Famous Shouts Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Summary History of Sir William Wallace

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie,
I'm told he went to the High School in Dundee,
For to learn to read and write,
And after that he learned to fight,
While at the High School in Dundee,
The Provost's son with him disagree,
Because Wallace did wear a dirk,
He despised him like an ignorant stirk,
Which with indignation he keenly felt,
And told him it would become him...Read more of this...

Lead Soldiers

by Amy Lowell
 The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheerful 
little explosions
and trails of sparks up the back of the chimney. Miniature 
rockets
peppering the black bricks with golden stars, as though a gala
flamed a night of victorious wars.
The nodding mandarin on the bookcase moves his 
head forward and back, slowly,
and looks into the air with his blue-green eyes. He stares 
into...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5

by Alexander Pope
 She said: the pitying audience melt in tears, 
But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan;
Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.
"Say, why are beauties prais'd...Read more of this...

The Sycamores

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 In the outskirts of the village 
On the river's winding shores 
Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 
And another half-way told 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 
Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music 
At his violin's sound they grew, 
Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
Making Amphion's...Read more of this...

The Wanderers

by Robert Browning
 OVER the sea our galleys went, 
With cleaving prows in order brave 
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave-- 
 A gallant armament: 
Each bark built out of a forest-tree 
 Left leafy and rough as first it grew, 
And nail'd all over the gaping sides, 
Within and without, with black bull-hides, 
Seethed in fat and suppled in...Read more of this...

Madrigal

by Lewis Carroll
 (To Miss May Forshall.) 


HE shouts amain, he shouts again, 
(Her brother, fierce, as bluff King Hal), 
"I tell you flat, I shall do that!" 
She softly whispers " 'May' for 'shall'!" 
He wistful sighed one eventide 
(Her friend, that made this Madrigal), 
"And shall I kiss you, pretty Miss!" 
Smiling she answered " 'May' for 'shall'!" 

With eager...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 04: Up high black walls up sombre terraces

by Conrad Aiken
 Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.

They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and...Read more of this...

Hymn 65

by Isaac Watts
 The kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of our Lord; or, The day of judgment.

Rev. 11:15-18. 

Let the seventh angel sound on high,
Let shouts be heard through all the sky;
Kings of the earth, with glad accord,
Give up your kingdoms to the Lord.

Almighty God, thy power assume,
Who wast, and art, and art to come:
Jesus, the Lamb who once was...Read more of this...

Limitations

by Siegfried Sassoon
 If you could crowd them into forty lines! 
Yes; you can do it, once you get a start; 
All that you want is waiting in your head, 
For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by heart. 

. . . . 
Begin: your mind’s the room where you have slept,
(Don’t pause for rhymes), till twilight woke you early. 
The window stands...Read more of this...

Unrecorded

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The splendors of a southern sun
  Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
  And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
  And weaves a mystic spell;
A glowing grace that charms the soul—
  Whose glory none can tell.
Oh, warm sweet treasures of a sun
  Of endless fire and love;
Those dying embers are the...Read more of this...

Letters To Dead Imagists

by Carl Sandburg
 EMILY DICKINSON:
You gave us the bumble bee who has a soul,
The everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks,
And how God plays around a back yard garden.

STEVIE CRANE:
War is kind and we never knew the kindness of war till
you came;
Nor the black riders and clashes of spear and shield out
of the sea,
Nor the mumblings and shouts that rise from dreams on
call....Read more of this...

Captain Orlando Killion

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,
You dauntless fledglings
Who pass by my headstone,
Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army
And my faith in God!
They are not denials of each other.
Go by reverently, and read with sober care
How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
The centaur of Revolution,
Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the...Read more of this...

An EPISTLE from Alexander to Hephaestion In His Sickness

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 WITH such a Pulse, with such disorder'd Veins, 
Such lab'ring Breath, as thy Disease constrains; 
With failing Eyes, that scarce the Light endure, 
(So long unclos'd, they've watch'd thy doubtful Cure) 
To his Hephaestion Alexander writes, 
To soothe thy Days, and wing thy sleepless Nights, 
I send thee Love: Oh! that I could impart, 
As well my vital Spirits...Read more of this...

Beast and Man in India

by Rudyard Kipling
 Written for John Lockwood Kipling's
They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.

I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own,
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone.

I am the meat of sacrifice, 
The ransom of man's guilt,
For they give my life to...Read more of this...

The Eleusinian Festival

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Wreathe in a garland the corn's golden ear!
With it, the Cyane [31] blue intertwine
Rapture must render each glance bright and clear,
For the great queen is approaching her shrine,--
She who compels lawless passions to cease,
Who to link man with his fellow has come,
And into firm habitations of peace
Changed the rude tents' ever-wandering home.

Shyly in the mountain-cleft
Was the Troglodyte concealed;
And the...Read more of this...

The Auctioneer of Parting

by Emily Dickinson
 The Auctioneer of Parting
His "Going, going, gone"
Shouts even from the Crucifix,
And brings his Hammer down --
He only sells the Wilderness,
The prices of Despair
Range from a single human Heart
To Two -- not any more --...Read more of this...

The Little Orphan

by Edgar Albert Guest
 The crowded street his playground is, a patch of blue his sky;
A puddle in a vacant lot his sea where ships pass by:
Poor little orphan boy of five, the city smoke and grime 
Taint every cooling breeze he gets throughout the summer time;
And he is just as your boy is, a child who loves to play,
Except that he is...Read more of this...

Faithful Eckart

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 "OH, would we were further! Oh, would we were home,
The phantoms of night tow'rd us hastily come,

The band of the Sorceress sisters.
They hitherward speed, and on finding us here,
They'll drink, though with toil we have fetch'd it, the beer,

And leave us the pitchers all empty."

Thus speaking, the children with fear take to flight,
When sudden an old man appears in...Read more of this...

The Arsenal at Springfield

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling  
Like a huge organ rise the burnished arms; 
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah! what a sound will rise how wild and dreary 5 
When the death-angel touches those swift keys! 
What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful...Read more of this...

Success Comes To Cow Creek

by Edward Taylor
 I sit on the tracks,
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants
none. It's been nine months
since I last listened
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.

When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the...Read more of this...

Success Comes To Cow Creek

by James Tate
 I sit on the tracks,
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants
none. It's been nine months
since I last listened
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.

When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the...Read more of this...

The General Public

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning. 
"Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then," 
The old man said. A dry smile creased his face 
With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now! 
That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain? 
The time that I remember best is this -- 

A thin mire crept along the rutted ways,...Read more of this...

Sonnets 03: Not With Libations But With Shouts And Laughter

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove,
Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
The launching of the colored moths of Love.
Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone
We bound about our irreligious brows,
And fettered him with garlands of our own,
And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
Not yet the god has spoken; but...Read more of this...

A Terre

by Wilfred Owen
 (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)


Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me -- brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

I tried to peg out soldierly -- no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my...Read more of this...

Jottings of New York

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Oh, mighty city of New York, you are wonderful to behold--
Your buildings are magnificent-- the truth be it told--
They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye,
Because many of them are thirteen storeys high;

And as for Central Park, it is lovely to be seen--
Especially in the summer season when its shrubberies are green
And the Burns Statue is...Read more of this...

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