Famous Stall Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Hornet

by Ben Jonson
LXXVIII. — TO HORNET. HORNET, thou hast thy wife drest for the stall, To draw thee custom: but herself gets all....Read more of this...

Willie Metcalf

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
Or sometimes in a stall.
I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
Without getting kicked -- we knew each other.
On spring...Read more of this...

The touch of Zephyr (SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS)

by Horace
The touch of Zephyr and of Spring has loosen'd Winter's thrall;
       The well-dried keels are wheel'd again to sea:
     The ploughman cares not for his fire, nor cattle for their stall,
       And frost no more is whitening all the lea.
    ...Read more of this...

The Spring

by Thomas Carew
 Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost 
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost 
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream 
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream; 
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth, 
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth 
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree 
The drowsy...Read more of this...

Corn

by Sidney Lanier
 To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The...Read more of this...

The Land of the Exile

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what
the time is.
There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is
Saturday, our holiday.
Leave off your work, mother; sit here by the window and tell
me where the desert of Tepantar in the fairy tale is.
The shadow of the rains has covered...Read more of this...

Lepanto

by G K Chesterton
 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...

Beast and Man in India

by Rudyard Kipling
 Written for John Lockwood Kipling's
They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.

I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own,
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone.

I am the meat of sacrifice, 
The ransom of man's guilt,
For they give my life to...Read more of this...

Kings

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For the Rev. James B. Dollard)

The Kings of the earth are men of might,
And cities are burned for their delight,
And the skies rain death in the silent night,
And the hills belch death all day!
But the King of Heaven, Who made them all,
Is fair and gentle, and very small;
He lies in the straw, by the oxen's stall --
Let them think...Read more of this...

Double Ballade on the Nothingness of Things

by William Ernest Henley
 The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The weed of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The -isms and the -anities,
Magnificence and shame:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"

The Fates are subtle girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that...Read more of this...

The Rainy Day

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the
forest.
O child, do not go out!
The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads
against the dismal sky; the crows with their dragged wings are
silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river
is haunted by a deepening gloom.
Our cow is lowing loud, ties...Read more of this...

To Mr. F. Now Earl of W

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 No sooner, FLAVIO, was you gone, 
But, your Injunction thought upon,
ARDELIA took the Pen; 
Designing to perform the Task,
Her FLAVIO did so kindly ask,
Ere he returned agen. 

Unto Parnassus strait she sent, 
And bid the Messenger, that went
Unto the Muses Court,
Assure them, she their Aid did need,
And begg'd they'd use their utmost Speed,
Because the Time was short. 

The hasty...Read more of this...

The Runaway

by Robert Frost
 Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say 'Whose colt?'
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head
And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we...Read more of this...

The Buyers

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 To an apple-woman's stall

Once some children nimbly ran;
Longing much to purchase all,
They with joyous haste began
Snatching up the piles there raised,
While with eager eyes they gazed
On the rosy fruit so nice;
But when they found out the price,
Down they threw the whole they'd got,
Just as if they were red hot.


 * * * * *

The man who gratis will his...Read more of this...

Sams Racehorse

by Marriott Edgar
 When Sam Small retired from the Army 
He'd a pension of ninepence a day,
And seven pounds fourteen and twopence 
He'd saved from his rations and pay.

He knew this 'ere wasn't a fortune, 
But reckoned with prudence and care
He'd find some investment to save him 
From hard work and things like that there.

He thought he'd invest in a race orse,...Read more of this...

In the Stalls

by Arthur Symons
 My life is like a music-hall, 
Where, in the impotence of rage, 
Chained by enchantment to my stall, 
I see myself upon the stage 
Dance to amuse a music-hall. 

'Tis I that smoke this cigarette, 
Lounge here, and laugh for vacancy, 
And watch the dancers turn; and yet 
It is my very self I see 
Across the cloudy cigarette....Read more of this...

Tristia

by Osip Mandelstam
 I have studied the Science of departures,
in night’s sorrows, when a woman’s hair falls down.
The oxen chew, there’s the waiting, pure,
in the last hours of vigil in the town,
and I reverence night’s ritual cock-crowing,
when reddened eyes lift sorrow’s load and choose
to stare at distance, and a woman’s crying
is mingled with the singing of the Muse.

Who knows, when the word...Read more of this...

Half-And-Half

by Naomi Shihab Nye
 You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.

At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed mamool.

This morning we lit the...Read more of this...

To The Sound Of Violins

by Barry Tebb
 Give me life at its most garish

Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle

And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff

Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants

‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming...Read more of this...

Shower

by Les Murray
 From the metal poppy
this good blast of trance
arriving as shock, private cloudburst blazing down,
worst in a boarding-house greased tub, or a barrack with competitions,
best in a stall, this enveloping passion of Australians:
tropics that sweat for you, torrent that braces with its heat,
inflames you with its chill, action sauna, inverse bidet,
sleek vertical coruscating ghost of your inner river,
reminding all your...Read more of this...

A Youth Mowing

by D. H. Lawrence
 There are four men mowing down by the Isar; 
I can hear the swish of the scythe-strokes, four 
Sharp breaths taken: yea, and I 
Am sorry for what's in store. 

The first man out of the four that's mowing 
Is mine, I claim him once and for all; 
Though it's sorry I am, on his young feet, knowing 
None...Read more of this...

Wisdom of Hafiz: the Philosopher Takes to Racing

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo, 
Remember, it's seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow; 
Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow. 
If ever an owner should tell you, "Back mine" -- don't you be such a flat. 
He knows his own...Read more of this...

Christ Crucified

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Now ere I slept, my prayer had been that I might see my way
To do the will of Christ, our Lord and Master, day by day; 
And with this prayer upon my lips, I knew not that I dreamed, 
But suddenly the world of night a pandemonium seemed.
From forest, and from slaughter house, from bull ring, and from stall,...Read more of this...

The Worlds in this World

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
 Doors were left open in heaven again: 
drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages 
around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters 
flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,
its last angles caught in sopped
newspaper wings and billowing plastic — 
all this in one American street. 
 Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide 
recedes, incense is lit, an infant...Read more of this...

To My Bookseller

by Ben Jonson
III. ? TO MY BOOKSELLER.     Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and wisely well, Call'st a book good, or bad, as it doth sell, Use mine so too ;  I give thee leave :  but crave, For the luck's sake, it thus much favor have, To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought ; Not offer'd, as it made suit to...Read more of this...

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