Famous Stirred Up Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Stirred 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 stirred up poems. These examples illustrate what a famous stirred up poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Rock and The Bubble

by Louisa May Alcott
 Oh! a bare, brown rock 
Stood up in the sea, 
The waves at its feet 
Dancing merrily. 

A little bubble 
Once came sailing by, 
And thus to the rock 
Did it gayly cry,-- 

"Ho! clumsy brown stone, 
Quick, make way for me: 
I'm the fairest thing 
That floats on the sea. 

"See my rainbow-robe, 
See my crown of light,...Read more of this...

Florida

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters, 
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, 
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. 
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every...Read more of this...

Percival Sharp

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Observe the clasped hands!
Are they hands of farewell or greeting,
Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?
Would it not be well to carve a hand
With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?
And yonder is a broken chain,
The weakest-link idea perhaps --
But what was it?
And lambs, some lying down,
Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd --
Others bearing a cross, one...Read more of this...

The Drowned Man

by Alexander Pushkin
 Children running into izba,
Calling father, dripping sweat:
"Daddy, daddy! come -- there is a
Deadman caught inside our net."
"Fancy, fancy fabrication..."
Grumbled off their weary Pa,
"Have these imps imagination!
Deadman, really! ya-ha-ha...

"Well... the court may come to bother -
What'll I say before the judge?
Hey you brats, go have your mother
Bring my coat; I better trudge...
Show me, where?" -- "Right there, Dad, farther!"
On the...Read more of this...

The Song

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
My soul, lost in the music's mist,
Roamed, rapt, 'neath skies of amethyst.
The cheerless streets grew summer meads,
The Son of Ph[oe]bus spurred his steeds,
And, wand'ring down the mazy tune,
December lost its way in June,
While from a verdant vale I heard
The piping of a love-lorn bird.
A something in the tender strain
Revived an old, long-conquered pain,
And as in depths of many seas,
My heart...Read more of this...

Risus Dei

by Thomas Edward Brown
 Methinks in Him there dwells alway
A sea of laughter very deep,
Where the leviathans leap,
And little children play,
Their white feet twinkling on its crisped edge;
But in the outer bay
The strong man drives the wedge
Of polished limbs,
And swims.
Yet there is one will say:--
'It is but shallow, neither is it broad'--
And so he frowns; but is he nearer God?

One saith that God...Read more of this...

Darkness

by George (Lord) Byron
 I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into...Read more of this...

From Dewy Dreams

by James Joyce
 From dewy dreams, my soul, arise, 
From love's deep slumber and from death, 
For lo! the treees are full of sighs 
Whose leaves the morn admonisheth. 

Eastward the gradual dawn prevails 
Where softly-burning fires appear, 
Making to tremble all those veils 
Of grey and golden gossamer. 

While sweetly, gently, secretly, 
The flowery bells of morn are stirred 
And the...Read more of this...

Portrait of a Baby

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 He lay within a warm, soft world 
Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled, 
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red, 
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled 
To vanish in the grey-green gloom, 
Perspectiveless and shadowy. 
A bulging world that had no walls, 
A flowing world, most like the sea, 
Compassing all infinity 
Within a shapeless, ebbing room, 
An endless tide...Read more of this...

The Quids

by Laura Riding Jackson
 The little quids, the million quids,
The everywhere, everything, always quids,
The atoms of the Monoton—
Each turned three essences where it stood
And ground a gisty dust from its neighbors' edges
Until a powdery thoughtfall stormed in and out,
The cerebration of a slippery quid enterprise.
Each quid stirred.
The united quids
Waved through a sinuous decision.

The quids, that had never done anything before
But be, be, be,...Read more of this...

humming-bird pie

by Rg Gregory
 the paiute indians had the bird sussed
a humming bird (loaded with seeds) set out 
to see beyond the sun - it aimed to be frugal
rationing itself to only one seed a day - even so
it ran out long before it meant to
it gave up (getting nowhere and seeing nothing) -

all of which rings a human bell or two
such an...Read more of this...

To Helen 2

by Edgar Allan Poe
 I saw thee once- once only- years ago: 
I must not say how many- but not many. 
It was a July midnight; and from out 
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, 
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
Upon the upturned faces of...Read more of this...

Sonnet 21: So is it not with me as with that muse

by William Shakespeare
 So is it not with me as with that muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven it self for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O,...Read more of this...

O my soul! drink this limpid nectar which has not

by Omar Khayyam
O my soul! drink this limpid nectar which has not
been stirred; drink it in memory of the charming idols
which ravish the heart. Wine is the blood of the vine,
my friend, and the vine says to thee: Drink of me,
since I render it lawful to you.
331...Read more of this...

Crossing the Frontier

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time, 
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait: 
Passports in order, nothing to declare 
And surely holding hands was not a crime 
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate, 
All their most formidable friends were there. 

Wearing his conscience like a crucifix, 
Her father, rampant, nursed the Family Shame; 
And,...Read more of this...

Two Songs Of A Fool

by William Butler Yeats
 I

A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.

I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left unshut,
The hare may run till it's found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the...Read more of this...

Impression Du Matin

by Oscar Wilde
 The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold

The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses' walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul's
Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons: and a...Read more of this...

Djolan

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Soft was the night, the eve how airy,
When through the big, fat dictionary
I wandered on in careless ease,
And read the a's, b's, c's and d's!

But stop! What is this form I see,
Beginning with a hump-backed d?
I pause! I gasp! I falter there!
It is the djolan, I declare!

It is the djolan, wond'rous word!
The Buceros plicatus bird!
Ne'er, ne'er before had I...Read more of this...

On The River

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The sun is low,
The waters flow,
My boat is dancing to and fro.
The eve is still,
Yet from the hill
The killdeer echoes loud and shrill.
The paddles plash,
The wavelets dash,
We see the summer lightning flash;[Pg 286]
While now and then,
In marsh and fen
Too muddy for the feet of men,
Where neither bird
Nor beast has stirred,
The spotted bullfrog's croak is heard.
The wind is high,
The...Read more of this...

Australia Today 1916

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 They came from the lower levels 
Deep down in the Brilliant mine; 
From the wastes where the whirlwind revels, 
Whirling the leaves of pine. 
On the western plains, where the Darling flows, 
And the dust storms wheel and shift, 
The teamster loosened his yokes and bows, 
And turned his team adrift. 

On the western stations, far and wide, 
There's...Read more of this...

The Rope-maker

by Emile Verhaeren
In his village grey
At foot of the dykes, that encompass him
With weary weaving of curves and lines
Toward the sea outstretching dim,
The rope-maker, visionary white.
Stepping backwards along the way,
Prudently 'twixt his hands combines
The distant threads, in their twisting play.
That come to him from the infinite.


When day is gone.
Through ardent, weary evenings, yon
The whirr of a wheel can yet be heard;
Something by...Read more of this...

Going Away

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Walking to-day on the Common, 
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him, 
'Do you know I am going away? '
I had never seen their faces, 
May never see them again; 
Yet the words the stranger uttered, 
Stirred me with nameless pain.

For I knew some heart would miss him, 
Would ache at his going away!...Read more of this...

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

by Claude McKay
 All yesterday it poured, and all night long 
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat 
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song, 
Upon the grass like running children's feet. 
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed, 
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed, 
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist, 
And nestled soft against the...Read more of this...

Nirvana

by Sidney Lanier
 Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies,
Through seas of solitudes and vacancies,
And through my Self, the deepest of the seas,
I strive to thee, Nirvana.

Oh long ago the billow-flow of sense,
Aroused by passion's windy vehemence,
Upbore me out of depths to heights intense,
But not to thee, Nirvana.

By waves swept on, I learned to ride the waves.
I served my masters till...Read more of this...

Love's Growth

by John Donne
I scarce believe my love to be so pure
   As I had thought it was,
   Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make’ it more.

But if medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mixed of all stuffs...Read more of this...

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