Famous Stalk Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Corn-stalk Fiddle

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
When the corn 's all cut and the bright stalks shine
Like the burnished spears of a field of gold;
When the field-mice rich on the nubbins dine,
And the frost comes white and the wind blows cold;
Then it's heigho! fellows and hi-diddle-diddle,
For the time is ripe for the corn-stalk fiddle.
And you take a stalk that is straight and long,
With an expert eye...Read more of this...

Nymphidia The Court Of Fairy (excerpts)

by Michael Drayton
 But let us leave Queen Mab a while,
Through many a gate, o'er many a stile,
That now had gotten by this wile,
Her dear Pigwiggen kissing;
And tell how Oberon doth fare,
Who grew as mad as any hare,
When he had sought each place with care,
And found his queen was missing.
By grisly Pluto he doth swear,
He rent his clothes, and tore his hair,
And...Read more of this...

Granny

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Granny's come to our house,
 And ho! my lawzy-daisy!
All the childern round the place
 Is ist a-runnin' crazy!
Fetched a cake fer little Jake,
 And fetched a pie fer Nanny,
And fetched a pear fer all the pack
 That runs to kiss their Granny!


Lucy Ellen's in her lap,
 And Wade and Silas Walker
Both's a-ridin' on her foot,
 And 'Pollos on the...Read more of this...

The Bean-Stalk

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Ho, Giant! This is I!
I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky!
La,—but it's lovely, up so high!

This is how I came,—I put
Here my knee, there my foot,
Up and up, from shoot to shoot—
And the blessed bean-stalk thinning
Like the mischief all the time,
Till it took me rocking, spinning,
In a dizzy, sunny circle,
Making angles with the root,
Far and out above...Read more of this...

You Doctor Martin

by Anne Sexton
 You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
of pushing their bones against the thrust
of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel
or the laughing bee on a stalk

of death. We stand in broken
lines and wait while they unlock
the doors and count us at the frozen gates
of dinner....Read more of this...

The Little Lives Of Earth And Form

by Philip Larkin
 The little lives of earth and form,
Of finding food, and keeping warm,
 Are not like ours, and yet
A kinship lingers nonetheless:
We hanker for the homeliness
 Of den, and hole, and set.

And this identity we feel
- Perhaps not right, perhaps not real -
 Will link us constantly;
I see the rock, the clay, the chalk,
The flattened grass, the swaying stalk,
 And...Read more of this...

Stalk Me

by Maggie Estep
 Liner Notes - (from Love Is A Dog From Hell)

My friend Jenny is really
worried that people are going to follow me around and send me dead animal
parts and doll heads as a result of this song but please, if you feel inclined
to send me dead animal parts, think it through. Thanks.


Stalk me
I once wrote a poem called **** ME
So...Read more of this...

The Metamorphosis Of Plants

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THOU art confused, my beloved, at, seeing the thousandfold 
union

Shown in this flowery troop, over the garden dispers'd;
any a name dost thou hear assign'd; one after another

Falls on thy list'ning ear, with a barbarian sound.
None resembleth another, yet all their forms have a likeness;

Therefore, a mystical law is by the chorus proclaim'd;
Yes, a sacred enigma! Oh, dearest friend, could...Read more of this...

Conversation Among The Ruins

by Sylvia Plath
 Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured...Read more of this...

The Telephone

by Robert Frost
 'When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head again a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the window sill-
Do you remember what it was you said?'

'First tell me what it was you thought you heard.'

'Having found...Read more of this...

Forbearance

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk;
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse;
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust;
And loved so well a high behavior
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?—
O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!...Read more of this...

Diya {original title is Greek Delta-iota-psi-alpha}

by Amy Lowell
 Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night!
See where it casts the shadow of that tree
Far out upon the grass. And every gust
Of light night wind comes laden with the scent
Of opening flowers which never bloom by day:
Night-scented stocks, and four-o'clocks, and that
Pale yellow disk, upreared on its tall stalk,
The evening primrose, comrade of the stars.
It seems as though...Read more of this...

The Indian Upon God

by William Butler Yeats
 I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made...Read more of this...

Enigma

by Thomas Moore
 Come riddle-me-ree, come riddle-me-ree,
And tell me, what my name may be.
I am nearly one hundred and thirty years old,
And therefore no chicken, as you may suppose; --
Though a dwarf in my youth (as my nurses have told),
I have, ev'ry year since, been outgrowing my clothes;
Till, at last, such a corpulent giant I stand,
That if folks were to furnish me...Read more of this...

I In My Intricate Image

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She...Read more of this...

The Primrose

by Robert Herrick
 Ask me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the year?
Ask me why I send to you
This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?
I will whisper to your ears,--
The sweets of love are mixt with tears.

Ask me why this flower does show
So yellow-green, and sickly too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending, yet it doth not break?
I will answer,--these...Read more of this...

Caroline Branson

by Edgar Lee Masters
 With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
In the inspired improvisation of love!
But to put back of us as...Read more of this...

This Compost

by Walt Whitman
 1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; 
I withdraw from the still woods I loved; 
I will not go now on the pastures to walk; 
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; 
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.

O how...Read more of this...

The Bombardment

by Amy Lowell
 Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the 
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping 
and trickling
over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit 
of a gargoyle,
and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square.
Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple...Read more of this...

The Violet

by Jane Taylor
 Down in a green and shady bed, 
A modest violet grew; 
Its stalk was bent, it hung its head
As if to hide from view. 
And yet it was a lovely flower, 
Its colour bright and fair; 
It might have graced a rosy bower, 
Instead of hiding there. 

Yet thus it was content to bloom, 
In modest tints arrayed; 
And...Read more of this...

In Time Of The Breaking Of Nations

by Thomas Hardy
 I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

 II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onwards the same
Though Dynasties pass.

 III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Go whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die....Read more of this...

The Trade

by Rudyard Kipling
 They bear, in place of classic names,
 Letters and numbers on their skin.
 They play their grisly blindfold games
 In little boxes made of tin.
 Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,
 Sometimes they learn where mines are laid,
 Or where the Baltic ice is thin.
 That is the custom of "The Trade."

 Few prize-courts sit upon their claims.
 They seldom...Read more of this...

A Little Budding Rose

by Emily Brontë
 It was a little budding rose,
Round like a fairy globe,
And shyly did its leaves unclose
Hid in their mossy robe,
But sweet was the slight and spicy smell
It breathed from its heart invisible. 

The rose is blasted, withered, blighted,
Its root has felt a worm,
And like a heart beloved and slighted,
Failed, faded, shrunk its form.
Bud of beauty, bonnie flower,
I stole thee from...Read more of this...

Sea Poppies

by Hilda Doolittle
 Amber husk 
fluted with gold, 
fruit on the sand 
marked with a rich grain, 

treasure 
spilled near the shrub-pines 
to bleach on the boulders: 

your stalk has caught root 
among wet pebbles 
and drift flung by the sea 
and grated shells 
and split conch-shells. 

Beautiful, wide-spread, 
fire upon leaf, 
what meadow yields 
so fragrant a leaf 
as your bright...Read more of this...

Revolution is the Pod

by Emily Dickinson
 Revolution is the Pod
Systems rattle from
When the Winds of Will are stirred
Excellent is Bloom

But except its Russet Base
Every Summer be
The Entomber of itself,
So of Liberty --

Left inactive on the Stalk
All its Purple fled
Revolution shakes it for
Test if it be dead....Read more of this...

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