Famous Dumbly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Autograph

...ght him no despairing 
Of the world's future faring; 
In human nature still 
He found more good than ill. 

"To all who dumbly suffered, 
His tongue and pen he offered; 
His life was not his own, 
Nor lived for self alone. 

"Hater of din and riot 
He lived in days unquiet; 
And, lover of all beauty, 
Trod the hard ways of duty. 

"He meant no wrong to any 
He sought the good of many, 
Yet knew both sin and folly, -- 
May God forgive him wholly!"...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf


As the Bell Clinks

...As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the second changin-station,
Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar
Of a Wagner obb...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Baby Picture

...r
and it falls apart like dust balls.
I open the dress
and I see a child bent on a toilet seat.
I crouch there, sitting dumbly
pushing the enemas out like ice cream,
letting the whole brown world
turn into sweets.

Anne,
who are you?

Merely a kid keeping alive....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Children of the Moon

...of
Almighty wings!
I saw the black men huddle,
Fumed in fear, falling face downward;
Vainly I clutched and clawed,
Dumbly they cringed and cowered,
Moaning in mournful monotone:
O Freedom, O Freedom,
O Freedom over me;
Before I'll be a slave,
I'll be buried in my grave,
And go home to my God,
And be free.
It was angel-music
From the dead,
And ever, as they sang,
Some wingéd thing of wings, filling all heaven,
Folding and unfolding, and folding yet again,
Tor...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.

Eden in Winter

...he icy blast 
There by the icy sea. 
How did I reach your feet? 
Why should I — at the end 
Hold out half-frozen hands 
Dumbly to you my friend? 
Ne'er had I woman seen, 
Ne'er had I seen a flame. 
There you piled fagots on, 
Heat rose — the blast to tame. 
There by the cave-door dark, 
Comforting me you cried — 
Wailed o'er my wounded knee, 
Wept for my rock-torn side. 

Up from the South I trailed — 
Left regions fierce and fair! 
Left all the jungle-trees, 
Left the red ti...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel


Faces In The Street

...the pallid stream of faces in the street 
 Ebbing out, ebbing out,
 To the drag of tired feet,
While my heart is aching dumbly for the faces in the street. 

And now all blurred and smirched with vice the day's sad pages end,
For while the short 'large hours' toward the longer 'small hours' trend,
With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat,
Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street 
 Sinking down, sinking down,
 Battered wreck by tempests b...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

Geraint And Enid

...ld not make them laughable in all eyes, 
Not while they loved them; and your wretched dress, 
A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaks 
Your story, that this man loves you no more. 
Your beauty is no beauty to him now: 
A common chance--right well I know it--palled-- 
For I know men: nor will ye win him back, 
For the man's love once gone never returns. 
But here is one who loves you as of old; 
With more exceeding passion than of old: 
Good, speak the word: my followers ring ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

...t alone has to offer, but also because it needs our love. With large sad eyesits delectable creatures look up and begus dumbly to ask them to follow:they are exiles who long for the future that lives in our power, they too would rejoiceif allowed to serve enlightenment like him,even to bear our cry of 'Judas',as he did and all must bear who serve it. One rational voice is dumb. Over his gravethe household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:sad is Eros, builder of cities,and w...Read more of this...
by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)

In The Baggage Room At Greyhound

...I

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal 
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky 
 waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart 
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in 
 the night-time red downtown heaven 
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering 
 these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty 
 of our lives, irritable baggage clerks, 
nor the millions of weeping ...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Je Suis une table

...It has happened suddenly,
by surprise, in an arbor,
or while drinking good coffee,
after speaking, or before,

that I dumbly inhabit
a density; in language,
there is nothing to stop it,
for nothing retains an edge.

Simple ignorance presents,
later, words for a function,
but it is common pretense
of speech, by a convention,

and there is nothing at all
but inner silence, nothing
to relieve on principle
now this intense thickening....Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

Nature -- sometimes sears a Sapling

...imes -- scalps a Tree --
Her Green People recollect it
When they do not die --

Fainter Leaves -- to Further Seasons --
Dumbly testify --
We -- who have the Souls --
Die oftener -- Not so vitally --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Ode To Silence

..., the white wisteria Fastens its fingers in the strangling wall,
And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds;
There dumbly like a worm all day the still white orchid feeds;
But never an echo of your daughters' laughter
Is there, nor any sign of you at all
Swells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria!

Only her shadow once upon a stone
I saw,—and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.

I tell you you have done her body an ill,
You chatterers, you no...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Senlin: His Dark Origins

...cry. He does not turn his head. 
But is that Senlin?—Or is this city Senlin,—
Quietly watching the burial of the dead? 
Dumbly observing the cortège of its dead? 
Yet we would say that all this is but madness: 
Around a distant corner trots the hearse. 
And Senlin walks before us in the sunlight 
Happily conscious of his universe.

5

In the hot noon, in an old and savage garden, 
The peach-tree grows. Its cruel and ugly roots 
Rend and rifle the silent earth for moisture. 
A...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

Song of Myself

...per in the open air in the far west—the bride
 was a red girl; 
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they
 had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
 shoulders; 
On a bank lounged the trapper—he was drest mostly in skins—his
 luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck—he held his bride by the hand;

She had long eyelashes—her head was bare—her coarse straight locks
 descended upon her voluptuous limbs a...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Apartment House

...its shade,
And vagrant breezes touch its walls and die.
Here sullen convicts in their chains might lie,
Or slaves toil dumbly at some dreary trade.
How worse than folly is their labor made
Who cleft the rocks that this might rise on high!
Yet, as I look, I see a woman's face
Gleam from a window far above the street.
This is a house of homes, a sacred place,
By human passion made divinely sweet.
How all the building thrills with sudden grace
Beneath the magic of Love's golden...Read more of this...
by Kilmer, Joyce

The Bridge of Sighs

...ly, 
Spurr'd by contumely, 
Cold inhumanity, 
Burning insanity, 
Into her rest.— 
Cross her hands humbly 
As if praying dumbly, 
Over her breast! 

Owning her weakness, 
Her evil behaviour, 
And leaving, with meekness, 
Her sins to her Saviour!...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

The Seed-At-Zero

...town of ghosts, the trodden womb,
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely stumbling
Over the manwaging line.

The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the manwaged tomb
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely leaping
Over the warbearing line.

Through the rampart of the sky
Shall the star-flanked seed be riddled,
Manna for the rumblin...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

The Symphony

...:
I hold
Full powers from Nature manifold.
I speak for each no-tongued tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
And briery mazes bounding lanes,
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cuppe...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Watchman

...l.
A faint wind stirred among the olive boughs­
Methinks I hear the sighing of that wind
In all sounds since, it was so dumbly sad;
But as the night wore on it died away
And all was deadly stillness; Claudia,
That stillness was most awful, as if some
Great heart had broken and so ceased to beat!
I thought of many things, but found no joy
In any thought, even the thought of thee;
The moon waned in the west and sickly grew 
Her light sucked from her in the breaking dawn­
Never ...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud

Venus and Adonis

...blood and seem'd with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth;
Over one shoulder doth she hang her head;
Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth;
She thinks he could not die, he is not dead:
Her voice is stopt, her joints forget to bow;
Her eyes are mad that they have wept till now....Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

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