Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Stack Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Burns, Robert
...him slip frae’ mang the folk,
 Sometime when nae ane see’d him,
 An’ try’t that night.


He marches thro’ amang the stacks,
 Tho’ he was something sturtin;
The graip he for a harrow taks,
 An’ haurls at his curpin:
And ev’ry now an’ then, he says,
 “Hemp-seed I saw thee,
An’ her that is to be my lass
 Come after me, an’ draw thee
 As fast this night.”


He wistl’d up Lord Lennox’ March
 To keep his courage cherry;
Altho’ his hair began to arch,
 He was sae fley’d an’ ...Read more of this...



by Gregory, Rg
...ne returns to us
and in the morning
(rooted in fear
we could not leave the place
but spent the night
huddled in one big stack
in the frozen hall)
and in the morning
we find not a single trace
of the friend who went
as simply as any word
into thin air...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...lves. You see lads walk the street 
Sixty the minute; what's to note in that? 
You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack; 
Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands! 
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. 
The honest thief, the tender murderer, 
The superstitious atheist, demirep 
That loves and saves her soul in new French books-- 
We watch while these in equilibrium keep 
The giddy line midway: one step aside, 
They're classed and done with. I...Read more of this...

by Bidart, Frank
...prints of the stars

--descending through the city
 fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep

 and you on top; the air
 now clean, for a moment weightless

 without memories, or
 need for a past.



The need for the past

is so much at the center of my life
I write this poem to record my discovery of it,
my reconciliation.

 It was in Bishop, the room was done
in California ...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...s, 
Emeralds, amythysts, 
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. 

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, 
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, 
With a cargo of Tyne coal, 
Road-rails, pig-lead, 
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays....Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...cret smile.

And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak
With his long crook undid the wattled cotes,
And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke
Curled through the air across the ripening oats,
And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed
As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed.

And when the light-foot mower went afield
Across the meadows laced with threaded dew,
And the sheep bleated on the misty weald,
And from its nest the waking corncra...Read more of this...

by Housman, A E
..."Farewell to barn and stack and tree, 
Farewell to Severn shore. 
Terence, look your last at me, 
For I come home no more. 

"The sun burns on the half-mown hill, 
By now the blood is dried; 
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still 
And my knife is in his side. 

"My mother thinks us long away; 
'Tis time the field were mown. 
She had two sons at rising day, 
To-ni...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...he bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sk...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...y.
It's heavy as gold in the rocker, it's white and fleecy as wool;
 It's soft as a bed of feathers, it's warm as a stack of hay.
Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired, stumbling feet;
 I guess they're a job for the surgeon, they feel so queerlike to lift--
I'll rest them just for a moment--oh, but to rest is sweet!
 The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down in the drift."

 "Father, a bitter cry I heard,
 Out of the night so dark and wild.
 Why is ...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...  She has a baby on her arm,  Or else she were alone;  And underneath the hay-stack warm,  And on the green-wood stone,  She talked and sung the woods among;  And it was in the English tongue.   "Sweet babe! they say that I am mad,  But nay, my heart is far too glad;  And I am happy when I sing  Full many a sad and doleful thing:Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...the threshold by his door
Picking from mallows sport to please
Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese
And hunting from the stackyard sod
The stinking hen banes belted pod
By youths vain fancys sweetly fed
Christning them his loaves of bread
He sees while rocking down the street
Wi weary hands and crimpling feet
Young childern at the self same games
And hears the self same simple names
Still floating on each happy tongue
Touchd wi the simple scene so strong
Tears almost start and...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, -- 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Unti...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o' life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi' mair of horrible and awfu',
Which even to name wad be unlawfu'.

As Tammie glowered, amazed and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:
The Piper loud and louder blew;
The dancers quick and quicker flew;
They reeled, they set, they crossed, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,...Read more of this...

by Olds, Sharon
...I pull the bed slowly open, I
open the lips of the bed, get
the stack of fresh underpants
out of the suitcase—peach, white,
cherry, quince, pussy willow, I
choose a color and put them on,
I travel with the stack for the stack's caress,
dry and soft. I enter the soft
birth-lips of the bed, take off my
glasses, and the cabbage-roses on the curtain
blur to Keats's peonies, the
ochre willow holds a cloud
the way a skelet...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...kin to the jackal-spawn, -- howl, dog, and call them up!
And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!"
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
"No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf meet.
May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?"
Lightly answered the C...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...help you notice it less. 

To be or to become
is a serious question posed by a work-shorts counter
with its pressed stack, bulk khaki and blue,
reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour. 

Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern,
the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness
all fall within the scunge ambit
wearing board shorts of similar;
it is a kind of weightlessness. 

Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners
is deeply circumstantial, ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...hat eagle's rather well cut, Martin.
But I'm sick of smelling Cossack,
Take me inside and let me put my head into a stack
Of orris-root and musk."
Within the shop, the light is dimmed to a pearl-and-green dusk
Out of which dreamily sparkle counters and shelves of glass,
Containing phials, and bowls, and jars, and dishes; a mass
Of aqueous transparence made solid by threads of gold.
Gold and glass,
And scents which whiff across the green twilight and pass.
The ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...had but a single coat, and not a single care;
When I would feast right royally on bacon, bread and beer,
And dig into a stack of hay and doze like any peer;
When I would wash beside a brook my solitary shirt,
And though it dried upon my back I never took a hurt;
When I went romping down the road contemptuous of care,
And slapped Adventure on the back -- by Gad! we were a pair;
When, though my pockets lacked a coin, and though my coat was old,
The largess of the stars was mine...Read more of this...

by Davies, William Henry
...light,
Thou cheerest the fox in the night,
And lettest him see to steal the grey goose away
Out of the farm-yard from a stack of hay. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the farmer in the night,
and makes his heart beat high with delight
As he views his crops by the light in the night. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the eagle in the night,
And lettest him see to devour his prey
And carry it to his nest away. 

Beautiful...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...ome: We should worry.

Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map
And the passenger trains stop there
And the factory smokestacks smoke
And the grocery stores are open Saturday nights
And the streets are free for citizens who vote
And inhabitants counted in the census.
Saturday night is the big night.
 Listen with your ears on a Saturday night in Kalamazoo
 And say to yourself: I hear America, I hear, what do I hear?

Main street there runs through the middle of the twon...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Stack poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things