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Famous Shocked Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilbur, Richard
...Right down the shocked street with a
 siren-blast
That sends all else skittering to the
 curb,
Redness, brass, ladders and hats hurl
 past,
 Blurring to sheer verb,

Shift at the corner into uproarious gear
And make it around the turn in a squall
 of traction,
The headlong bell maintaining sure and
 clear,
 Thought is degraded action!

Beautiful, heavy, unweary, loud,
 obv...Read more of this...



by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...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 Synthesizer of time
Chaos unscrambled
back to the first
harmonies
And the first light...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...the Nile
have shuffled to your insolent appeal.
I've rocked with glee the chimpanzee, and mocked the crocodile,
And shocked the pompous penquin and the seal.

I've set the yokels singing in a little Surrey pub,
Apaches swinging in a Belville bar.
I've played an obligato to the tom-tom's rub-a-dub,
And the throb of Andalusian guitar.
From the Horn to Honolulu, from the Cape to Kalamazoo,
From Wick to Wicklow, Samarkand to Spain,
You've roughed it with my kilt-b...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...it was gone, she cut the giant's head off.
Isabel met a troublesome doctor,
He punched and he poked till he really shocked her.
The doctor's talk was of coughs and chills
And the doctor's satchel bulged with pills.
The doctor said unto Isabel,
Swallow this, it will make you well.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She took those pills from the pill concocter,
And Isabel calmly cured the doctor....Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...ll say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
an...Read more of this...



by Strand, Mark
...her eyes in horror,
you take it all back. You tell her you're almost
a girl yourself and can understand why she is shocked.
When she is about to walk away, you tell her
you have no *****, that you don't

know what got into you. You get on your knees.
She suddenly bends down to kiss your shoulder and you know
you're on the right track. You tell her you want
to bear children and that is why you seem confused.
You wrinkle your brow and curse the day you ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...r>'

'The day of doom
Is not yest come.
Until that time
A crock of dust is my dear hom.'

'Fond phantom,' cried shocked Father Shawn,
'Can there be such stubbornness--
A soul grown feverish, clutching its dead body-tree
Like a last storm-crossed leaf? Best get you gone
To judgment in a higher court of grace.
Repent, depart, before God's trump-crack splits the sky.'

From that pale mist
Ghost swore to priest:
'There sits no higher court
Than man's red heart.Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...hee, and embraced;
Thou, out of millions, mine!--Let earth and sky
Return to darkness, and the antique waste--
To chaos shocked, let warring atoms be,
Still shall each heart unto the other flee!

Do I not find within thy radiant eyes
Fairer reflections of all joys most fair?
In thee I marvel at myself--the dyes
Of lovely earth seem lovelier painted there,
And in the bright looks of the friend is given
A heavenlier mirror even of the heaven!

Sadness casts off its load, and ga...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...rtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could turn such sirens down
or was it a circean slip that shocked the pulse
all men are pigs when hunger rips the gown
and these men were not there to grace the town
service bustling (no time to take caps off)
hot steaming food and noses in the trough

i loved it deeply squashed in there with you
rough offensive banter bantered back
the smells of sweat and cargoes mixed with stew
and dumplings lamb chops roast beef...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...more! too well I know thee, ay-- 
The most ungentle knight in Arthur's hall.' 
'Have at thee then,' said Kay: they shocked, and Kay 
Fell shoulder-slipt, and Gareth cried again, 
'Lead, and I follow,' and fast away she fled. 

But after sod and shingle ceased to fly 
Behind her, and the heart of her good horse 
Was nigh to burst with violence of the beat, 
Perforce she stayed, and overtaken spoke. 

'What doest thou, scullion, in my fellowship? 
Deem'st thou that...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...iot told it to me:
The dead man's widow came to the rabbis weeping,

Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him.
Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not.
But the short rabbi told her to bring the body

Into the study house, and ordered the shutters
Closed so the room was night-dark. Then he prayed
Over the body, chanting a secret blessing

Out of Kabala. "Arise and breathe," he shouted;
But nothing happened. The body lay still. So then
The littl...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...burst into the Royal suite,
And like a cowboy whooped with glee;
Dodging the charger's flying feet
The Chamberlain was shocked to see:
Imagine how it must have been a
Grief to Mother Queen Christina!

And so through sheer magnificence
I roamed from stately room to room,
Yet haunted ever by the sense
Of tragical dynastic doom.
The walls were wailing: Kings must die,
Being plain blokes like you and I.

Well, here's the moral to my rhyme:
When memories more worthy fade
...Read more of this...

by Mansfield, Katherine
...ad or proud
Just flung her arms round Mother's neck
And kissed her very loud.

The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child
Was shocked at such a sight,
She only offered you her cheek
At morning and at night.

O Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child
Your happy laughing face
Does like a scented Summer rose
Make sweet the dullest place.

O Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child
My dear, I'm well content
To have my daughter in my arms,
And not an ornament....Read more of this...

by Fu, Du
...rps on the wicker gate, I return from a thousand li away. My wife and children are shocked to see me, Then calm themselves and wipe their tears. I floated through this disordered life, By chance I have managed to return alive. The neighbours all lean over the wall, And they as well are sighing and sobbing. Late at night we bring out candles, And face each other as in a dream....Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...rave. 

Mr. Wilson, a young electrician, got a terrible fright,
When he saw his mother and sister dead-- he was shocked at the sight,
Because his sister had not many days returned from her honeymoon,
And in his countenance, alas! there was a sad gloom. 

His Majesty has sent a message of sympathy to the bereaved ones in distress,
And the Duke and Duchess of York have sent 25 guineas I must confess.
And £1000 from the Directors of the Thames Ironworks and Shipb...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...VI ETHANDUNE: THE SLAYING OF THE CHIEFS


As the sea flooding the flat sands
Flew on the sea-born horde,
The two hosts shocked with dust and din,
Left of the Latian paladin,
Clanged all Prince Harold's howling kin
On Colan and the sword.

Crashed in the midst on Marcus,
Ogier with Guthrum by,
And eastward of such central stir,
Far to the right and faintlier,
The house of Elf the harp-player,
Struck Eldred's with a cry.

The centre swat for weariness,
Stemming the scr...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...old house
where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you—warm brown tea—we held
each other...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d everywhere 
He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists, 
And all the plain,--brand, mace, and shaft, and shield-- 
Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged 
With hammers; till I thought, can this be he 
From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so, 
The mother makes us most--and in my dream 
I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front 
Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, 
And highest, among the statues, statuelike, 
Between a cymballed Miriam and a Jael, 
With P...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...starve as always
and the novelists miss the mark,
but not the pelican , the gull;
pelicans dip and dive, rise,
shaking shocked half-dead
radioactive fish from their beaks;
indeed, indeed, the waters wash
the rocks with slime; and on wall st.
the market staggers like a lost drunk
looking for his key; ah,
this will be a good one,by God:
it will take us back to the
sabre-teeth, the winged monkey
scrabbling in pits over bits
of helmet, instrument and glass;
a lightning crash...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...

Now the lady of refinement, in the lap of comfort rocked, 
Chancing on these rugged verses, will pretend that she is shocked. 
Leave her to her smelling-bottle; 'tis the wealthy who decide 
That the world should hide its patches 'neath the cruel look of pride; 
And I think there's something noble, and I swear there's nothing low, 
In the pride of Human Nature when its pants begin to go....Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs