Famous Mumbling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Haunted

by Siegfried Sassoon
EVENING was in the wood, louring with storm. 
A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool 
And baked the channels; birds had done with song. 
Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon, 
Or willow-music blown across the water 5 
Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill. 

Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding, 
His face a little...Read more of this...

Thoughts

by Walt Whitman
 OF Public Opinion; 
Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later, (How impassive! How certain and final!) 
Of the President with pale face, asking secretly to himself, What will the people say
 at
 last? 
Of the frivolous Judge—Of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor—Of such as
 these,
 standing helpless and exposed; 
Of the mumbling and screaming priest—(soon, soon deserted;)
Of...Read more of this...

chickens claw

by Rg Gregory
 by a dank and ancient coffin
in the gaunt and gloomy hall
alone and sighing deeply
crouched the sorriest crone of all
her worn hands clutched a feather
her eyes were sore with tears
her lips were mumbling slowly
through the burdens of her fears
her clothes were drab and tattered
her body drooped and old
she waited waited waited
her blood let in the cold
she waited waited waited
a chill...Read more of this...

Ode To Silence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...

Young Blood

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 "But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood! Youth will be served!" 
-- D'Hermonville's Fabliaux. 


He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth 
And lay there heavily, while dancing motes 
Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams, 
And...Read more of this...

The Funeral of Youth: Threnody

by Rupert Brooke
 The Day that Youth had died,
There came to his grave-side, 
In decent mourning, from the country’s ends, 
Those scatter’d friends 
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted, 
In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse, 
The days and nights and dawnings of the time 
When Youth kept open house,...Read more of this...

Funeral Of Youth The: Threnody

by Rupert Brooke
 The day that YOUTH had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country's ends,
Those scatter'd friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown'd carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When YOUTH kept open house,
Nor left untasted
Aught of his high emprise...Read more of this...

The Poet in the Nursery

by Robert Graves
 The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling 
In a dim library, just behind the chair 
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling 
A song about some Lovers at a Fair, 
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were beastly things and never there. 

And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking 
About the tragic...Read more of this...

You Can Be A Republican Im A Genocrat

by Ogden Nash
 Oh, "rorty" was a mid-Victorian word
Which meant "fine, splendid, jolly,"
And often to me it has reoccurred
In moments melancholy.
For instance, children, I think it rorty
To be with people over forty. 

I can't say which, come eventide,
More tedious I find;
Competing with the juvenile stride,
Or meeting the juvenile mind.
So I think it rorty, yes, and nifty,
To be with people over fifty. 

The...Read more of this...

The Singing-Woman from the Woods Edge

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...

Sea Song

by Katherine Mansfield
 I will think no more of the sea! Of the big green waves And the hollowed
shore, Of the brown rock caves No more, no more Of the swell and the weed
And the bubbling foam. Memory dwells in my far away home, She has nothing
to do with me. She is old and bent With a pack On her back. Her...Read more of this...

Sea Sorcery

by Robert William Service
 Oh how I love the laughing sea,
 Sun lances splintering;
Or with a virile harmony
 In salty caves to sing;
Or mumbling pebbles on the shore,
 Or roused to monster might:
By day I love the sea, but more
 I love it in the night.

High over ocean hangs my home
 And when the moon is clear
I stare and stare till fairy foam
...Read more of this...

To All and Everything

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
 No.
It can’t be.
No!
You too, beloved?
Why? What for?
Darling, look -
I came,
I brought flowers,
but, but... I never took
silver spoons from your drawer!

Ashen-faced,
I staggered down five flights of stairs.
The street eddied round me. Blasts. Blares.
Tires screeched.
It was gusty.
The wind stung my cheeks.
Horn mounted horn lustfully.

Above the capital’s madness
I raised my face,
stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent,
on your body as on a...Read more of this...

Albert Down Under

by Marriott Edgar
 Albert were what you'd call “thwarted”. 
He had long had an ambition, which... 
Were to save up and go to Australia, 
The saving up that were the hitch. 

He'd a red money box on the pot shelf, 
A post office thing made of tin, 
But with him and his Dad and the bread knife, 
It never had anything in....Read more of this...

The Fairy Temple; Or Oberons Chapel

by Robert Herrick
 THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON'S CHAPEL

DEDICATED TO MR JOHN MERRIFIELD,
COUNSELLOR AT LAW

RARE TEMPLES THOU HAST SEEN, I KNOW,
AND RICH FOR IN AND OUTWARD SHOW;
SURVEY THIS CHAPEL BUILT, ALONE,
WITHOUT OR LIME, OR WOOD, OR STONE.
THEN SAY, IF ONE THOU'ST SEEN MORE FINE
THAN THIS, THE FAIRIES' ONCE, NOW THINE.

THE TEMPLE

A way enchaced with glass and beads
There is, that to the Chapel...Read more of this...

A list of some observation..

by Joseph Brodsky
 A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body bulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence, they'll no...Read more of this...

The Singing-Woman From The Woods Edge

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...

Jonah

by Robert Graves
 A purple whale 
Proudly sweeps his tail 
Towards Nineveh; 
Glassy green 
Surges between
A mile of roaring sea. 

“O town of gold, 
Of splendour multifold, 
Lucre and lust, 
Leviathan’s eye
Can surely spy 
Thy doom of death and dust.” 

On curving sands 
Vengeful Jonah stands. 
“Yet forty days,
Then down, down, 
Tumbles the town 
In flaming ruin ablaze.” 

With swift lament 
Those...Read more of this...

The Redeemer

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep; 
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night, 
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep; 
There, with much work to do before the light, 
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might 
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang, 
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang; 
We...Read more of this...

A list of some observation

by Joseph Brodsky
A list of some observation. In a corner it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow the body bulks
like a glacier's debris a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence they'll no doubt...Read more of this...

Lost Love

by Robert Graves
 His eyes are quickened so with grief, 
He can watch a grass or leaf 
Every instant grow; he can 
Clearly through a flint wall see, 
Or watch the startled spirit flee 
From the throat of a dead man. 
Across two counties he can hear 
And catch your words before you speak. 
The woodlouse or the maggot's weak 
Clamour rings...Read more of this...

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