Famous Action Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Action poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous action poems. These examples illustrate what a famous action poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Dejan Stojanovic
Love: Which is more important: Love or life?
Life: Without life, there would be no love.
Love: But without love, life would have no meaning.
Life: True, but life gives birth to love.
Love: And what gives birth to life?
Life: Life gives birth to itself.
Love: Nothing gives birth to itself automatically,
There must be some cause, a reason...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men's sakes whom...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
All Circumstances are the Frame
In which His Face is set --
All Latitudes exist for His
Sufficient Continent --
The Light His Action, and the Dark
The Leisure of His Will --
In Him Existence serve or set
A Force illegible....Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
NOW list to my morning’s romanza—I tell the signs of the Answerer;
To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me.
A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother;
How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother?
Tell him to send me the signs.
And...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.
Ille. By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
From the metal poppy
this good blast of trance
arriving as shock, private cloudburst blazing down,
worst in a boarding-house greased tub, or a barrack with competitions,
best in a stall, this enveloping passion of Australians:
tropics that sweat for you, torrent that braces with its heat,
inflames you with its chill, action sauna, inverse bidet,
sleek vertical coruscating ghost of your inner river,
reminding all your...Read more of this...
by
Ehsan Sehgal
"Do not create things that make some-one doubtful and show wrong direction.
No matter you are doing that in good sense, but you are making yourself, untrusted, miner and bad person. Placing or setting the seeds of doubts in the mind of your friends, your lover or any person means you are pushing them away from your own relationships. In this...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame.
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea.
Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!
On the sward at the cliff-top,
Lie strewn the white flocks;
On the cliff-side, the pigeons
Roost deep in...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!
High lust and froward bearing,
Proud heart, rebellious brow --
Deaf ear and soul uncaring,
We seek My mercy now!
The sinner that forswore Thee,
The fool that passed Thee by,
Our times are known...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,
When the miserly press of each day's need
Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction
My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?
How can I pause my thoughts upon the task
My soul was born to think that it must do
When every moment has a thought to ask
To fit the immediate craving of its...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture
into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words only.
A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier's one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion.
Full...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Should you come to people the whole earth, that action
would not make a saddened soul rejoice. It would be
more to thy advantage to enslave a free man, through
thy gentleness, than to give freedom to a thousand slaves.
390...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea,
Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!
On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks,
On the cliff-side the...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LX. Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso. HE PRAYS THAT SHE WILL BE NEAR HIM AT HIS DEATH, WHICH HE FEELS APPROACHING. Go, plaintive verse, to the cold marble go,Which hides in earth my treasure from these eyes;[Pg 291]There call on her who answers from yon skies,Although the...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Do what is good, and humanity's godlike plant thou wilt nourish;
Plan what is fair, and thou'lt strew seeds of the godlike around....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Four Trees -- upon a solitary Acre --
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action --
Maintain --
The Sun -- upon a Morning meets them --
The Wind --
No nearer Neighbor -- have they --
But God --
The Acre gives them -- Place --
They -- Him -- Attention of Passer by --
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply --
Or Boy --
What Deed is Theirs unto...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Deeming that I were better dead,
"How shall I kill myself?" I said.
Thus mooning by the river Seine
I sought extinction without pain,
When on a bridge I saw a flash
Of lingerie and heard a splash . . .
So as I am a swimmer stout
I plunged and pulled the poor wretch out.
The female that I saved? Ah yes,
To yield the Morgue...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur'd, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I...Read more of this...
by
Henry David Thoreau
Great God, I ask for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.
And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be,
They may...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As a boy, reserved and naughty;
As a youth, a coxcomb and haughty;
As a man, for action inclined;
As a greybeard, fickle in mind.--
Upon thy grave will people read:
This was a very man, indeed!
1815.*...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
GREAT are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
warriors,
and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Upon the City Ramparts, lit up by sunset gleam,
The Blue eyes that conquer, meet the Darker eyes that dream.
The Dark eyes, so Eastern, and the Blue eyes from the West,
The last alight with action, the first so full of rest.
Brown, that seem to hold the...Read more of this...
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