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Famous Rumbling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...Sounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
a rumbling and a roaring
as of some enormous creature turning
under sea and earth
a billion sotto voices murmuring
a vast muttering
a swelling stuttering
in ocean's speakers
world's voice-box heard with ear to sand
a shocked echoing
a shocking shouting
of all life's voices lost in night
And the tape of it
someow running backwards now
through the Moog Synthesiz...Read more of this...



by Masefield, John
...A WIND'S in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels, 
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels; 
I hunger for the sea's edge, the limit of the land, 
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. 

Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street, 
To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet; 
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride, 
Oh I'l be going, going, until I meet the tide. ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...essure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-...Read more of this...

by Chatterton, Thomas
...the howling storm; 
And whilst the tempest whistles round his face, 
Exults to find his mantled carcase warm. 

Now rumbling coaches furious drive along, 
Full of the majesty of city dames, 
Whose jewels sparkling in the gaudy throng, 
Raise strange emotions and invidious flames. 

Now Merit, happy in the calm of place, 
To mortals as a highlander appears, 
And conscious of the excellence of lace, 
With spreading frogs and gleaming spangles glares. 

Whilst Envy, ...Read more of this...

by Bosselaar, Laure-Anne
...thing but cinder-block
and parking lots,

 wasting its breath on smokeless 
smoke-stacks, not even a trash can 
to send rumbling through the streets.
And that lightning bolt, forking itself 
to death, to hit 

 nothing — what a waste. 
What if I hadn’t been here, lost too,
four in the morning, driving around
in a jean-shirt over my night-gown,
reciting Baudelaire aloud — 

 like an idiot ¬— unable to sleep, 
scared to death by my longing for it,
death, so early in the...Read more of this...



by Lowell, Amy
...a gilded perch 
screams;
they have forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows 
shake. Boom! Boom!
It is the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses 
bloom at Malmaison.
Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, 
rotting beneath them.
Fallen flowers strew the unraked walks. Fallen flowers 
for a fallen Emperor!
The General in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches 
of music --
snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a ...Read more of this...

by Milligan, Spike
...Maveric Prowles
Had Rumbling Bowles
That thundered in the night.
It shook the bedrooms all around
And gave the folks a fright.
The doctor called;
He was appalled
When through his stethoscope
He heard the sound of a baying hound,
And the acrid smell of smoke.
Was there a cure?
'The higher the fewer'
The learned doctor said,
Then turned poor Maveric inside out
And sto...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...d Nesbitt marching at its side,
Great executioner and proud,
Like hangman high on Holborn road;
And o'er the slow-drawn rumbling car,
The waving ensigns of the war!
As when a triumph Rome decreed
For great Caligula's valiant deed,
Who had subdued the British seas,
By gath'ring cockles from their base;
In pompous car the conq'ror bore
His captive scallops from the shore,
Ovations gain'd his crabs for fetching,
And mighty feats of oyster-catching:
'Gainst Yankies thus the war b...Read more of this...

by Untermeyer, Louis
...soar
Or drive against my will. (So I have said
These many years—and still they are not tame.)
Scraps of a song keep rumbling in my head ...
Listen—you never heard me sing before.
When a false world betrays your trust
And stamps upon your fire,
When what seemed blood is only rust,
Take up the lyre!
How quickly the heroic mood
Responds to its own ringing;
The scornful heart, the angry blood
Leap upward, singing!
Ah, that was how it used to be. But now,
Du schöner...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...ggling hard with might and main,
Hoping his struggle won't prove in vain. 

So on comes the iron-horse snorting and rumbling,
And the mountain-torrent at the bridge kept roaring and tumbling;
While brave Carl keeps shouting, 'The bridge is down! The bridge is down!'
He cried with a pitiful wail and sound. 

But, thank heaven, the engine-driver sees the red light
That Carl keeps swinging round his head with all his might;
But bang! bang! goes the engine with a terrible...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...that rise
In the dark of the troubled deep
To break on the beach in fiery lines.
Echo the far-off roll of thunder,
Rumbling loud
And ever louder, under
The blue-black curtain of cloud, 
Where the lightning serpents gleam.
Echo the moaning
Of the forest in its sleep 
Like a giant groaning
In the torment of a dream. 

Now an interval of quiet
For a moment holds the air
In the breathless hush
Of a silent prayer. 

Then the sudden rush
Of the rain, and the riot
O...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...ough the harbor streets 
151 Inspecting the cabildo, the fa?ade 
152 Of the cathedral, making notes, he heard 
153 A rumbling, west of Mexico, it seemed, 
154 Approaching like a gasconade of drums. 
155 The white cabildo darkened, the fa?ade, 
156 As sullen as the sky, was swallowed up 
157 In swift, successive shadows, dolefully. 
158 The rumbling broadened as it fell. The wind, 
159 Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry, 
160 Came bluntly thundering, mor...Read more of this...

by Bonnefoy, Yves
...s waking,
I loved those days we had, days preserved
The way a river flows slowly, though already
Caught in the vaulting rumbling of the sea.
They were passing through us, with the majesty of simple things,
The mighty sails of what is were kind enough to take
Precarious human life on board the ship
That the mountain spread out around us.
O memory,
They covered with the flapping of their silence
The sound, of water on the stones, of our voices,
And up ahead, there might...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, ...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...t, like the pelicans know,
so I got raptures once, and I saw God
like a harpooned grouper bleeding, and a far
voice was rumbling, "Shabine, if you leave her,
if you leave her, I shall give you the morning star."
When I left the madhouse I tried other women
but, once they stripped naked, their spiky cunts
bristled like sea eggs and I couldn't dive.
The chaplain came round. I paid him no mind.
Where is my rest place, Jesus? Where is my harbor?
Where is the pillo...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ll me how.
It is impossible, it may not be.
Hey nice* churl, God let him never the.** *foolish **thrive
The rumbling of a fart, and every soun',
Is but of air reverberatioun,
And ever wasteth lite* and lite* away; *little
There is no man can deemen,* by my fay, *judge, decide
If that it were departed* equally. *divided
What? lo, my churl, lo yet how shrewedly* *impiously, wickedly
Unto my confessour to-day he spake;
I hold him certain a demoniac.
Now eat y...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...g voices of the men 
Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
Hark! There’s the big bombardment on our right 
Rumbling and bumping; and the dark’s a glare 
Of flickering horror in the sectors where 
We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled, 
Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
‘What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?’ 
Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire: 
Why did he do it? ... Starlight overhead— 
Blank stars. I’m...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...ausoleum 
hiding its iron frame in masonry. 
Men burn like grass 
while armies grow. 

Thirty years in the vast rumbling gut 
of this society you stormed 
to be used, screamed 
no louder than any other breaking voice. 
The waste of a good man 
bleeds the future that's come 
in Chicago, in flat America, 
where the poor still bleed from the teeth, 
housed in sewers and filing cabinets, 
where prophets may spit into the wind 
till anger sleets their eyes shut, 
where...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...r smog gasoline 
hazing red Denver's day 

December bare trees 

sticking up from housetop streets 

Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over 

radar wheels, black smoke 

drifts from tailfins 

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains 
Oil from Texas, Bahrein, Venezuela Mexico 
Oil that turns General Motors 

revs up Ford 
lights up General Electric, oil that crackles 

thru International Business Machine computers, 

charges dynamos for ITT 
spa...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...gy unresting.
How their merry quickstep played—
Silver, sharp, sonorous,
Piercing through with prophecy
The demons' rumbling chorus—
Behold the ancient powers of sin
And slavery before them!—
Sworn to stop the glorious dawn,
The pit-black clouds hung o'er them.
Plagues that rose to blast the day
Fiend and tiger faces,
Monsters plotting bloodshed for
The patient toiling races.
Round the dawn their cannon raged,
Hurling bolts of thunder,
Yet before our spangled flag...Read more of this...

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