Famous Stalks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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75. Halloween

...he door,
 Wi’ cannie care, they’ve plac’d them
 To lie that night.


The lassies staw frae ’mang them a’,
 To pou their stalks o’ corn; 6
But Rab slips out, an’ jinks about,
 Behint the muckle thorn:
He grippit Nelly hard and fast:
 Loud skirl’d a’ the lasses;
But her tap-pickle maist was lost,
 Whan kiutlin in the fause-house 7
 Wi’ him that night.


The auld guid-wife’s weel-hoordit nits 8
 Are round an’ round dividend,
An’ mony lads an’ lasses’ fates
 Are there that night ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


August 1968

...beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips. ...Read more of this...
by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)

By The Fire-Side

...t pond
Danced over by the midge.

XV.

The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,
Blackish-grey and mostly wet;
Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke.
See here again, how the lichens fret
And the roots of the ivy strike!

XVI.

Poor little place, where its one priest comes
On a festa-day, if he comes at all,
To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,
Gathered within that precinct small
By the dozen ways one roams---

XVII.

To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts,
Or cli...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Endymion: Book I

...willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Endymion: Book II

...a faint damask mouth
To slumbery pout; just as the morning south
Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head,
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed
To make a coronal; and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,
Together intertwin'd and trammel'd fresh:
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries; and woodbine,
Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine;
Convolvulus in streaked vases flush;
The creeper, mellowing for an autumn bl...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Humanitad

...hirl 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 sky.

Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
And stamp...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

...ream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill 
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another bre...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

Insomniac

...ovie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-lif...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Last Instructions to a Painter

...cassowar she feeds: 
Chops off the piece wheres'e'er she close the jaw, 
Else swallows all down her indented maw. 
She stalks all day in streets concealed from sight 
And flies, like bats with leathern wings, by night; 
She wastes the country and on cities preys. 
Her, of a female harpy, in dog days, 
Black Birch, of all the earth-born race most hot 
And most rapacious, like himself, begot, 
And, of his brat enamoured, as't increased, 
Buggered in incest with the mongrel bea...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

Live

...dn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.

Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Middle Passage

...through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper's 
claw. You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks 
the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot 
kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will. 

"But for the storm that flung up barriers 
of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores, 
would have reached the port of Príncipe in two, 
three days at most; but for the storm we should 
have been prepared for what befell. 
Swift as ...Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert

Paradise Lost: Book 04

...unespied, 
To mark what of their state he more might learn, 
By word or action marked. About them round 
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare; 
Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied 
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play, 
Straight couches close, then, rising, changes oft 
His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground, 
Whence rushing, he might surest seize them both, 
Griped in each paw: when, Adam first of men 
To first of women Eve thus moving speech, 
Turned hi...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Portrait of a Lady

...h, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after a...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Proud Music of The Storm

...nes—and o’er the rest, 
Italia’s peerless compositions.

Across the stage, with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion, 
Stalks Norma, brandishing the dagger in her hand. 

I see poor crazed Lucia’s eyes’ unnatural gleam; 
Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevell’d. 

I see where Ernani, walking the bridal garden,
Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the hand, 
Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn. 

To crossing swords, and grey...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of Myself

...g-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps;
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard—where the dry-stalks are
 scattered—where the brood-cow waits in the hovel; 
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work—where the stud to the
 mare—where the cock is treading the hen; 
Where the heifers browse—where geese nip their food with short jerks; 
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie; 
Where herds of buffalo make a cr...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The bubble floats

...The bubble floats before,
The shadow stalks behind....Read more of this...
by Shelley, Mary

The Child and the Mariner

...e in ships' cabins once: 
Sea-shells and charts and pebbles, model ships; 
Green weeds, dried fishes stuffed, and coral stalks; 
Old wooden trunks with handles of spliced rope, 
With copper saucers full of monies strange, 
That seemed the savings of dead men, not touched 
To keep them warm since their real owners died; 
Strings of red beads, methought were dipped in blood, 
And swinging lamps, as though the house might move; 
An ivory lighthouse built on ivory rocks, 
The bon...Read more of this...
by Davies, William Henry

The Emigrants: Book II

...gre, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,
The blasted land--There, taunting in the van
Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;
And, in the ranks, "1 Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
"Crouch for employment."--Lo! the suffering world,
Torn by the fearful conflict, shrinks, amaz'd,
From Freedom's name, usurp'd and misapplied,
And, cow'ring to the purple Tyrant's rod,
Deems that the lesser ill--Deluded Men!
Ere ye prophane her ever-glorious name,
Or catalogue the thousands that have...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Millers Tale

...
And hung them in the roof full privily.
With his own hand then made he ladders three,
To climbe by *the ranges and the stalks* *the rungs and the uprights*
Unto the tubbes hanging in the balks*; *beams
And victualed them, kemelin, trough, and tub,
With bread and cheese, and good ale in a jub*, *jug
Sufficing right enough as for a day.
But ere that he had made all this array,
He sent his knave*, and eke his wench** also, *servant **maid
Upon his need* to London for to go. *bu...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Shadow

...e tools on his table rattle and jump.
In his hands he carried a new-burst clump
Of laurel blossoms, whose smooth-barked stalks
Were pliant with sap. As a husband talks
To the wife he left an hour ago,
Paul spoke to the Shadow. "Dear, you know
To-day the calendar calls it Spring,
And I woke this morning gathering
Asphodels, in my dreams, for you.
So I rushed out to see what flowers blew
Their pink-and-purple-scented souls
Across the town-wind's dusty scrolls,
And made the appr...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

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