Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Stile Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ay, labours at in vaine. 
But within due proportions, circumscribe 
What e're you write; that with a flowing Tyde, 
The Stile, may rise, yet in its rise forbeare, 
With uselesse Words, t'oppresse the wearyed Eare: 
Here be your Language lofty, there more light, 
Your Rethorick, with your Poetry, unite: 
For Elegance sake, sometimes alay the force 
Of Epethets; 'twill soften the discourse; 
A Jeast in Scorne, poynts out, and hits the thing, 
More home, than the Morosest Satyrs...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John



...lood.

Others for Language all their Care express,
And value Books, as Women Men, for Dress:
Their Praise is still--The Stile is excellent:
The Sense, they humbly take upon Content.
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
False Eloquence, like the Prismatic Glass,
Its gawdy Colours spreads on ev'ry place;
The Face of Nature was no more Survey,
All glares alike, without Distinction gay:
But true Expression, like th' uncha...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...stare --

I hope the Father in the skies
Will lift his little girl --
Old fashioned -- naught -- everything --
Over the stile of "Pearl."...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...it, to shepherds pipe retires,
Yet hiding royall bloud full oft in rurall vaine.
To some a sweetest plaint a sweetest stile affords:
While teares poure out his inke, and sighes breathe out his words,
His paper pale despaire, and pain his pen doth moue.
I can speake what I feele, and feele as much as they,
But thinke that all the map of my state I display
When trembling voyce brings forth, that I do Stella loue. 
VII 

When Nature made her chief worke, Stellas eyes,
...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip
...h, testing each fraction
Of torque on the spindles, on tiptoe
Slip yourself through the upright slot
And press the lock-stile silently
Back into its frame.

Or you can use your shoulder
Or the hard heel of your shoe
And a leg-thrust to break it open.

Or you can approach the door as if accustomed
To having all barriers open by themselves.
You can wrench aside
This unauthorized interruption of your progress
And then leave it ajar
For others to do with as they may see fit.

Or ...Read more of this...
by Wagoner, David



...came to field in such wise :
`A daisied mead', each said to each,
So were they one; so sought they couch,
Across barbed stile, through flocked brown cows.

`No pitchforked farmer, please,' she said;
`May cockcrow guard us safe,' said he;
By blackthorn thicket, flower spray
They pitched their coats, come to green bed.

Below: a fen where water stood;
Aslant: their hill of stinging nettle;
Then, honor-bound, mute grazing cattle;
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.

All...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...m the rough-adzed pole topped with a white china doorknob. 
It stops, and a man carrying a bay gets off, 
climbs over a stile, and goes down through a small steep meadow, 
which establishes its poverty in a snowfall of daisies, 
to his invisible house beside the water. 

The birds keep on singing, a calf bawls, the bus starts. 
The thin mist follows 
the white mutations of its dream; 
an ancient chill is rippling the dark brooks....Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth
...uper-
seded all need to remember
Somerset were: a large flock

of winter-bedcover-thick-
pelted sheep up on the moor;
a stile, a church spire, 
and an excess, at Porlock,

of tenderly barbarous antique
thatch in tandem with flower-
beds, relentlessly pictur-
esque, along every sidewalk;

a millwheel; and a millbrook 
running down brown as beer.
Exempt from the disaster.
however, as either too quick

or too subtle to put on rec-
ord, were these: the flutter
of, beside the brow...Read more of this...
by Clampitt, Amy
...--
Then I said softly to myself --
"That must have been the Sun"!
But how he set -- I know not --
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while --
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray --
Put gently up the evening Bars --
And led the flock away --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...with Salt -- The Lord pass the last year's accounts in my conscience thro' the merits of Jesus Christ. New Year by Old Stile 1763. 

Let Forward, house of Forward rejoice with Immussulus a kind of bird -- the Lord forward my translation of the psalms this year. 

Let Quarme, house of Quarme rejoice with Thyosiris yellow Succory -- I pray God bless all my Subscribers. 

Let Larkin, house of Larkin rejoice with Long-wort or Torch-herb -- God give me good riddance of my present...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher
...tree
Seem chirping for his company
And all in fancys idle whim
Seem keeping holiday but him
He lolls upon each resting stile
To see the fields so sweetly smile
To see the wheat grow green and long
And list the weeders toiling song
Or short not[e] of the changing thrush
Above him in the white thorn bush
That oer the leaning stile bends low
Loaded wi mockery of snow
Mozzld wi many a lushing thread
Of crab tree blossoms delicate red
He often bends wi many a wish
Oer the brig ra...Read more of this...
by Clare, John
...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 as he runneth here and there,
An acorn-cup he greeteth;
Which soon he taketh by th...Read more of this...
by Drayton, Michael
...; 
The Sailors too must fall a Prey, 
Those that Command, with those that did Obey; 
The best Supporters of thy pompous Stile, 
Thou far Renown'd, thou pow'rful BRITISH Isle! 
Foremost in Naval Strength, and Sov'reign of the Sea! 
These from thy Aid that wrathful Night divides, 
Plung'd in those Waves, o'er which this Title rides. 


What art Thou, envy'd Greatness, at the best, 
In thy deluding Splendors drest? 
What are thy glorious Titles, and thy Forms? 
Which cannot give...Read more of this...
by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...he summer sun
Sets in a glorious sky;
A quiet field, all green and lone,
Receives its rosy dye.
Jane sits upon a shaded stile,
Alone she sits there now;
Her head rests on her hand the while,
And thought o'ercasts her brow. 

She's thinking of one winter's day,
A few short months ago,
When Emma's bier was borne away
O'er wastes of frozen snow.
She's thinking how that drifted snow
Dissolved in spring's first gleam,
And how her sister's memory now
Fades, even as fades a dream. 
...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...enere e in caverne;
o Ilión, come te basso e vile
mostrava il segno che lì si discerne!
 Qual di pennel fu maestro o di stile
che ritraesse l'ombre e ' tratti ch'ivi
mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile?
 Morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi:
non vide mei di me chi vide il vero,
quant'io calcai, fin che chinato givi.
 Or superbite, e via col viso altero,
figliuoli d'Eva, e non chinate il volto
sì che veggiate il vostro mal sentero!
 Più era già per noi del monte vòlto
e del cammi...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...s 
Like wheels go round. 

Crash under bridges, 
Flash over ridges, 
And vault the downs; 
The road is straight -- 
Nor stile, nor gate; 
For milestones -- towns! 

Voluminous, vanishing, white, 
The steam plume trails; 
Parallel streaks of light, 
THe polished rails. 

Oh, who can follow? 
The little swallow, 
The trout of the sky: 
But the sun 
Is outrun, 
And Time passed by. 

O'er bosky dens, 
By marsh and mead, 
Forest and fens 
Embodied speed 
Is clanked and hurled; 
O'...Read more of this...
by Davidson, John
...herd seek his mate
On that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment, -

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental t...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...n; and a man 
On a great yawing chestnut trying to cast ’em 
While I was in a corner pounded by 
The ugliest hog-backed stile you’ve clapped your eyes on.
There was an iron-spiked fence round all the coverts, 
And civil-spoken keepers I couldn’t trust, 
And the main earth unstopp’d. The fox I found 
Was always a three-legged ’un from a bag, 
Who reeked of aniseed and wouldn’t run.
The farmers were all ploughing their old pasture 
And bellowing at me when I rode their beans 
T...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...t hamlets come
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam,
Or cross a stile into the public way.
Oft thou hast given them store
Of flowers—the frail-leafed white anemony,
Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves,
And purple orchises with spotted leaves— 
But none hath words she can report of thee.

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,
Men who through those wide ...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...ly in the day,
And I went to kiss the place
Where she broke the rose away
And I saw the patten rings
Where she o'er the stile had gone,
And I love all other things
Her bright eyes look upon.
If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree,
The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me.

I have a pleasant hill
Which I sit upon for hours,
Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme
And other little flowers;
And she muttered as she did it
As does beauty in a dream,
An...Read more of this...
by Clare, John

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Stile poems.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry