Famous Excitement Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Ballad of Footmen

...n and the stars
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars?
Do men find life so full of humour and joy
That for want of excitement they smash up the toy?
Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"
Are not quite the same. All these men by the ears,
And nine nations of women choking with tears.
It is folly to think that the will of a king
Can force men to make ducks and drakes of a thing
They value, and life is, at lea...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy


An Attempt At Jealousy

...y in nasty weather?
Face force 55 gales and chat about prep
or how you bested that Birmingham rep?

He must be mad with excitement.
So must you. What an incitement
to lust all those press-ups must be.
Or is it just the same? PE?

Tell me, I'm curious. Is it fun
being in love with just anyone?
How do you remember his face
if you meet in a public place?

Perhaps you know him by his shoes?
Or do you sometimes choose
another pinstriped clone
by accident and drag that home

instea...Read more of this...
by Raine, Craig

Baseball and Writing

...is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
back to plate.(His spring 
de-winged a bat swing.)
They hav...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne

Days of Pie and Coffee

...or trying to speak 
because I was commanding Sithnewy to be silent, 
though, indeed I was sympathetic 
to his emotional excitement.
It was, as I recall, a day of prodigious beauty. 
April 21, 1932--clouds
like the inside of your head explained. 
Bluebirds, too numerous to mention. 
The clover calling you by name.
And fields oozing green.
And this motorist from nowhere 
moving his lips
like the wings of a butterfly 
and nothing coming out, 
and Sithney silent now. 
He was no l...Read more of this...
by Tate, James

Days of Pie and Coffee

...or trying to speak 
because I was commanding Sithnewy to be silent, 
though, indeed I was sympathetic 
to his emotional excitement.
It was, as I recall, a day of prodigious beauty. 
April 21, 1932--clouds
like the inside of your head explained. 
Bluebirds, too numerous to mention. 
The clover calling you by name.
And fields oozing green.
And this motorist from nowhere 
moving his lips
like the wings of a butterfly 
and nothing coming out, 
and Sithney silent now. 
He was no l...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward


from Proverbs of Hell

...hands things i believe in
  not to be told that other rules prevail - there is
  a treading forward to be done of great excitement
  and people to be found who by the old laws
  should be little more than dead
      this enlightment

  is cutting like spring into a bitter winter
  and there is this smashing of many concrete shells
  a dream with the cheek to be aggressive has assumed
  its own flesh and bone and will not put up with sleep
  as its prime condition - life out o...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Give me the Splendid Silent Sun

...de—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! 
—These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by
 the
 war-strife;) 
These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, 
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; 
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up; 
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you g...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Happy As The Day Is Long

...stian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be a cat and just sleep.
Or to read the Confessions of Saint Augustine.
Jesus called the sons of Zebedee the Sons of Thunder.
In my secret room, plans are hatched: we'll explore the Smoky Mountains.
Then we'll walk along a beach: Hallelujah...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

Ithaka

...f them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may yo...Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P

Locksley Hall

...tion that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life; 

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, 

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn; 

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men: ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Part 8 of Trout Fishing in America

...ngs ! Look there's me !

 I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Hell-

diver, and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing,

let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby

woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.

 My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and

the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls

of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and

her face was hot and flushed...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Phantasmagoria CANTO V ( Byckerment )

...Mayor
I KNOW that every Sprite meant
To vote for ME, but did not dare -
He was so frantic with despair
And furious with excitement. 

"When it was over, for a whim,
He ran to tell the King;
And being the reverse of slim,
A two-mile trot was not for him
A very easy thing. 

"So, to reward him for his run
(As it was baking hot,
And he was over twenty stone),
The King proceeded, half in fun,
To knight him on the spot." 

"'Twas a great liberty to take!"
(I fired up like a rocket...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Poem of Joys

...om the mast-head—There—she blows! 
—Again I spring up the rigging, to look with the rest—We see—we descend,
 wild
 with excitement, 
I leap in the lower’d boat—We row toward our prey, where he lies,
We approach, stealthy and silent—I see the mountainous mass, lethargic, basking, 
I see the harpooneer standing up—I see the weapon dart from his vigorous arm: 
O swift, again, now, far out in the ocean, the wounded whale, settling, running to
 windward,
 tows me; 
—Again I see hi...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Superior

...thinks it great fun.
Everybody knows that father is away, but if in play I call
aloud "Father," she looks about her in excitement and thinks that
father is near.
When I hold my class with the donkeys that our washer man
brings to carry away the clothes and I warn her that I am the
schoolmaster, she will scream for no reason and call me dada.
Your baby wants to catch the moon. She is so funny; she calls
Ganesh Ganush.
Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

...you crave
In pay? What even childhood gave!
I have been dedicate from youth.
Before my God I speak the truth!"
Fatigue, excitement of the past
Few hours broke me down at last.
All day I had forgot to eat,
My nerves betrayed me, lacking meat.
I bowed my head and felt the storm
Plough shattering through my prostrate form.
The tearless sobs tore at my heart.
My host withdrew himself apart;
Busied among his crockery,
He paid no farther heed to me.
Exhausted, spent, I huddled ther...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Cremona Violin

...him. When she went
Into the house, she found the evening spent.
Theodore arrived quite wearied out and teased,
With all excitement in him burned away.
It had gone well, he said, the audience pleased,
And he had played his very best to-day,
But afterwards he had been forced to stay
And practise with the stupid ones. His head
Ached furiously, and he must get to bed.

Part Second
Herr Concert-Meister Altgelt 
played,
And the four strings of his violin
Were spinning like bees on ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Map

...hore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
--the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,
lending the land their waves' own conformation:
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,
profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they ass...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

The Olympic Girl

...ere
(Forgive me, shade of Rupert Brooke)
An object fit to claim her look.
Oh! would I were her racket press'd
With hard excitement to her breast
And swished into the sunlit air
Arm-high above her tousled hair,
And banged against the bounding ball
"Oh! Plung!" my tauten'd strings would call,
"Oh! Plung! my darling, break my strings
For you I will do brilliant things."
And when the match is over, I
Would flop beside you, hear you sigh;
And then with what supreme caress,
You'd t...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John

The Wee Shop

...glass cases,
And bon-bon bottles, many-hued and bright;
Yet nothing half so radiant as their faces,
Their eyes of hope, excitement and delight.

I entered: how they waited all a-flutter!
How awkwardly they weighed my acid-drops!
And then with all the thanks a tongue could utter
They bowed me from the kindliest of shops.
I'm sure that night their customers they numbered;
Discussed them all in happy, breathless speech;
And though quite worn and weary, ere they slumbered,
Sent h...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Wildpeace

...Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floatin...Read more of this...
by Amichai, Yehuda

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