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Famous Shut Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Nash, Ogden
...To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up....Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...the shade: 
Often they scatter sparkles: there is force! 
'Dug up a newt He may have envied once 
And turned to stone, shut up Inside a stone. 
Please Him and hinder this?--What Prosper does? 
Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He! 
There is the sport: discover how or die! 
All need not die, for of the things o' the isle 
Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees; 
Those at His mercy,--why, they please Him most 
When . . . when . . . well, never...Read more of this...

by Aldington, Richard
...nging gods 
Who plague us for sins we never sinned 
But who avenge us. 

That's why I'll never have a child, 
Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box 
For the moth to spoil and crush its brght colours, 
Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...er tube; she smiles to see it rise. 
What if I told her, it is just a thread 
From that great river which the hills shut up, 
And mock her with my leave to take the same? 
The artificer has given her one small tube 
Past power to widen or exchange--what boots 
To know she might spout oceans if she could? 
She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread: 
And so a man can use but a man's joy 
While he sees God's. Is it for Zeus to boast, 
"See, man, how happy I live, and ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...ns of tender years...immature
 judgement...pyschiatric examination..."
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam

Leroi on bum gun rap, $7,000
 lawyer fees, years' negotiations--
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez'
 paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe--
 having a baby, a man--
Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked,

Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
 blood splashing down the moun...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e chambers of children;
And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable,
And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell,
And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes,
With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village.
Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith,
Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand,
"Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village,...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...be a bore,
The Atheist is even more.

I ain't religious worth a damn;
My views are reckoned to be broad;
And yet I shut up like a clam
When folks get figgerin' on God;
I'd hate my kids to think like me,
And though they leave me in the lurch,
I'm always mighty glad to see
 My fam'ly trot to Church.

Although of books I have a shelf
Of skeptic stuff, I must confess
I keep their knowledge to myself:
Doubt doesn't help to happiness.
I never scoff at Holy Writ,
But en...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...rom the far-foamed sands.
"O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,
Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies!
Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears,
My voice is not a bellows unto ire.
Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof
How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:
And in the proof much comfort will I give,
If ye will take that comfort in its truth.
We fall by course of Nature's law, not force
Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou
Hast s...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...on was king. 

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn, 
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; 
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea 
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be, 
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl, 
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; 
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,-- 
They gat...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ll.

Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.

Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...ARRANGING long-locked drawers and shelves 
Of cabinets, shut up for years, 
What a strange task we've set ourselves ! 
How still the lonely room appears ! 
How strange this mass of ancient treasures, 
Mementos of past pains and pleasures; 
These volumes, clasped with costly stone, 
With print all faded, gilding gone; 

These fans of leaves, from Indian trees­ 
These crimson shells, from Indian seas­ 
These tiny p...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...France and Spain, by inch of candle?
Shall good King George, with want oppress'd,
Insert his name in bankrupt list,
And shut up shop, like failing merchant,
That fears the bailiffs should make search in't;
With poverty shall princes strive,
And nobles lack whereon to live?
Have they not rack'd their whole inventions
To feed their brats on posts and pensions;
Made their Scotch friends with taxes groan,
And pick'd poor Ireland to the bone:
Yet have on hand, as well deserving,
T...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Soul
 (Which Men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)
Imprison'd now indeed,
In real darkness of the body dwells,
Shut up from outward light 
To incorporate with gloomy night;
For inward light alas
Puts forth no visual beam.
O mirror of our fickle state,
Since man on earth unparallel'd!
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall'n.
For him I reckon not in high...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...r>---And then, the last song
When the dead man is praised on his journey---``Bear, bear him along
``With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here
``To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.
``Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!''---And then, the glad chaunt
Of the marriage,---first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.---And then, the great march
Wherein man runs to ...Read more of this...

by Bible, The
...arments is like
           the smell of Lebanon.

22:004:012 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a
           fountain sealed.

22:004:013 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant
           fruits; camphire, with spikenard,

22:004:014 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of
           frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:

22:004:015 A fountain of gardens, a well of livin...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...ideth; and in stead
Of mouth he hath
One minute point of jet; silence, the lightning path!

XXVI

Also his nostrils are shut up; for he
Hath not the need of any breath;
Nor can the curtain of eternity
Cover that head with life or death.
So all his body, a slim almond-tree,
Knoweth no bough
Nor branch nor twig nor bud, from never until now.

XXVII

This thought I bred within my bowels, I am.
I am in him, as he in me; 
And like a satyr ravishing a lamb
So either see...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
... They were very loud and
persistent. I sat the bottle down and screamed out: "GOD DAMN YOU, YOU SON OF A *****
,SHUT UP!" The night kept coming and there was nothing I could do....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...y confused with fears,
And ever worse with growing time,
And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,
And all alone in crime:


Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round
With blackness as a solid wall,
Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound
Of human footsteps fall.


As in strange lands a traveller walking slow,
In doubt and great perplexity,
A little before moon-rise hears the low
Moan of an unknown sea;


And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound
Of rocks thrown down, or ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...wave below. The dreary Plain
Lies overwhelm'd, and lost. The bellying Clouds
Combine, and deepening into Night, shut up
The Day's fair Face. The Wanderers of Heaven,
Each to his Home, retire; save those that love 
To take their Pastime in the troubled Air,
And, skimming, flutter round the dimply Flood.
The Cattle, from th'untasted Fields, return,
And ask, with Meaning low, their wonted Stalls;
Or ruminate in the contiguous Shade: 
Thither, the houshold, feathe...Read more of this...

by Forche, Carolyn
...Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone.
 --Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi

Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple.
Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women
 shimmered.
They held their arms in front of them like ghosts.

The coal bones of the house clinked in a kimono of smoke.
An attention hovered o...Read more of this...

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