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Famous Alarmed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Yeats, William Butler
...as though
It had not learned its lesson.

He. Why have you laid your hands upon my eyes?
What can have suddenly alarmed you
Whereon 'twere best
My eyes should never rest?
What is there but the slowly fading west,
The river imaging the flashing skies,
All that to this moment charmed you?

She. A Sweetheart from another life floats there
As though she had been forced to linger
From vague distress
Or arrogant loveliness,
Merely to loosen out a tress
Among the starry ...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, 
The sad voice of Death—the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed,
 uncertain, 
This sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me, 
Come tell me where I am speeding—tell me my destination. 

2
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear, behold—the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry, 
Whither I go from the bed I now recline on, come tell me; 
Old age, alarmed, uncertain—A yo...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...rms to eat.

Methinks I see her now in Charon's boat
Bark at the Stygian fish which round it float;
While Cerberus, alarmed to hear the sound,
Makes Hell's wide concave bellow all around.
She sees him not, but hears him through the dark,
And valiantly returns him bark for bark.
But now she trembles -though a ghost, she dreads
To see a dog with three large yawning heads.
Spare her, you hell-hounds, case your frightful paws,
And let poor Tiger 'scape your furiou...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...and reserve when near –
The eye that glistens with an unshed tear –
The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, 
As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast, 
And knows, and names, the greets its god-like guest –
Thus doth Love speak.

How doth Love speak? 
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek –
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendour, 
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all things to one beloved fa...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...o dark
and urgent eyes and motions
 so quick and precise
they were barely motions at all?
 When he was gone
you turned, alarmed by the rustling
 of oily feathers
and the curious pungency,
 and were sure
you'd heard him say the words
 that could explain
the meaning of blond grasses
 burning on a hillside
beneath the hands of a man
 in the middle of
his life caught in the posture
 of prayer. I'd
heard that a magpie could talk,
 so I waited
for the words, knowing without
 th...Read more of this...



by Taylor, Edward
...relieved
of its duty, pacified, tamed, a pussycat.
But not before it tied the flagpole in knots,
and not before it alarmed the firemen out of their pants.
Now it's really calm, almost too calm, as though
anything could happen, and it would be a first.
It could be the worst thing that ever happened.
All the little rodents are sitting up and counting
their nuts. What if nothing ever happened again?
Would there be enough to "eke out an existence,"
as they sa...Read more of this...

by Tate, James
...relieved
of its duty, pacified, tamed, a pussycat.
But not before it tied the flagpole in knots,
and not before it alarmed the firemen out of their pants.
Now it's really calm, almost too calm, as though
anything could happen, and it would be a first.
It could be the worst thing that ever happened.
All the little rodents are sitting up and counting
their nuts. What if nothing ever happened again?
Would there be enough to "eke out an existence,"
as they sa...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...br> Dear Boy George,
Do you ever sit and wonder what's gone wrong?
If there's been some initial mistake?
Well, don't be alarmed, but there
has been....Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...your dispersing Play. 
Now, by new Orders and Decrees, 
For our Chastisement issu'd forth, 
You on his Confines the alarmed North 
With equal Fury sees, 
And summons swiftly to his Aid 
Eurus, his Confederate made, 
His eager Second in th' opposing Fight, 
That even the Winds may keep the Balance right, 
Nor yield increase of Sway to arbitrary Might. 


Meeting now, they all contend, 
Those assail, while These defend; 
Fierce and turbulent the War, 
And in the loud tu...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...plowman doubting stands, 
Left on the threshing floor his hopeless sheaves 
Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, alarmed, 
Collecting all his might, dilated stood, 
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved: 
His stature reached the sky, and on his crest 
Sat Horrour plumed; nor wanted in his grasp 
What seemed both spear and shield: Now dreadful deeds 
Might have ensued, nor only Paradise 
In this commotion, but the starry cope 
Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements 
At leas...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...e toward Canaan from the shore advance 
Through the wild Desart, not the readiest way; 
Lest, entering on the Canaanite alarmed, 
War terrify them inexpert, and fear 
Return them back to Egypt, choosing rather 
Inglorious life with servitude; for life 
To noble and ignoble is more sweet 
Untrained in arms, where rashness leads not on. 
This also shall they gain by their delay 
In the wide wilderness; there they shall found 
Their government, and their great senate choose ...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...twinkles 
behind glass, and I am on 
the way out, "an instance 

of the succumbed through extreme 
fantasy." He is alarmed 
at last, and would raise me, but 
I am floorward in a dream 
of lowered trousers, unarmed 
and weakly fighting to shut 

the window of my drawers. 
There are others in the room, 
voices of women above 
white oxfords; and the old floor, 
the friendly linoleum, 
departs. I whisper, "my love," 

and am safe, tabled, sniffing 
spirits of ammonia...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...r next climb. You went together, armed
with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches
and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed
by the thick woods of briars and bushes,
nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo
up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated
with his coat off as you waded through top snow.
He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled
down on the train to catch a steam boat for home;
or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome.
This is Italy. You le...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...s embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell
Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far
The troubled army fled;
Up rose the glorious morning star,
The ghastly host was dead.

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man,
That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream,
In Fancy's misty light,
Giganti...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...sia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof ti...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...ople.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a leper in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while.Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...uld not catch the swell.
     'A stranger I,' the Huntsman said,
     Advancing from the hazel shade.
     The maid, alarmed, with hasty oar
     Pushed her light shallop from the shore,
     And when a space was gained between,
     Closer she drew her bosom's screen;—
     So forth the startled swan would swing,
     So turn to prune his ruffled wing.
     Then safe, though fluttered and amazed,
     She paused, and on the stranger gazed.
     Not his the form, n...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...rist," cried this blind Briton,
"Dame Hermegild, give me my sight again!"
This lady *wax'd afrayed of that soun',* *was alarmed by that cry*
Lest that her husband, shortly for to sayn,
Would her for Jesus Christe's love have slain,
Till Constance made her hold, and bade her wirch* *work
The will of Christ, as daughter of holy Church

The Constable wax'd abashed* of that sight, *astonished
And saide; *"What amounteth all this fare?"* *what means all
Constance answered; "Sir, i...Read more of this...

by Lear, Edward
...eenwich,Whose garments were border'd with Spinach;But a large spotty Calf bit her shawl quite in half,Which alarmed that young lady of Greenwich. ...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...up from a well
she was really a long long way away
but a stroke - how were we to tell

it was only yesterday we became alarmed
she seemed eaten away in her sleep -
it's too late now the doctor said
she's leapt where i cannot leap

my mother died the next thursday
as the new moon was borne above
her stroke had lodged a twig in her mouth
and her face was the face of a dove...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs