Famous Stirred Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A bird came down the walk

...etle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


A Sunset

...shes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, 
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red 
Into the furnace stirred to fume, 
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, 
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire 
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume. 

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, 
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil? 
With love that has not speech for need! 
Beneath their solem...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Beowulf (Modern English)

...night,
and the north wind battle-grim turned against us.
The waves were cruel, and the spirits of sea-monsters
were stirred up. There my body-sark gave me
some help against their hatred, hardened and hand-linked,
the woven war-dress laying on my breast,
fretted with gold. A speckled harmer, hostile,
had me fast, tore me to the sea floor,
grim in his grip. However, it was granted me
to skewer the monster on the tip of my battle-sword.
The rush of warfare seized the ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...firm-bound over briny currents,
till they got them sight of the Geatish cliffs,
home-known headlands. High the boat,
stirred by winds, on the strand updrove.
Helpful at haven the harbor-guard stood,
who long already for loved companions
by the water had waited and watched afar.
He bound to the beach the broad-bosomed ship
with anchor-bands, lest ocean-billows
that trusty timber should tear away.
Then Beowulf bade them bear the treasure,
gold and jewels; no journey ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Charmides

...ny pearl
Just threaded with a blue vein's tapestry
Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast
Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest)

And then each pigeon spread its milky van,
The bright car soared into the dawning sky,
And like a cloud the aerial caravan
Passed over the AEgean silently,
Till the faint air was troubled with the song
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.

But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where t...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...ast rang,
Breaking the seal of silence, and giving tongues to the forest.
Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music.
Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance,
Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches;
But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness;
And, when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.
Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight,
Silent at times, then singi...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Frost at Midnight

...wer,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
>From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the ...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

He took a few cups of love

...rt of laughter,
One pinch of concern.
And then, he mixed willingness with happiness.
He added lots of faith,
And he stirred it up well.
Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime,
And he served it to each and every deserving person he met....Read more of this...
by Ali, Muhammad

Humanitad

...e!

There was a time when any common bird
Could make me sing in unison, a time
When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
To quick response or more melodious rhyme
By every forest idyll; - do I change?
Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

Nay, nay, thou art the same: 'tis I who seek
To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall each wronged and rest...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Inferno (English)

...the following three, - 
 Horace, and Ovid, and Lucan. The voice ye heard, 
 That hailed me, caused them by one impulse stirred 
 Approach to do me honour, for these agree 
 In that one name we boast, and so do well 
 Owning it in me." There was I joyed to meet 
 Those shades, who closest to his place belong, 
 The eagle course of whose out-soaring song 
 Is lonely in height. 
 Some space apart (to
 tell, 
 It may be, something of myself ), my guide 
 Conversed, until they tu...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Love's Growth

...rged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love’s awakened root do bud out now.

If, as water stirred more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those, like so many spheres, but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in time of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the spring’s increase....Read more of this...
by Donne, John

Maple

...Mabel."

 "No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.
I have to let them call me what they like."

 They were both stirred that he should have divined
Without the name her personal mystery.
It made it seem as if there must be something
She must have missed herself. So they were married,
And took the fancy home with them to live by.

 They went on pilgrimage once to her father's
(The house one story high in front, three stories
On the side it presented to the road)
To see...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Snow

...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 stirred the bell, then listened.
“Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I’m at Cole’s. I’m late.
I called you up to say Good-night from here
Before I went to say Good-morning there.—
I thought I would.— I know, but, Lett—I know—
I could, but what’s the sense? The rest won’t be
So bad.— Give me an hour for it.— Ho, ho,
Three hours to here! But that was all up hill;
The ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Ballad of the White Horse

...lf the minstrel,
With womanish hair and ring,
Yet heavy was his hand on sword,
Though light upon the string.

And as he stirred the strings of the harp
To notes but four or five,
The heart of each man moved in him
Like a babe buried alive.

And they felt the land of the folk-songs
Spread southward of the Dane,
And they heard the good Rhine flowing
In the heart of all Allemagne.

They felt the land of the folk-songs,
Where the gifts hang on the tree,
Where the girls give ale a...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Everlasting Mercy

...yards stank of bitter bark, 
The curate's pigeons gave a flutter, 
A cart went courting down the gutter, 
And none else stirred a foot or feather. 
The houses put their heads together, 
Talking, perhaps, so dark and sly, 
Of all the folk they'd seen go by, 
Children, and men and women, merry all, 
Who'd some day pass that way to burial. 
It was all dark, but at the turning 
The Lion had a window burning. 
So in we went and up the stairs, 
Treading as still as cats and hares. ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Holy Grail

...ty hill, 
And on the top, a city walled: the spires 
Pricked with incredible pinnacles into heaven. 
And by the gateway stirred a crowd; and these 
Cried to me climbing, "Welcome, Percivale! 
Thou mightiest and thou purest among men!" 
And glad was I and clomb, but found at top 
No man, nor any voice. And thence I past 
Far through a ruinous city, and I saw 
That man had once dwelt there; but there I found 
Only one man of an exceeding age. 
"Where is that goodly company," sa...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Lady of the Lake

...ue
     To purple changed Loch Katrine blue;
     Mildly and soft the western breeze
     Just kissed the lake, just stirred the trees,
     And the pleased lake, like maiden coy,
     Trembled but dimpled not for joy
     The mountain-shadows on her breast
     Were neither broken nor at rest;
     In bright uncertainty they lie,
     Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
     The water-lily to the light
     Her chalice reared of silver bright;
     The doe awoke, an...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Shadow

...he knew.
By Christ's Blood! He would prove it true!
The edge of the Shadow never blurred.
The lips of the Shadow never stirred.

He would climb on chairs to reach her lips,
And pat her hair with his finger-tips.
But instead of young, warm flesh returning
His warmth, the wall was cold and burning
Like stinging ice, and his passion, chilled,
Lay in his heart like some dead thing killed
At the moment of birth. Then, deadly sick,
He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick
Ph...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Waste Land

...rked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended 
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
A...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Witch Of Atlas

...en and the mountain-maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant--
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts,--and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.

For she was beautiful. Her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
No thought of livi...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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