Famous Shoot Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Deaths And Entrances

by Dylan Thomas
 On almost the incendiary eve
 Of several near deaths,
When one at the great least of your best loved
 And always known must leave
Lions and fires of his flying breath,
 Of your immortal friends
Who'd raise the organs of the counted dust
 To shoot and sing your praise,
One who called deepest down shall hold his peace
 That cannot sink or cease
...Read more of this...

Elegy on Thyrza

by George (Lord) Byron
AND thou art dead as young and fair 
As aught of mortal birth; 
And form so soft and charms so rare 
Too soon return'd to Earth! 
Though Earth received them in her bed 5 
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread 
In carelessness or mirth  
There is an eye which could not brook 
A moment on that grave...Read more of this...

Ballade of Unfortunate Mammals

by Dorothy Parker
 Love is sharper than stones or sticks;
Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;
Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;
Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.
Show me a love was done and through,
Tell me a kiss escaped its debt!
Son, to your death you'll pay your due-
Women and elephants never forget.

Ever a man, alas, would mix,
Ever a man, heigh-ho, must woo;
So...Read more of this...

To The Moon

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 BUSH and vale thou fill'st again

With thy misty ray,
And my spirit's heavy chain

Castest far away.

Thou dost o'er my fields extend

Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching like a gentle friend,

O'er my destiny.

Vanish'd days of bliss and woe

Haunt me with their tone,
Joy and grief in turns I know,

As I stray alone.

Stream beloved, flow on! flow on!

Ne'er can I be gay!
Thus have sport and...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 2

by Alexander Pope
 Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain, 
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively...Read more of this...

Mad Day In March

by Philip Levine
 Beaten like an old hound 
Whimpering by the stove, 
I complicate the pain 
That smarts with promised love. 
The oilstove falls, the rain, 
Forecast, licks at my wound; 
Ice forms, clips the green shoot, 
And strikes the wren house mute. 

May commoner and king, 
The barren bride and nun 
Begrudge the season's dues. 
May children curse the sun, 
Sweet...Read more of this...

The Flood

by John Clare
 On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I've seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o'er its wall to watch the dashing spray
As their old stations would be washed away
Crash came the ice against the jambs and then
A shudder jarred the arches—yet once more
It breasted raving waves and stood agen
To wait...Read more of this...

S. I. W

by Wilfred Owen
 "I will to the King,
 And offer him consolation in his trouble,
 For that man there has set his teeth to die,
 And being one that hates obedience,
 Discipline, and orderliness of life,
 I cannot mourn him."
 W. B. Yeats.


Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad
He'd always show the Hun a brave man's face;
Father would sooner him dead than...Read more of this...

Upon a Little Lady Under the Discipline of an Excellent Person

by Anne Killigrew
 I. 
HOw comes the Day orecast ? the Flaming Sun
Darkn'd at Noon, as if his Course were run ? 
He never rose more proud, more glad, more gay, 
Ne're courted Daphne with a brighter Ray ! 
 And now in Clouds he wraps his Head, 
As if not Daphne, but himself were dead ! 
 And all the little...Read more of this...

The Death of the Old Mendicant

by William Topaz McGonagall
 There was a rich old gentleman
Lived on a lonely moor in Switzerland,
And he was very hard to the wandering poor,
'Tis said he never lodged nor served them at his door. 

'Twas on a stormy night, and Boreas blew a bitter blast,
And the snowflakes they fell thick and fast,
When a poor old mendicant, tired and footsore,
Who had travelled that day...Read more of this...

Craving for Spring

by D. H. Lawrence
 I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets...Read more of this...

In Progress

by Christina Rossetti
 Ten years ago it seemed impossible
That she should ever grow so calm as this,
With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss
And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.
Slow-speaking when she had some fact to tell,
Silent with long-unbroken silences,
Centered in self yet not unpleased to please,
Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.
Mindful of drudging daily common things,
Patient at pastime, patient at her work,
Wearied...Read more of this...

Trooper Campbell

by Henry Lawson
 One day old Trooper Campbell 
Rode out to Blackman's Run, 
His cap-peak and his sabre 
Were glancing in the sun. 
'Twas New Year's Eve, and slowly 
Across the ridges low 
The sad Old Year was drifting 
To where the old years go. 

The trooper's mind was reading 
The love-page of his life -- 
His love for Mary Wylie 
Ere...Read more of this...

Barbara Frietchie

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;

Over the mountains winding...Read more of this...

Snow

by David Berman
 Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.


Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice...Read more of this...

Tampa Robins

by Sidney Lanier
 The robin laughed in the orange-tree:
"Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me
-- Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.

Burn, golden globes in leafy sky,
My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears)
And thrid the...Read more of this...

Faint Yet Pursuing

by Coventry Patmore
 Heroic Good, target for which the young
Dream in their dreams that every bow is strung,
And, missing, sigh
Unfruitful, or as disbelievers die,
Thee having miss'd, I will not so revolt,
But lowlier shoot my bolt,
And lowlier still, if still I may not reach,
And my proud stomach teach
That less than highest is good, and may be high.
And even walk in life's uneven way,
Though...Read more of this...

How still how happy!

by Emily Brontë
 How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge -
The changing heaven the breezy weather, 

More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears. 

How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter...Read more of this...

The Phases Of The Moon

by William Butler Yeats
 An old man cocked his car upon a bridge;
 He and his friend, their faces to the South,
 Had trod the uneven road. Their hoots were soiled,
 Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;
 They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,
 Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon,
 Were distant still. An old man cocked his ear.

Aherne....Read more of this...

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti
 My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple...Read more of this...

Nostalgia

by Billy Collins
 Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was...Read more of this...

In The Seven Woods

by William Butler Yeats
 I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of...Read more of this...

Jueju Free Mood, No. 7 of 9 (The Path is Paved With Poplar Catkins)

by Du Fu
 Grain path poplar blossom pave white carpet Little stream lotus leaves piled green money Bamboo shoot root sprout no person see Sand on duckling beside mother sleep The path is paved with poplar catkins, a carpet of white grain, Lotus leaves on the little stream are piled like green coins. Among the roots of new bamboo,...Read more of this...

Icicles Round A Tree In Dumfriesshire

by Ruth Padel
 We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.

These icicles aren't going to last for ever 

Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun.

But here they hang, a frozen whirligig of lightning,

And the famous American sculptor 

Who scrambles the world with his tripod

For strangeness au naturel, got sunset to fill them. 

It's not comfortable, a double helix of opalescent...Read more of this...

The Parsons Son

by Robert William Service
 This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone,
On the wild, weird nights, when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone,
And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry huskies moan:

"I'm one of the Arctic brotherhood, I'm an old-time pioneer.
I came with the first -- O God! how I've...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shoot poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace