Famous Stir Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Passion

by Charlotte Bronte
 SOME have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow. 

Could the battle-struggle earn
One kind glance from thine eye,
How this withering heart would burn,
The heady fight to try ! 

Welcome nights of broken sleep,
And days of carnage cold,
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep
To hear my perils told. 

Tell me, if with...Read more of this...

from Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard...Read more of this...

To A Poet Breaking Silence

by Francis Thompson
 Too wearily had we and song
Been left to look and left to long,
Yea, song and we to long and look,
Since thine acquainted feet forsook
The mountain where the Muses hymn
For Sinai and the Seraphim.
Now in both the mountains' shine
Dress thy countenance, twice divine!
From Moses and the Muses draw
The Tables of thy double Law!
His rod-born fount and Castaly
Let the one rock...Read more of this...

Oh! Death Will Find Me Long Before I Tire

by Rupert Brooke
 Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire 
 Of watching you; and swing me suddenly 
Into the shade and loneliness and mire 
 Of the last land! There, waiting patiently, 

One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing, 
 See a slow light across the Stygian tide, 
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,...Read more of this...

Songs of Battle

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Old as the world--no other things so old; 
Nay, older than the world, else, how had sprung 
Such lusty strength in them when earth was young?-- 
Stand valor and its passion hot and bold, 
Insatiate of battle. How, else, told 
Blind men, born blind, that red was fitting tongue 
Mute, eloquent, to show how trumpets rung 
When armies charged...Read more of this...

Killers

by Carl Sandburg
 I AM singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:

Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.

And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen...Read more of this...

The Nurse

by Katharine Tynan
 Such innocent companionship 
Is hers, whether she wake or sleep, 
'Tis scarcely strange her face should wear 
The young child's grave and innocent air. 

All the night long she hath by her 
The quiet breathing, the soft stir, 
Nor knows how in that tender place 
The children's angels veil the face. 

She wakes at dawn with bird and child
To...Read more of this...

I had a daily Bliss

by Emily Dickinson
 I had a daily Bliss
I half indifferent viewed
Till sudden I perceived it stir --
It grew as I pursued

Till when around a Height
It wasted from my sight
Increased beyond my utmost scope
I learned to estimate....Read more of this...

How many times these low feet staggered

by Emily Dickinson
 How many times these low feet staggered --
Only the soldered mouth can tell --
Try -- can you stir the awful rivet --
Try -- can you lift the hasps of steel!

Stroke the cool forehead -- hot so often --
Lift -- if you care -- the listless hair --
Handle the adamantine fingers
Never a thimble -- more -- shall wear --

Buzz the...Read more of this...

Astrophel And Stella-Eleventh Song

by Sir Philip Sidney
 "Who is it that this dark night
Underneath my window plaineth?"
'It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah! exiled, disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.'

"Why, alas! and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changed?"
'Dear, when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estranged,
Let my change to ruin be.'

"Well, in absence this will die;
Leave to see, and leave to wonder."
'Absence...Read more of this...

Shearing at Castlereagh

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The bell is set a-ringing, and the engine gives a toot, 
There's five-and-thirty shearers here a-shearing for the loot, 
So stir yourselves, you penners-up, and shove the sheep along -- 
The musterers are fetching them a hundred thousand strong -- 
And make your collie dogs speak up; what would the buyers say 
In London if the wool was late...Read more of this...

I would not paint -- a picture --

by Emily Dickinson
 I would not paint -- a picture --
I'd rather be the One
Its bright impossibility
To dwell -- delicious -- on --
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare -- celestial -- stir --
Evokes so sweet a Torment --
Such sumptuous -- Despair --

I would not talk, like Cornets --
I'd rather be the One
Raised softly to the Ceilings --
And out, and easy on...Read more of this...

Sailors Sweetheart

by Robert William Service
 He sleeps beside me in the bed;
Upon my breast I hold his head;
Oh how I would that we were wed,
 For he sails in the morning.

I wish I had not been so kind;
But love is fain and passion blind,
While out of sight is out of mind,
 And he ships in the morning.

I feel his bairn stir in my womb;
Poor...Read more of this...

There Was A Saviour

by Dylan Thomas
 There was a saviour
 Rarer than radium,
 Commoner than water, crueller than truth;
 Children kept from the sun
 Assembled at his tongue
 To hear the golden note turn in a groove,
Prisoners of wishes locked their eyes
In the jails and studies of his keyless smiles.

 The voice of children says
 From a lost wilderness
 There was calm to be done...Read more of this...

For Little Things

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Last night I looked across the hills
And through an arch of darkling pine
Low-swung against a limpid west
I saw a young moon shine. 

And as I gazed there blew a wind,
Loosed where the sylvan shadows stir,
Bringing delight to soul and sense
The breath of dying fir. 

This morn I saw a dancing host
Of poppies in a garden way,
And straight my heart...Read more of this...

My Last Dance

by Julia Ward Howe
 The shell of objects inwardly consumed
Will stand, till some convulsive wind awakes;
Such sense hath Fire to waste the heart of things,
Nature, such love to hold the form she makes.
Thus, wasted joys will show their early bloom,
Yet crumble at the breath of a caress;
The golden fruitage hides the scathèd bough,
Snatch it, thou scatterest wide its emptiness.
For pleasure bidden, I went...Read more of this...

The Isle Of Portland

by A E Housman
 The star-filled seas are smooth tonight
 From France to England strown;
Black towers above Portland light
 The felon-quarried stone.

On yonder island; not to rise,
 Never to stir forth free,
Far from his folk a dead lad lies
 That once was friends with me.

Lie you easy, dream you light,
 And sleep you fast for aye;
And luckier may you find the night
 Than...Read more of this...

The Captive Bee; Or The Little Filcher

by Robert Herrick
 As Julia once a-slumb'ring lay,
It chanced a bee did fly that way,
After a dew, or dew-like shower,
To tipple freely in a flower;
For some rich flower, he took the lip
Of Julia, and began to sip;
But when he felt he suck'd from thence
Honey, and in the quintessence,
He drank so much he scarce could stir;
So Julia took the pilferer.
And thus surprised, as...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 15. To-night the winds begin to rise

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I...Read more of this...

The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that 's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 02: The Screen Maiden

by Conrad Aiken
 You read—what is it, then that you are reading?
What music moves so silently in your mind?
Your bright hand turns the page.
I watch you from my window, unsuspected:
You move in an alien land, a silent age . . .

. . . The poet—what was his name—? Tokkei—Tokkei—
The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like...Read more of this...

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

by Amy Lowell
 After a Print by George Cruikshank

It was a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled...Read more of this...

Absence

by Claude McKay
 Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool, 
Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool. 

Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb, 
Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim. 

But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties 
Now, through the menacing miles,...Read more of this...

Croquis

by William Ernest Henley
 The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then,
He groped and fiddled doggedly along,
His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng
The stony peevishness of sightless men.
He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again,
Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song,
So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong,
You hardly could distinguish one in ten.
He stopped at last, and sat him...Read more of this...

That short -- potential stir

by Emily Dickinson
 That short -- potential stir
That each can make but once --
That Bustle so illustrious
'Tis almost Consequence --

Is the eclat of Death --
Oh, thou unknown Renown
That not a Beggar would accept
Had he the power to spurn --...Read more of this...

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