Famous Stages Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Stages poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous stages poems. These examples illustrate what a famous stages poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what's more, see toenails and
all ten stages, root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes.
Further up, my darling, the woman
is calling her secrets, little houses,
little tongues that tell you.
There is no one else but us
in this house on the land spit.
The sea wears a bell in its navel.
And I'm your bar...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...he infinite future, Eidólons, Eidólons,
Eidólons.
The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves—in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy—interpret yet to them, God, and
Eidólons.
And thee, My Soul!
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations!
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, Thy mates, Eidólons.
Thy Body permanent,
The Body lurking there within thy Body,
The only purport of the Form thou art—the real I myself, An image...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...lves compose,
While flowing Time above his head does close.
Cromwell alone with greater vigour runs,
(Sun-like) the stages of succeeding suns:
And still the day which he doth next restore,
Is the just wonder of the day before.
Cromwell alone doth with new lustre spring,
And shines the jewel of the yearly ring.
'Tis he the force of scattered time contracts,
And in one year the work of ages acts:
While heavy monarchs make a wide return,
Longer, and more malignant t...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art....Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...ht to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,'
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...d rule for ever.
Her servants humour'd every whim,
And own'd at once her power supreme;
Her follies nursed in all their stages,
For sake of liveries and wages;
In Stephen's Chapel then in state too
Set up her golden calf to pray to;
Proclaim'd its power and right divine,
And call'd for worship at its shrine;
And for poor heretics to burn us,
Bade North prepare his fiery furnace;
Struck bargains with the Romish churches,
Infallibility to purchase;
Set wide for Popery the door,...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...ng,
Plied them with scourging, cold and famine,
By noxious food and plagues contagious
Reduced to life's last, fainting stages.
Amid the dead, that crowd the scene,
The moving skeletons were seen.
Aloft the haughty Loring stood,
And thrived, like Vampire, on their blood,
And counting all his gains arising,
Dealt daily rations out, of poison.
At hand our troops, in vaunting strain,
Insulted all their wants and pain,
And turn'd upon the dying tribe
The bitter taunt and scornful...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...morning.
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
You mustn't go by anything I've said.
Bob Bicknell's Southern Stages have been laid aside for ages,
But the Limited will take you there instead.
Toby Hirte can't be seen at One Hundred and Eighteen
North Second Street--no matter when you call;
And I fear you'll search in vain for the wash-house down the lane
Where Pharaoh played the fiddle at the ball.
It is gone, gone, gone with Thebes the Golden,
(Never say I d...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...Bill that Stingy's sheep got out.
So Saltbush Bill, with an easy heart, prepared for what might befall,
Commenced his stages on Take 'Em Down, the station of Roostr Hall.
'Tis strange how often the men out back will take to some curious craft,
Some ruling passion to keep their thoughts away from the overdraft:
And Rooster Hall, of the Take 'Em Down, was widely known to fame
As breeder of champion fighting cocks -- his forte was the British Game.
The passing stranger w...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...AND PRAYER FOR HELP. Life's three first stages train'd my soul in partTo place its care on objects high and new,And to disparage what men often prize,But, left alone, and of her fatal courseAs yet uncertain, frolicsome, and free,She enter'd at spring-time a lovely wood. Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...ing it, to another not having it;
Wisdom is of the Soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities, and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the Soul.
Now I reëxamine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious cloud...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...We have sung the song of the droving days,
Of the march of the travelling sheep;
By silent stages and lonely ways
Thin, white battalions creep.
But the man who now by the land would thrive
Must his spurs to a plough-share beat.
Is there ever a man in the world alive
To sing the song of the Wheat!
It's west by south of the Great Divide
The grim grey plains run out,
Where the old flock-masters lived and died
In a ceaseless fight with drough...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...he meaning, good or other, can never
Become known. The singer thinks
Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages
Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away.
The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness
Which must in turn flood the whole continent
With blackness, for it cannot see. The singer
Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved
Of the evil burthen of the words. Stellification
Is for the few, and comes about much later
When all record of th...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...emselves Compose,
While flowing Time above his Head does close.
Cromwell alone with greater Vigour runs,
(Sun-like) the Stages of succeeding Suns:
And still the Day which he doth next restore,
Is the just Wonder of the Day before.
Cromwell alone doth with new Lustre spring,
And shines the Jewel of the yearly Ring.
'Tis he the force of scatter'd Time contracts,
And in one Year the Work of Ages acts:
While heavy Monarchs make a wide Return,
Longer, and more Malignant then Satur...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
..., crossed the swamp,
passed the cellar hole holding
the remains of the 1850s farmhouse
that had slid down into it by stages
in the thirties and forties, followed
the overgrown logging road
and came to the trees. I climbed up
to the perch, and this time looked
not into the distance but at
the tree itself, its trunk
contorted by the terrible struggle
of that time when it had its hard time.
After the trauma it grows less solid.
It may be some such time now comes upo...Read more of this...
by
Kinnell, Galway
...The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have l...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A
current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile
or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...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
...n you go to bed."
He went into the kitchen, stepping around the littlest
children, whose wet diapers were in various stages of anarchy.
He made his breakfast: a slice of homemade bread covered
with Karo syrup and peanut butter.
"Let's go," he said.
We left the house with him still eating the sandwich. The
store was three blocks away, on the other side of a field
covered with heavy yellow grass. There were many pheasants
in the field. Fat with summer they barely fle...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
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