels round it weep, 
Shooting out against the light 
Fibres of a deadly night, 
Reasoning upon its own dark fiction, 
In doubt which is self-contradiction? 
Humility is only doubt, 
And does the sun and moon blot out, 
Rooting over with thorns and stems 
The buried soul and all its gems. 
This life’s five windows of the soul 
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole, 
And lead...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...
     Within the dark ravines below,
     Where twined the path in shadow hid,
     Round many a rocky pyramid,
     Shooting abruptly from the dell
     Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
     Round many an insulated mass,
     The native bulwarks of the pass,
     Huge as the tower which builders vain
     Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
     The rocky summits, split and rent,
     Formed turret, dome, or battlement.
     Or seemed fantastically set
     Wit...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...Or roll the Planets thro' the boundless Sky. 
Some less refin'd, beneath the Moon's pale Light
Hover, and catch the shooting stars by Night;
Or suck the Mists in grosser Air below,
Or dip their Pinions in the painted Bow,
Or brew fierce Tempests on the wintry Main,
Or o'er the Glebe distill the kindly Rain.
Others on Earth o'er human Race preside,
Watch all their Ways, and all their Actions guide:
Of these the Chief the Care of Nations own,
And guard with Arms Divine ...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...> Flies crawl
over the sweet instant


You know what is in these blankets


The trees outside are bending with
children shooting guns. Leave
them alone. They are playing
games of their own.


I give water, I give clean crusts


Aren't there enough words
flowing in your veins
to keep you going....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The hump of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are ch...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...ittle white tails 
Against the green grass. 
'Next time, Mother, 
I must really bring a gun, 
I know you don't like shooting, 
But—!' John's own son, 
That blond bowed face, 
Those clear steady eyes, 
Hard to be certain 
That the dead don't rise.
Jogging on his pony
Through the autumn day,
'Bad year for fruit, Mother,
But good salt hay.'
Bowling for the village
As his father had before;
Coming home at evening
To read the cricket score,
Back to the old house
Where ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...the noon of interlunar night,
The Lady Witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
Its storm-outspeeding wings the Hermaphrodite;
She to the austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana.

Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,
Which rain could never bend or whirlblast shake,
With the antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the austral lake--
There she wo...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shooting poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs