Famous Stage Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Stage poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous stage poems. These examples illustrate what a famous stage poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ath those grassy tombs their bodies lie,
But they have risen from each labour bere
To make their entrance on a nobler stage.
What though with us they walk the humble vale
Of indigence severe, with want oppress'd?
Riches belong not to their family,
Nor sloth luxurious nor the pride of kings;
But truth meek-ey'd and warm benevolence
Wisdom's high breeding in her sons rever'd
Bespeaks them each the children[2] of a king.
The christian truth of origin divine,
Grows not...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...st and richly stor'd with all
The luxuries of life. Hail happy land
The seat of empire the abode of kings,
The final stage where time shall introduce
Renowned characters, and glorious works
Of high invention and of wond'rous art,
Which not the ravages of time shall wake
Till he himself has run his long career;
Till all those glorious orbs of light on high
The rolling wonders that surround the ball,
Drop from their spheres extinguish'd and consum'd;
When final ruin ...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sig...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...tain Bard encountring on the Way,
Discours'd in Terms as just, with Looks as Sage,
As e'er cou'd Dennis, of the Grecian Stage;
Concluding all were desp'rate Sots and Fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's Rules.
Our Author, happy in a Judge so nice,
Produc'd his Play, and beg'd the Knight's Advice,
Made him observe the Subject and the Plot,
The Manners, Passions, Unities, what not?
All which, exact to Rule were brought about,
Were but a Combate in the Lists left out.
What! ...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...icious twist
On his amphibious face that might have been
On anything else a smile—rather like one
We look for on the stage than in the street.
I must have been a yard away from him
Yet as we passed I felt the touch of him
Like that of something soft in a dark room.
There’s hardly need of saying that we said nothing,
Or that we gave each other an occasion
For more than our eyes uttered. He was gone
Before I knew it, like a solid phantom;
And his reality was for me som...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
N...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...that he still can, much better than most,
Produce blood-curdling noises to bring on the Ghost.
And he once crossed the stage on a telegraph wire,
To rescue a child when a house was on fire.
And he says: "Now then kittens, they do not get trained
As we did in the days when Victoria reigned.
They never get drilled in a regular troupe,
And they think they are smart, just to jump through a hoop."
And he'll say, as he scratches himself with his claws,
"Well, the Theatre's certain...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...received.
I found him standing at the close of day
Inside the threshold of his open barn,
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—
And recognized him, through the iron gray
In which his face was muffled to the eyes,
As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed
A drover with me on the road to Brighton.
His farm was "grounds," and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor's at a trading station.
And be was rich, and I was still a rascal.
I coul...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...y morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?
III
The Octob...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...divided into Stanza's or Pauses
they may be call'd Allaeostropha. Division into Act and Scene
referring chiefly to the Stage (to which this work never was
intended) is here omitted.
It suffices if the whole Drama be found not produc't beyond the
fift Act, of the style and uniformitie, and that commonly call'd the
Plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such
oeconomy, or disposition of the fable as may stand best with
verisimilitude and decorum; the...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...aight
Ye then conducted to their ends.
What Nature, as she moves along,
Far from each other ever rends,
Become upon the stage, in song,
Members of order, firmly bound.
Awed by the Furies' chorus dread,
Murder draws down upon its head
The doom of death from their wild sound.
Long e'er the wise to give a verdict dared,
An Iliad had fate's mysteries declared
To early ages from afar;
While Providence in silence fared
Into the world from Thespis' car.
Yet into that world's current...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...ast of the dipping coot
``Dives under, and all is mute.
``So, at the last shall come old age,
``Decrepit as befits that stage;
``How else wouldst thou retire apart
``With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
``And gather all to the very least
``Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
``Let fall through eagerness to find
``The crowning dainties yet behind?
``Ponder on the entire past
``Laid together thus at last,
``When the twilight helps to fuse
``The first fresh with the fad...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...1.1 Lo now! four other acts upon the stage,
1.2 Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age.
1.3 The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water,
1.4 Unstable, supple, moist, and cold's his Nature.
1.5 The second: frolic claims his pedigree;
1.6 From blood and air, for hot and moist is he.
1.7 The third of fire and choler is compos'd,
1.8 Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos'd.
1.9 The last, o...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...There nobles mourned their pride restrained,
And the mean burgher's joys disdained;
And chiefs, who, hostage for their clan,
Were each from home a banished man,
There thought upon their own gray tower,
Their waving woods, their feudal power,
And deemed themselves a shameful part
Of pageant which they cursed in heart.
XXII.
Now, in the Castle-park, drew out
Their checkered bands the joyous rout.
There mor...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...eavy bag and trudge
From room to room. The couch Emily died on, so shabby and so faded,
Patrick’s hat and sticks like stage props, Mrs. Gaskell’s escritoire
So thoroughly bourgeois, Charlotte’s crinoline evoking ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’.
I sat outside the tourist shop, watching the families pass,
Still reeling from the news of our son’s loss,
His life-in-death and death-in-life.
The crowds gone, the shops closed
I browsed over rock and lichen,
O sleeper in the earth
Woul...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...train below,And with unfading laurels deck'd the brow;Though from a bounded stage a softer strainWas his, who next appear'd to cross the plain:Famed Alcibiades, whose siren spellCould raise the tide of passion, or repelWith more than magic sounds, when Athens stoodBy his superior eloquence subdued.The M...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...he drama of Joined Lives? Ah, they forget
They cannot write their parts; the bell has rung,
The curtain rises and the stage is set
For tragedy-they were in love and young.
V
We went to the Tower,
We went to the Zoo,
We saw every flower
In the gardens at Kew.
We saw King Charles a-prancing
On his long-tailed horse,
And thought him more entrancing
Than better kings, of course.
At a strange early hour,
In St. James's palace yard,
We watched in a shower
The changing ...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child....Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...frozen mud in
the
streets, a gray, discouraged sky overhead, the short, last daylight of Twelfth-month,
A hearse and stages—other vehicles give place—the funeral of an old Broadway
stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.
Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is pass’d, the
new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses,
The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin,
the
earth is s...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...x x x
They're on the way, the words of love and freedom,
They're flying faster than the moment flies
And I am in stage fright before singing -
My lips have grown colder than ice.
But soon that place, where, leaning to the windows
The tender birches make dry rustling sound,
The voices will be ringing of the shadows
And roses will in blackened wreaths be wound.
And further onward still -- the light is generous
Unbearably as though ¡®t were red hot wine..
And ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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