Famous Riotous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Draw up your chair near mine

by Emile Verhaeren
Draw up your chair near mine, and stretch your hands out towards the hearth that I may see between your fingers the old flame burning; and watch the fire quietly with your eyes that fear no light, that they may be for me still franker when a quick and flashing ray strikes to their depths, illuminating them.
Oh! how beautiful and...Read more of this...

Mystic Trumpeter The

by Walt Whitman
 1
HARK! some wild trumpeter—some strange musician, 
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. 

I hear thee, trumpeter—listening, alert, I catch thy notes, 
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me, 
Now low, subdued—now in the distance lost.

2
Come nearer, bodiless one—haply, in thee resounds 
Some dead composer—haply thy pensive life 
Was fill’d with aspirations high—unform’d ideals, 
Waves, oceans musical,...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts LII: Tired of Waiting

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Tired of waiting, you burst your bonds, impatient flowers, before
the winter had gone. Glimpses of the unseen comer reached your
wayside watch, and you rushed out running and panting, impulsive
jasmines, troops of riotous roses.
You were the first to march to the breach of death, your
clamour of colour and perfume troubled the air. You laughed and
pressed and pushed each other, bared...Read more of this...

The Only Child

by Katharine Tynan
 Lest he miss other children, lo! 
His angel is his playfellow. 
A riotous angel two years old, 
With wings of rose and curls of gold. 

There on the nursery floor together 
They play when it is rainy weather, 
Building brick castles with much pain, 
Only to knock them down again. 

Two golden heads together look 
An hour long o'er...Read more of this...

Tomes

by Billy Collins
 There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.

I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note...Read more of this...

The Debt

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end—
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release—
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best—
God! but the interest![Pg 214]
...Read more of this...

The Hour of Twilight

by George William Russell
 WHEN the unquiet hours depart
And far away their tumults cease,
Within the twilight of the heart
We bathe in peace, are stilled with peace.


The fire that slew us through the day
For angry deed or sin of sense
Now is the star and homeward ray
To us who bow in penitence.


We kiss the lips of bygone pain
And find a secret sweet in them:
The thorns...Read more of this...

Liberty

by James Whitcomb Riley
 New Castle, July 4, 1878

or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
And...Read more of this...

A Noon Interval

by James Whitcomb Riley
 A deep, delicious hush in earth and sky -- 
A gracious lull--since, from its wakening, 
The morn has been a feverish, restless thing 
In which the pulse of Summer ran too high 
And riotous, as though its heart went nigh 
To bursting with delights past uttering: 
Now--as an o'erjoyed child may cease to sing 
All falteringly at play, with...Read more of this...

To A Brown Beggar-maid

by Charles Baudelaire
 WHITE maiden with the russet hair, 
Whose garments, through their holes, declare 
That poverty is part of you, 
And beauty too. 

To me, a sorry bard and mean, 
Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, 
With summer freckles here and there, 
Is sweet and fair. 

Your sabots tread the roads of chance, 
And not one queen of old romance 
Carried...Read more of this...

The Debt

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 This is the debt I pay 
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end --
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release --
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best --
God! but the interest!...Read more of this...

The Priestess of Panormita

by Aleister Crowley
 Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed...Read more of this...

The Cooks Tale

by Geoffrey Chaucer
 THE PROLOGUE.


THE Cook of London, while the Reeve thus spake,
For joy he laugh'd and clapp'd him on the back:
"Aha!" quoth he, "for Christes passion,
This Miller had a sharp conclusion,
Upon this argument of herbergage.* *lodging
Well saide Solomon in his language,
Bring thou not every man into thine house,
For harbouring by night is perilous.
*Well ought a man avised for to be* *a...Read more of this...

The golden barks of lovely summer

by Emile Verhaeren
The golden barks of lovely summer that set out, riotous for space, are returning sad and weary from the blood-stained horizons.
With monotonous strokes of the oars, they advance upon the waters; they are as cradles in which sleep autumn flowers.
Stalks of lilies with golden brows, you all lie overthrown; alone, the roses struggle to live beyond death.
What matters to their...Read more of this...

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man

by Ogden Nash
 It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called...Read more of this...

The Prodigal Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here come I to my own again, 
Fed, forgiven and known again, 
Claimed by bone of my bone again 
And cheered by flesh of my flesh. 
The fatted calf is dressed for me, 
But the husks have greater zest for me, 
I think my pigs will be best for me, 
So I'm off to the Yards afresh.

I never was...Read more of this...

A Lovers Quarrel

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 We two were lovers, the Sea and I;
We plighted our troth ‘neath a summer sky.

And all through the riotous ardent weather
We dreamed, and loved, and rejoiced together.
* * *
At times my lover would rage and storm.
I said: ‘No matter, his heart is warm.’

Whatever his humour, I loved his ways,
And so we lived though the golden days.

I know not the...Read more of this...

In the Stalls

by Arthur Symons
 My life is like a music-hall, 
Where, in the impotence of rage, 
Chained by enchantment to my stall, 
I see myself upon the stage 
Dance to amuse a music-hall. 

'Tis I that smoke this cigarette, 
Lounge here, and laugh for vacancy, 
And watch the dancers turn; and yet 
It is my very self I see 
Across the cloudy cigarette....Read more of this...

Alfonso Dressing to Wait at Table

by Claude McKay
 Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad 
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts; 
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad, 
His eyes were made to capture women's hearts. 

Down in the glory-hole Alfonso sings 
An olden song of wine and clinking glasses 
And riotous rakes; magnificently flings 
Gay kisses to imaginary lasses. 

Alfonso's voice of mellow music thrills 
Our...Read more of this...

The Prodigal Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here come I to my own again, 
Fed, forgiven and known again, 
Claimed by bone of my bone again 
And cheered by flesh of my flesh. 
The fatted calf is dressed for me, 
But the husks have greater rest for me, 
I think my pigs will be best for me, 
So I'm off to the Yards afresh.

I never was...Read more of this...

Long Time I Lay In Little Ease

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 LONG TIME I LAY IN LITTLE EASE


LONG time I lay in little ease
Where, placed by the Turanian,
Marseilles, the many-masted, sees
The blue Mediterranean.

Now songful in the hour of sport,
Now riotous for wages,
She camps around her ancient port,
As ancient of the ages.

Algerian airs through all the place
Unconquerably sally;
Incomparable women pace
The shadows of the alley.

And high o'er dark and graving yard
And where...Read more of this...

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