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Famous Stem Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...,” or earth, stick to the root, that is “tocher,” or fortune; and the taste of the “custock,” that is, the heart of the stem, is indicative of the natural temper and disposition. Lastly, the stems, or, to give them their ordinary appellation, the “runts,” are placed somewhere above the head of the door; and the Christian names of the people whom chance brings into the house are, according to the priority of placing the “runts,” the names in question.—R. B. [ba...Read more of this...



by Bryant, William Cullen
...perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace 
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak--- 
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem 
Almost annihilated---not a prince, 
In all that proud old world beyond the deep, 
E'er wore his crown as lofty as he 
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which 
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root 
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare 
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower 
With scented breath,...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...ow'r and place,
His lowly mind advanc'd to David's grace:
With him the Sagan of Jerusalem,
Of hospitable soul and noble stem;
Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense
Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
The Prophet's sons by such example led,
To learning and to loyalty were bred:
For colleges on bounteous kings depend,
And never rebel was to arts a friend.
To these succeed the pillars of the laws,
Who best could plead, and best can judge a cause.
Next t...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...of- deep pride-
Of her who lov'd a mortal- and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Upreared its purple stem around her knees:-
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd-
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd
All other loveliness:- its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond- and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...g through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
To a wide lawn, whence one could only see
Stems thronging all around between the swell
Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,
Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.

 Full in the middle of this pleasantness
There stood a marble altar, with a tress...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...out a three-years' death-in-life.
They could not leave him. After he was gone,
The two remaining found a fallen stem;
And Enoch's comrade, careless of himself,
Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell
Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone.
In those two deaths he read God's warning `wait.' 

The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...ages gone, 
 The funeral odors, in the nest alone 
 Of its dead masters. Ancient was the race; 
 To trace the upward stem of proud Lusace 
 Gives one a vertigo; descended they 
 From ancestor of Attila, men say; 
 Their race to him—through Pagans—they hark back; 
 Becoming Christians, race they thought to track 
 Through Lechus, Plato, Otho to combine 
 With Ursus, Stephen, in a lordly line. 
 Of all those masters of the country round 
 That were on Northern Europe...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...hat well-worn reserve which proved he knew 
No sympathy with that familiar crew: 
His soul, whate'er his station or his stem, 
Could bow to Lara, not descend to them. 
Of higher birth he seem'd, and better days, 
Nor mark of vulgar toil that hand betrays, 
So femininely white it might bespeak 
Another sex, when match'd with that smooth cheek, 
But for his garb, and something in his gaze, 
More wild and high than woman's eye betrays; 
A latent fierceness that far more beca...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...pollution of the mind;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
But if the brave old mould is broke,
And end in clowns the mountain-folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,—
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!

Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...n the great skin coat he wore.

Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward
Over his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying,
“You can just see it glancing off the roof
Making a great scroll upward toward the sky,
Long enough for recording all our names on.—
I think I’ll just call up my wife and tell her
I’m here—so far—and starting on again.
I’ll call her softly so that if she’s wise
And gone to sleep, she needn’t wake to answer.”
Three times he barely st...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...leaves on high; 
And yet, though storms and blight assail, 
And hands more rude than wintry sky 
May wring it from the stem — in vain — 
To-morrow sees it bloom again! 
The stalk some spirit gently rears, 
And waters with celestial tears; 
For well may maids of Helle deem 
That this can be no earthly flower, 
Which mocks the tempest's withering hour, 
And buds unshelter'd by a bower; 
Nor droops, though spring refuse her shower, 
Nor woos the summer beam: 
To it the livelong...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...or young Mercury
Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its
suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne's silver tapestry, -
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river's marge Narciss...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...his ear, 
35 Ubiquitous concussion, slap and sigh, 
36 Polyphony beyond his baton's thrust. 

37 Could Crispin stem verboseness in the sea, 
38 The old age of a watery realist, 
39 Triton, dissolved in shifting diaphanes 
40 Of blue and green? A wordy, watery age 
41 That whispered to the sun's compassion, made 
42 A convocation, nightly, of the sea-stars, 
43 And on the cropping foot-ways of the moon 
44 Lay grovelling. Triton incomplicate with that 
45 ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...hey yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father's name -
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear 
...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ened in despair,
     When rose Benledi's ridge in air;
     Who flagged upon Bochastle's heath,
     Who shunned to stem the flooded Teith,—
     For twice that day, from shore to shore,
     The gallant stag swam stoutly o'er.
     Few were the stragglers, following far,
     That reached the lake of Vennachar;
     And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
     The headmost horseman rode alone.
     VII.

     Alone, but with unbated zeal,
     That horseman plied t...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ked grave?

Where is the cross of weathered wood and stapled names?

The thirty roses that you left had withered on the stem,

The weeds had spread and spread and you yourself

Were paler than the dead.



There may be little time or time enough for ills

We have to bear for others with our own. Madness

Seems our calling, yours and mine, speaking a tongue

Where words are symbols, signs and symptoms, pointers

To a buried past, clues to an untold murder.

Those n...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening ...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...in his own way a man might worship his God. 
Never more English than when they dared to be 
Rebels against her-that stem intractable sense 
Of that which no man can stomach and still be free, 
Writing: 'When in the course of human events. . .'
Writing it out so all the world could see 
Whence come the powers of all just governments. 
The tree of Liberty grew and changed and spread, 
But the seed was English. 
 I am American bred,
I have seen much to ha...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem; and there lay calm
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song,--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong,
And all the code of Custom's lawless law
Written upon the brows of old and young.
"This," said the Wizard Maiden, "is the ...Read more of this...

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