Famous Rattling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Wanderers Storm-song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe says of this ode, that it is the only 
one remaining out of several strange hymns and dithyrambs composed 
by him at a period of great unhappiness, when the love-affair between 
him and Frederica had been broken off by him. He used to sing them 
while wandering wildly about the country. This particular one was 
caused by his...Read more of this...

An Excelente Balade of Charitie: As Wroten bie the Gode Pri

by Thomas Chatterton
 In Virgynë the sweltrie sun gan sheene, 
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie; 
The apple rodded from its palie greene, 
And the mole peare did bende the leafy spraie; 
The peede chelandri sunge the livelong daie; 
'Twas nowe the pride, the manhode of the yeare, 
And eke the grounde was dighte in its moste defte aumere....Read more of this...

Psalm 147

by Isaac Watts
 v.7-9,13-18 
C. M.
The seasons of the year.

With songs and honors sounding loud,
Address the Lord on high;
Over the heav'ns he spreads his cloud,
And waters veil the sky.

He sends his showers of blessing down
To cheer the plains below;
He makes the grass the mountains crown,
And corn in valleys grow.

He gives the grazing ox his meat,
He hears the raven's cry;
But man, who tastes...Read more of this...

Over the Misty Mountains Cold

by J R R Tolkien
 Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old,
We must away, ere break of day,
To seek our pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells,
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light...Read more of this...

Footsteps

by Constantine P Cavafy
 On an ebony bed decorated
with coral eagles, sound asleep lies
Nero -- unconscious, quiet, and blissful;
thriving in the vigor of flesh,
and in the splendid power of youth.

But in the alabaster hall that encloses
the ancient shrine of the Aenobarbi
how restive are his Lares.
The little household gods tremble,
and try to hide their insignificant bodies.
For they heard a horrible clamor,
a deathly clamor ascending...Read more of this...

The Beauty of Death XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and 
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights; 
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and 
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body; 
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with...Read more of this...

Sonnet XV: You That Do Search

by Sir Philip Sidney
 You that do search for every purling spring, 
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows, 
And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows 
Near thereabouts, into your poesy wring; 

You that do dictionary's method bring 
Into your rimes, running in rattling rows; 
You that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes, 
With new-born sighs and denizen'd wit do sing, 

You take...Read more of this...

Whereas At Morning In A Jeweled Crown

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Whereas at morning in a Jeweled Crown
I bit my fingers and was hard to please,
Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down
I feel tonight more happy and at ease:
Feet running in the corridors, men quick— 
Buckling their sword-belts, bumping down the stair,
Challenge, and rattling bridge-chain, and the click
Of hooves on pavement—this will clear the air.
Private this chamber as it...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...

Gargoyle

by Carl Sandburg
 I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again...Read more of this...

The Rattling Boy from Dublin

by William Topaz McGonagall
 I'm a rattling boy from Dublin town,
I courted a girl called Biddy Brown,
Her eyes they were as black as sloes,
She had black hair and an aquiline nose. 

Chorus --

Whack fal de da, fal de darelido,
Whack fal de da, fal de darelay,
Whack fal de da, fal de darelido,
Whack fal de da, fal de darelay. 

One night I met her with...Read more of this...

Shearing With a Hoe

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The track that led to Carmody's is choked and overgrown, 
The suckers of the stringybark have made the place their own; 
The mountain rains have cut the track that once we used to know 
When first we rode to Carmody's, a score of years ago. 

The shearing shed at Carmody's was slab and stringybark, 
The press was just a...Read more of this...

Astrophel and Stella: XV

by Sir Philip Sidney
 You that do search for every purling spring
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows,
And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows
Near thereabouts, into your poesy wring;
Ye that do dictionary's method bring
Into your rimes, running in rattling rows;
You that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes
With new-born sighs and denizen'd wit do sing:
You take wrong ways; those far-fet helps be such
As do...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...

The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old. 

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.


I

Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining...Read more of this...

Friends Within The Darkness

by Charles Bukowski
 I can remember starving in a 
small room in a strange city 
shades pulled down, listening to 
classical music 
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife 
inside 
because there was no alternative except to hide as long 
as possible-- 
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: 
trying to connect. 

the old...Read more of this...

90. Epistle to James Smith

by Robert Burns
 DEAR SMITH, the slee’st, pawkie thief,
That e’er attempted stealth or rief!
Ye surely hae some warlock-brief
 Owre human hearts;
For ne’er a bosom yet was prief
 Against your arts.


For me, I swear by sun an’ moon,
An’ ev’ry star that blinks aboon,
Ye’ve cost me twenty pair o’ shoon,
 Just gaun to see you;
An’ ev’ry ither pair that’s done,
 Mair taen I’m wi’...Read more of this...

Buttons

by Carl Sandburg
 I HAVE been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black buttons--
are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a...Read more of this...

The Triumph Of Love

by Friedrich von Schiller
 By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!

In Pyrrha's rear (so poets sang
In ages past and gone),
The world from rocky fragments sprang--
Mankind from lifeless stone.

Their soul was but a thing of night,
Like stone and...Read more of this...

legs rivers and age

by Rg Gregory
 with landbound legs a wish
for the easy flow of a river - not 
the clambering up crags to seek 
more favour from the sun
(or long-haired moon) harped for
since those sparks of who am i 
first clicked through consciousness

how the river sidles round 
rocks blocking the painful straight
seems to brush aside
all snags disrupting its ambition
to be sea - certain from...Read more of this...

Elizabeth Gone

by Anne Sexton
 1.

You lay in the nest of your real death,
Beyond the print of my nervous fingers
Where they touched your moving head;
Your old skin puckering, your lungs' breath
Grown baby short as you looked up last
At my face swinging over the human bed,
And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go.

You lay in the crate of your last death,
But were not...Read more of this...

The Widow

by Walter de la Mare
 Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snows fell,
Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked,
When a poor Wanderer struggled on her journey
Weary and way-sore.

Drear were the downs, more dreary her reflexions;
Cold was the night wind, colder was her bosom!
She had no home, the world was all before her,
She had no shelter.

Fast o'er the bleak heath rattling drove...Read more of this...

As the Bell Clinks

by Rudyard Kipling
 As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the...Read more of this...

A Fable

by Richard Wilbur
 Securely sunning in a forest glade, 
A mild, well-meaning snake
Approved the adaptations he had made
For safety’s sake.

He liked the skin he had—
Its mottled camouflage, its look of mail,
And was content that he had thought to add
A rattling tail.


The tail was not for drumming up a fight;
No, nothing of the sort.
And he would only use his poisoned bite
As last resort....Read more of this...

310. Tam o' Shanter: A Tale

by Robert Burns
 WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering...Read more of this...

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