Famous Restive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Bereft

...ad I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch's sagging floor,
leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
W...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


Footsteps

...h,
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 the stairs,
iron footsteps rattling the stairs.
And now in a faint the miserable Lares,
burrow in the depth of the shrine,
one tumbles and stumbles upon the other,
one little god falls over the oth...Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P

On the Way

...Washington. 
There was a nation in the man who passed us, 
If there was not a world. I may have driven 
Since then some restive horses, and alone,
And through a splashing of abundant mud; 
But he who made the dust that sets you on 
To coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry, 
And in a measure safe. 

BURR

Here’s a new tune
From Hamilton. Has your caution all at once, 
And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle? 
I have forgotten what my father said 
When I was born, b...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
You will stay on, restive, serene in
Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning
But which holds something of both in pure
Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.

The balloon pops, the attention
Turns dully away. Clouds
In the puddle stir up into sawtoothed fragments.
I think of the friends
Who came to see me, of what yesterday
Was like. A peculiar slant
Of memory th...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Sorley's Weather

...When outside the icy rain 
Comes leaping helter-skelter, 
Shall I tie my restive brain 
Snugly under shelter? 

Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study, 
When outside the winds blow strong 
And the lanes are muddy? 

With old wine and drowsy meats 
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats? 
Shall I drink with Shelley? 

Tobacco’s pleasant, firelight’s good: 
Poetry makes both better. 
Clay is wet and so ...Read more of this...
by Graves, Robert


Sparkles from The Wheel

...arrested; 

The group, (an unminded point, set in a vast surrounding;) 
The attentive, quiet children—the loud, proud, restive base of the streets; 
The low, hoarse purr of the whirling stone—the light-press’d blade, 
Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,
Sparkles from the wheel....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ships of Saint John

...nreasoned strife
And dare the risk of ill.

Not mere insensate wood and paint
Obedient to the helm's command,
But often restive as a saint
Beneath the Heavenly hand.

All the beauty and mystery
Of life were there, adventure bold,
Youth, and the glamour of the sea
And all its sorrows old.

And many a time I saw them go
Out on the flood at morning brave,
As the little tugs had them in tow,
And the sunlight danced on the wave.

There all day long you could hear the sound
Of the ...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss

The Undertakers Horse

...ere kindles in my bosom
An emotion chill and gruesome
As I canter past the Undertaker's Horse.

Neither shies he nor is restive,
But a hideously suggestive
Trot, professional and placid, he affects;
And the cadence of his hoof-beats
To my mind this grim reproof beats: --
"Mend your pace, my friend, I'm coming. Who's the next?"

Ah! stud-bred of ill-omen,
I have watched the strongest go -- men
Of pith and might and muscle -- at your heels,
Down the plantain-bordered highway,
(...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Years of the Modern

...to be but one heart to the globe? 
Is humanity forming, en-masse?—for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim; 
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war; 
No one knows what will happen next—such portents fill the days and nights; 
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of
 phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me; 
This incredible rush and heat—this strange extatic fever of...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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