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Famous Flutter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes,
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart;
Lie still, for the wind on the warm seas dozes,
And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What...Read more of this...



by Moody, William Vaughn
...And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, 
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, 
Unrolling rivers clear 
For flutter of broad phylacteries; 
While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas 
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep 
To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, 
And Mariposa through the purple calms 
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms 
Where East and West are met, -- 
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set 
To say that East and West are twain, 
W...Read more of this...

by Aldington, Richard
...And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour. 

I was like a moth -- 
Like one of those grey Emperor moths 
Which flutter through the vines at Capri. 
And that damned little town was my match-box, 
Against whose sides I beat and beat 
Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy 
As that damned little town. 

IV 

At school it was just as dull as that dull High Street. 
The front was dull; 
The High Street and the other street were dull -- 
And there was a ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...were tears of sorrow;
Answering thus, just as the golden morrow
Beam'd upward from the vallies of the east:
"O that the flutter of this heart had ceas'd,
Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away.
Young feather'd tyrant! by a swift decay
Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:
And I do think that at my very birth
I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly;
For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee,
With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven.
Art thou not cruel? ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...y muse,
that good nurse.
She stays in my hand,
a mild white mouse.

The curtains, lazy and delicate,
billow and flutter and drop
like the Victorian skirts
of my two maiden aunts
who kept an antique shop.

Hornets have been sent.
They cluster like floral arrangements on the screen.
Hornets, dragging their thin stingers,
hover outside, all knowing,
hissing: the hornet knows.
I heard it as a child
but what was it that he meant?
The hornet knows!
What happ...Read more of this...



by Neruda, Pablo
...rift 
Into me, choking my lost heart. 

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
On the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
Into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for 
A second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll 
Have gone so far I'll wander mazily 
Over all the earth, asking, will you 
Come back? Will you leave me here, dying?...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...'s azure warp.

II
Her little feet tapped softly down the path. Her 
soul was listless; even the morning breeze
Fluttering the trees and strewing a light swath Of fallen petals 
on the grass, could please
Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside With a 
swift move, and a half-angry frown.
She stopped to pull a daffodil or two, And 
held them to her gown
To test the colours; put them at her side,
Then at her breast, then loosened them and tried
Some new arrange...Read more of this...

by Belloc, Hilaire
...e
12 Make asters in the brook,

13 From dewy lanes at morning
14 The grapes' sweet odors rise;
15 At noon the roads all flutter
16 With yellow butterflies.

17 By all these lovely tokens 
18 September days are here,
19 With summer's best of weather,
20 And autumn's best of cheer.

21 But none of all this beauty
22 Which floods the earth and air
23 Is unto me the secret
24 Which makes September fair.

25 'T is a thing which I remember;
26 To name it thrills me yet:...Read more of this...

by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...fulness intense;
Until one day it chanced that they were fast becoming spooney,
When Shamus spied that ould red shawl a-flutter on the fence.

Now Missis Rooney loved that shawl beyond all rhyme or reason,
And maybe 'twas an heirloom or a cherished souvenir;
For judging by the way she wore it season after season,
I might have been as precious as a product of Cashmere.
So Shamus strolled towards it, and no doubt the colour pleased him,
For he biffed it and he sniffed i...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...lowers I wait and linger. 

The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane 
the yellow leaves flutter and fall. 

What emptiness do you gaze upon! 
Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air 
with the notes of the far-away song 
floating from the other shore?...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
..., and mumble. 
Down in the lane so thick and dark 
The tan-yards stank of bitter bark, 
The curate's pigeons gave a flutter, 
A cart went courting down the gutter, 
And none else stirred a foot or feather. 
The houses put their heads together, 
Talking, perhaps, so dark and sly, 
Of all the folk they'd seen go by, 
Children, and men and women, merry all, 
Who'd some day pass that way to burial. 
It was all dark, but at the turning 
The Lion had a window burning.Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...kind.

There are the flowers which mourning Herakles
Strewed on the tomb of Hylas, columbine,
Its white doves all a-flutter where the breeze
Kissed them too harshly, the small celandine,
That yellow-kirtled chorister of eve,
And lilac lady's-smock, - but let them bloom alone, and leave

Yon spired hollyhock red-crocketed
To sway its silent chimes, else must the bee,
Its little bellringer, go seek instead
Some other pleasaunce; the anemone
That weeps at daybreak, like a si...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...the bench and knitting fast,
She talked as someone with a noble store
Of hidden fancies, blown upon the wind,
Eager to flutter forth and leave their silent past.

31
The little apple leaves above their heads
Let fall a quivering sunshine. Quiet, cool,
In blossomed boughs they sat. Beyond, the beds
Of tulips blazed, a proper vestibule
And antechamber to the rainbow. Dyes
Of prismed richness: Carmine. Madder. Blues
Tinging dark browns to purple. Sil...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...ck at the mother the earth.
Night in the valley,
Gloom on the mountain,
Wind in the wheat,
Far to the southward
The flutter of lightning,
The shudder of thunder;
But high at the zenith,
A cluster of stars
Glimmers and throbs
In the gasp of the midnight,
Steady and absolute,
Ancient and sure...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...to a Gnome,
In search of Mischief still on Earth to roam.
The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the Fields of Air.

Know farther yet; Whoever fair and chaste
Rejects Mankind, is by some Sylph embrac'd:
For Spirits, freed from mortal Laws, with ease
Assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please. 
What guards the Purity of melting Maids,
In Courtly Balls, and Midnight Masquerades,
Safe from the treach'rous Friend, and daring Spark,
The...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...tery explore: 35 
'T is the wind and nothing more." 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, 
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; 
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door, 40 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door: 
Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad f...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...rs of Heaven,
Each to his Home, retire; save those that love 
To take their Pastime in the troubled Air,
And, skimming, flutter round the dimply Flood.
The Cattle, from th'untasted Fields, return,
And ask, with Meaning low, their wonted Stalls;
Or ruminate in the contiguous Shade: 
Thither, the houshold, feathery, People croud,
The crested Cock, with all his female Train,
Pensive, and wet. Mean while, the Cottage-Swain
Hangs o'er th'enlivening Blaze, and, taleful, the...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...re jays and some were magpies,
Others thrushes, others blackbirds;
And they hopped, and sang, and twittered,
Perked and fluttered all their feathers,
Strutted in their shining plumage,
And their tails like fans unfolded.
"Only Oweenee, the youngest,
Was not changed, but sat in silence,
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly,
Looking sadly at the others;
Till Osseo, gazing upward,
Gave another cry of anguish,
Such a cry as he had uttered
By the oak-tree in the forest.
"Then r...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...
Again they towed her seawards, and again 
We, watching, praised her beauty, praised her trim, 
Saw her fair house-flag flutter at the main, 
And slowly saunter seawards, dwindling dim; 

And wished her well, and wondered, as she died, 
How, when her canvas had been sheeted home, 
Her quivering length would sweep into her stride, 
Making the greenness milky with her foam. 

But when we rose next morning, we discerned 
Her beauty once again a shattered thing; 
Towing to do...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things