Famous Mumbled Poems by Famous Poets

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

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That Day

by Anne Sexton
 This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
with its shoulders gathered in like a Greek chorus,
with its tongue like a king making up rules as he goes,
with its tongue quite openly like a cat lapping...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene: Book I Canto I

by Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall...Read more of this...

Hero

by Siegfried Sassoon
 'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she'd read. 
'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He'd told the poor old dear some gallant...Read more of this...

The Artist

by Robert William Service
 All day with brow of anxious thought
 The dictionary through,
Amid a million words he sought
 The sole one that would do.
He wandered on from pub to pub
 Yet never ceased to seek
With burning brain and pencil stub
 The Word Unique.

Said he: 'I'll nail it down or die.
 Oh Heaven help me, pray!'
And then a heavy car dashed by,
 And...Read more of this...

Troll Sat Alone on His Seat of Stone

by J R R Tolkien
 Troll sat alone on his seat of stone,
And munched and mumbled a bare old bone;
For many a year he had gnawed it near,
For meat was hard to come by.
Done by! Gum by!
In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone,
And meat was hard to come by.

Up came Tom with his big boots on.
Said he to Troll: 'Pray, what is...Read more of this...

To The Chapel Bell

by Robert Southey
 "Lo I, the man who erst the Muse did ask
Her deepest notes to swell the Patriot's meeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter task
For cap and gown to leave my minstrel weeds,"
For yon dull noise that tinkles on the air
Bids me lay by the lyre and go to morning prayer.

Oh how I hate the sound! it is the Knell,
That still...Read more of this...

Menelaus and Helen

by Rupert Brooke
 I

Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

High sat white Helen, lonely...Read more of this...

Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage

by John Berryman
 How this woman came by the courage, how she got
the courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot
night of the eight of July,
where it came from, did once the Lord frown down
upon her ancient cradle thinking 'This one
will do before she die

for two and seventy years of chipped indignities
at least,' and with his thunder clapped a promise?
In that far...Read more of this...

Ancient History

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain,
Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees;
Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees,
He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain;
‘He was the grandest of them all was Cain!
‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire:
‘Swift as a stag: a stallion of the plain,
‘Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire.’ 

Grimly...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor

by Robert William Service
 Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall:
"We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew's Ball.
Yon squakin' saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes.
I'm sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes."
"Alas! it's true," said Tam MacCall. "The young folk of to-day
Are fox-trot mad and dinna ken a reel from Strathspey.
Now, what we want's a...Read more of this...

The wayfarer

by Stephen Crane
 The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."...Read more of this...

Deaf House Agent

by Katherine Mansfield
 That deaf old man
With his hand to his ear--
His hand to hi head stood out like a shell,
Horny and hollow. He said, "I can't hear,"
He muttered, "Don't shout,
I can hear very well!"

He mumbled, "I can't catch a word;
I can't follow."
Then Jack with a voice like a Protestant bell
Roared--"Particulars! Farmhouse! At 10 quid a year!"
"I dunno wot place you are...Read more of this...

Bronzes

by Carl Sandburg
 I

THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln
Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment
for dinner and matinees and buying and selling
Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling
On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near by
I have seen the...Read more of this...

The first Days Night had come

by Emily Dickinson
 The first Day's Night had come --
And grateful that a thing
So terrible -- had been endured --
I told my Soul to sing --

She said her Strings were snapt --
Her Bow -- to Atoms blown --
And so to mend her -- gave me work
Until another Morn --

And then -- a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my...Read more of this...

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