Famous Staring Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Staring poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous staring poems. These examples illustrate what a famous staring poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Victor Hugo
("Lorsque avec ses enfants Cain se fût enfui.")
{Bk. II}
Then, with his children, clothed in skins of brutes,
Dishevelled, livid, rushing through the storm,
Cain fled before Jehovah. As night fell
The dark man reached a mount in a great plain,
And his tired wife and his sons, out of breath,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I
TRUTH is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God's death were but a play.
Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo's painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
I live only here, between your eyes and you,
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man....Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
don't be so lazy maisie maisie
don't be so lazy please
i know it's snowing
and a hard wind's blowing
but nobody knows
at the rate we're going
what time we'll get home tonight
keep to the path for me timothy timothy
keep to the path for me please
my legs are aching
and my poor back's breaking
and everyone knows
the track you're taking
will not fetch us home tonight
i know...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had!
And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad!
And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!
To hark to their talk in the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart,
Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
A bullet through his heart at dawn. On
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.
Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,
The tiresome noises, all the common things
I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.
I longed for the cool quiet and the dark,
Under the common sod where louts and kings
Lie down, serene, unheeding, careless, stark,
Never to rise or move or feel again,
Filled with the...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Down, you mongrel, Death!
Back into your kennel!
I have stolen breath
In a stalk of fennel!
You shall scratch and you shall whine
Many a night, and you shall worry
Many a bone, before you bury
One sweet bone of mine!
When shall I be dead?
When my flesh is withered,
And above my head
Yellow pollen gathered
All the empty afternoon?
When sweet lovers pause and wonder
Whom am I that...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
Coming up England by a different line
For once, early in the cold new year,
We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. 'I was born here.'
I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign
That this was still the town that had been 'mine'
So long, but found I wasn't even clear
Which side...Read more of this...
by
Nick Flynn
Bees may be trusted, always,
to discover the best, nay, the only
human, solution. Let me cite
an instance; an event, that,
though occurring in nature, is still
in itself wholly abnormal. I refer
to the manner in which the bees
will dispose of a mouse
or a slug
that may happen to...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;
The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.
Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,
Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes
Glares the imperious mystery of the way.
Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train
Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,
Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .
As...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
I took a small path leading
up a hill valley, finding there
a temple, its gate covered
with moss, and in front of
the door but tracks of birds;
in the room of the old monk
no one was living, and I
staring through the window
saw but a hair duster hanging
on the wall, itself covered
with dust; emptily I sighed
thinking to go, but then
turning back several times,
seeing...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"Tell Annie I'll be home in time
To help her with her Christmas-tree."
That's what he wrote, and hark! the chime
Of Christmas bells, and where is he?
And how the house is dark and sad,
And Annie's sobbing on my knee!
The page beside the candle-flame
With cruel type was overfilled;
I read and read until a name
Leapt at me and my heart was stilled:
My eye...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
Night fell over North Lebanon and snow was covering the villages surrounded by the Kadeesha Valley, giving the fields and prairies the appearance of a great sheet of parchment upon which the furious Nature was recording her many deeds. Men came home from the streets while silence engulfed the night.
In a lone house near those villages lived a...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Padel
(After Pushkin)
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour.
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this
Unlived - this world...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
(To Robert Graves)
I
Here I'm sitting in the gloom
Of my quiet attic room.
France goes rolling all around,
Fledged with forest May has crowned.
And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
Thinking how the fighting started,
Wondering when we'll ever end it,
Back to hell with Kaiser sent it,
Gag the noise, pack up and go,
Clockwork soldiers...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt-water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,--
Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:--
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is't ye...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
The garden's full of scented wallflowers,
And, save that these stir faintly, nothing stirs;
Only a distant bell in hollow chime
Cried out just now for far-forgoten time,
And three reverberate words the great bell spoke.
The knocker's made of brass, the door of oak,
And such a clamor must be loosed on air
By the knocker's blow that...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out ...Read more of this...
by
Richard Brautigan
With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.
It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The nearest Dream recedes -- unrealized --
The Heaven we chase,
Like the June Bee -- before the School Boy,
Invites the Race --
Stoops -- to an easy Clover --
Dips -- evades -- teases -- deploys --
Then -- to the Royal Clouds
Lifts his light Pinnace --
Heedless of the Boy --
Staring -- bewildered -- at the mocking sky --
Homesick for steadfast Honey --
Ah,...Read more of this...
by
Annie Finch
HLF, August 8, 1918—August 22, 1997
“Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.”
—Hart Crane, “Voyages”
“If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly
past the long edge of the last human shore,
there are deep windows the waves haven't opened,
where night is...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Patchen
We go out together into the staring town
And buy cheese and bread and little jugs with
flowered labels
Everywhere is a tent where we put on our whirling
show
A great deal has been said of the handless serpents
Which war has set loose in the gay milk of our
heads
But because you braid your hair and taste like
honey of heaven
We go together into...Read more of this...
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