Famous Shrilly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Whipping

by Robert Hayden
 The old woman across the way
 is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
 her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
 pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
 pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
 boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
 to woundlike...Read more of this...

Woods in Winter

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

Irony

by D. H. Lawrence
 Always, sweetheart,
Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of cherry,
Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that very
Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance of spring
Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days waiting
In a little throng at your door, and admit the one who is plaiting
Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her, then bid...Read more of this...

Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And On Themselves

by William Butler Yeats
 Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play,
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,
Though drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.

First Voice. Maybe they linger by the way.
One gathers up his purple gown;
One leans and mutters...Read more of this...

The Mocking Fairy

by Walter de la Mare
 'Won't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?' 
Quoth the Fairy, nidding, nodding in the garden; 
'Can't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?' 
Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden; 
But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still, 
And the ivy-tod neath the empty sill, 
And never from her window looked out Mrs....Read more of this...

Demeter And Persephone

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When...Read more of this...

In Romney Marsh

by John Davidson
 As I went down to Dymchurch Wall,
I heard the South sing o'er the land
I saw the yellow sunlight fall
On knolls where Norman churches stand.

And ringing shrilly, taut and lithe,
Within the wind a core of sound,
The wire from Romney town to Hythe
Along its airy journey wound.

A veil of purple vapour flowed
And trailed its fringe along the Straits;
The upper air like...Read more of this...

Late September

by Amy Lowell
 Tang of fruitage in the air;
Red boughs bursting everywhere;
Shimmering of seeded grass;
Hooded gentians all a'mass.
Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind
Tearing off the husky rind,
Blowing feathered seeds to fall
By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.
Beech trees in a golden haze;
Hardy sumachs all ablaze,
Glowing through the silver birches.
How that pine tree shouts and lurches!
From the sunny door-jamb high,
Swings the shell of a butterfly.
Scrape...Read more of this...

Sea-Gulls of Manhattan

by Henry Van Dyke
 Children of the elemental mother, 
Born upon some lonely island shore 
Where the wrinkled ripples run and whisper,
Where the crested billows plunge and roar; 
Long-winged, tireless roamers and adventurers,
Fearless breasters of the wind and sea,
In the far-off solitary places
I have seen you floating wild and free! 

Here the high-built cities rise around you;
Here the cliffs that tower east and...Read more of this...

The Garden in Winter

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Frosty-white and cold it lies 
Underneath the fretful skies; 
Snowflakes flutter where the red 
Banners of the poppies spread, 
And the drifts are wide and deep 
Where the lilies fell asleep. 

But the sunsets o'er it throw 
Flame-like splendor, lucent glow, 
And the moonshine makes it gleam 
Like a wonderland of dream, 
And the sharp winds all the day...Read more of this...

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