Famous Noises Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Frankenstein

by Edward Field
 The monster has escaped from the dungeon
where he was kept by the Baron,
who made him with knobs sticking out from each side of his neck
where the head was attached to the body
and stitching all over
where parts of cadavers were sewed together.

He is pursued by the ignorant villagers,
who think he is evil and dangerous because he is ugly
and makes ugly...Read more of this...

Clover

by Sidney Lanier
 Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one --
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
'Tis a...Read more of this...

The Conquerors

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Round the wide earth, from the red field your valour has won,
Blown with the breath of the far-speaking gun,
Goes the word.
Bravely you spoke through the battle cloud heavy and dun.
Tossed though the speech toward the mist-hidden sun,
The world heard.
Hell would have shrunk from you seeking it fresh from the fray,
Grim with the dust of the battle, and gray
From the fight.
Heaven...Read more of this...

Autumn Birds

by John Clare
 The wild duck startles like a sudden thought,
And heron slow as if it might be caught.
The flopping crows on weary wings go by
And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly.
The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by,
And darken like a clod the evening sky.
The larks like thunder rise and suthy round,
Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground.
The wild...Read more of this...

A Death Song

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass,
Whah de branch 'll go a-singin' as it pass.
An' w'en I 's a-layin' low,
I kin hyeah it as it go
Singin', "Sleep, my honey, tek yo' res' at las'."
Lay me nigh to whah hit meks a little pool,
An' de watah stan's so quiet lak an' cool,
Whah de little birds in spring,
Ust to come...Read more of this...

The Lady of Shalott

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
ON either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 
And thro' the field the road runs by 
To many-tower'd Camelot; 5 
And up and down the people go, 
Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below, 
The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 10 
Little breezes...Read more of this...

Like

by Frank O'Hara
It's not so much 
abstractions are available:
the lofty period of the mind
ending a sentence while the pain endures:
departures absences.

And you are still on the dock 
the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows 
At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George
Who is mopping the stage up 
While two girls cry in the last row.

I think they got laid last...Read more of this...

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,when grief has been made so public, and exposedto the critique of a whole epochthe frailty of our conscience and anguish, of whom shall we speak? For every day they dieamong us, those who were doing us some good,who knew it was never enough buthoped to improve a little by living....Read more of this...

sam swill

by Rg Gregory
 sam swill
took a pill
went blue
ate stew
had pains
no brains
sucked a date
too late
swallowed stone
all alone
too proud
to cry aloud
scoffed cake
great ache
at work
went beserk
in a funk
did a bunk
hitch hike
stole a bike
empty car
not too far
flat tyre
on fire
skid swerve
lost his nerve
bang crash
frantic dash
turned bend
pond at end
police whistle
fall on thistle
jump in air
pond there
shocked scream
can't swim
hold breath
certain death
police leap
foot deep
soaking wet
vow they'll get
sam swill
off up hill
put in...Read more of this...

Noises

by Fenny Sterenborg
 I woke up this morning
with the city's noises
fusing into my dream
A pride of lions
roaring in anger
The traffic, it must have been

A hunter shouting something
but I probably heard a street vendor
For a moment, total silence
then a shot rings out in the wild
Perhaps a car's broken exhaust
or the toy pistol from a child

The noises slowly become familiar
as I slip out of...Read more of this...

The Dead Master

by John McCrae
 Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
To-day around him surges from the silences of Time
A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,
Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God....Read more of this...

From One Who Stays

by Amy Lowell
 How empty seems the town now you are gone!
A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls
Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls
Eery, distorted, as it long had shone
On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone.
The whir of motors, stricken through with calls
Of playing boys, floats up at intervals;
But all these noises blur to one long moan.
What quest is worth...Read more of this...

In Hilly-Wood

by John Clare
 How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thick the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many...Read more of this...

To Walt Whitman In America

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender...Read more of this...

In The Cool Of The Evening

by James Stephens
 I thought I heard Him calling. Did you hear 
A sound, a little sound? My curious ear 
Is dinned with flying noises, and the tree 
Goes -- whisper, whisper, whisper silently 
Till all its whispers spread into the sound 
Of a dull roar. Lie closer to the ground, 
The shade is deep and He may pass us by. 
We...Read more of this...

The Space Heater

by Sharon Olds
 On the then-below-zero day, it was on,
near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,
like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire of a fire's heat,
the little coils like hairs in Hell.
And it was making a group of sick noises-
I wanted...Read more of this...

Life doesn't frighten me at all

by Maya Angelou
Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all
 
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all
 
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don't frighten me at all
 
Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn't frighten me at all.
 
I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I...Read more of this...

crematorium-return

by Rg Gregory
 (to where the ashes of both
 my parents are strewn)

i)
ok the pair of you lie still
what's disturbing me need pass
no fretful hand over your peace
this world's vicissitudes are stale
fodder for you who feed the grass

some particles of your two dusts
by moon's wish accident or wind
may have leapt that late-life wound
refound in you the rhapsodists
first-married days had twinned

i've come today...Read more of this...

A Hill

by Anthony Hecht
 In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur,
I had a vision once - though you understand
It was nothing at all like Dante's, or the visions of saints,
And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends,
Picking my way through a warm sunlit piazza
In the early morning. A clear fretwork of shadows
From huge umbrellas littered the pavement...Read more of this...

Road and Hills

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 I shall go away 
To the brown hills, the quiet ones, 
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, 
Sun-fired and drowsy! 

My horse snuffs delicately 
At the strange wind; 
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. 
The road winds, straightens, 
Slashes a marsh, 
Shoulders out a bridge, 
Then -- 
Again the hills. 
Unchanged, innumerable, 
Bowing huge,...Read more of this...

Waring

by Robert Browning
 I

What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through...Read more of this...

A Teamsters Farewell

by Carl Sandburg
 Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary

GOOD-BY now to the streets and the clash of wheels and
locking hubs,
The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs.
The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy
haunches,
Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle,
The smash of the iron hoof on the stones,
All the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street--
O God,...Read more of this...

The Secret

by Friedrich von Schiller
 She sought to breathe one word, but vainly;
Too many listeners were nigh;
And yet my timid glance read plainly
The language of her speaking eye.
Thy silent glades my footstep presses,
Thou fair and leaf-embosomed grove!
Conceal within thy green recesses
From mortal eye our sacred love!

Afar with strange discordant noises,
The busy day is echoing;
And 'mid the hollow hum of voices,
I hear the heavy hammer...Read more of this...

Santa Claus

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 "HALT! Who goes there?” The sentry’s call 
Rose on the midnight air 
Above the noises of the camp, 
The roll of wheels, the horses’ tramp. 
The challenge echoed over all— 
“Halt! Who goes there?” 
A quaint old figure clothed in white, 
He bore a staff of pine, 
An ivy-wreath was on his head. 
“Advance, oh friend,” the sentry said,...Read more of this...

The Painter on Silk

by Amy Lowell
 There was a man
Who made his living
By painting roses
Upon silk.
He sat in an upper chamber
And painted,
And the noises of the street
Meant nothing to him.
When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums,
He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses
Bursting in the sunshine,
And smiled as he worked.
He thought only of roses,
And silk.
When he could get no more silk
He stopped painting
And...Read more of this...

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