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Famous Stopping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bukowski, Charles
...he
sang "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." He sang "The St. Louis
Blues." He sasng "God Bless America," stopping several times and laughing.
Then he sat down next to Constance. He said, "Connie, you have beautiful legs."
He asked for another cigarette. He smoked it, drank two more drinks, then put his head
down on Connie's legs, against the stockings, in her lap, and he said, "Connie, I
guess I'm no good, I guess I'm crazy, I'm sorry I hit you,...Read More



by Browning, Robert
...ould slip 
Back and rejoin its source before the term,-- 
And aptest in contrivance (under God) 
To baffle it by deftly stopping such:-- 
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home 
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) 
Three samples of true snakestone--rarer still, 
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) 
And writeth now the twenty-second time. 

My journeyings were brought to Jericho; 
Thus I resume.Read More

by Plath, Sylvia
...r stones,

Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here: it is a stopping place.


(6)

The natural fatness of these lime leaves!----
Pollarded green balls, the trees march to church.

The voice of the priest, in thin air, 
Meets the corpse at the gate,

Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell;
A glittler of wheat and crude earth.

What is the name of that color?----
Old b...Read More

by Larkin, Philip
...choes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book donate an Irish sixpence 
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do 
And always end much at a loss like this 
Wondering what to look for; wondering too
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show 
Their parchment plate and pyx in locked cases 
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sh...Read More

by Piercy, Marge
...as a hill of daffodils, 
yellow as dandelions by the highway, 
yellow as butter and egg yolks, 
yellow as a school bus stopping you, 
yellow as a slicker in a downpour. 

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing 
song of all the things you make 
me think of, here is oblique 
praise for the height and depth 
of you and the width too. 
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet. 

Green as mint jelly, green 
as a frog on a lily pad twanging, 
the green of cos lettuce upr...Read More



by Gregory, Rg
...stars - poetry has to be
in service to this want (is fed
into the system gracelessly)
there can be no standing-still or
stopping-by no take a little time

and see what blossoms here - we're into
poetry in motion and all that ****
and i can accept it all - what stirs
the surface of the ocean ignores
the depths - what talks the hindlegs off
the day can't murder dreams - that's not
to say the depths and dreams aren't there
for those who need them - it's commonplace

they hold th...Read More

by Edgar, Marriott
...y 
But Joe, like Horatio Nelson 
Put a fist to the Captain’s blind eye! 

On he went 'til the goal lay before him 
Then stopping to get himself set 
He steadied the ball, and then kicked it 
And landed it right in the net! 

The fog seemed to lift at that moment 
And all eyes were turned on the lad 
The Whippets seemed kind of dumbfounded 
While the Swifts started cheering like mad! 

'Twere his own goal as he’d kicked the ball through 
He’d scored for his foes ‘gainst his fr...Read More

by Keats, John
...tead of silent plumes,
To hover round my head, and make me sick
Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame,
And I was stopping up my frantic ears,
When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands,
A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune,
And still it cried, 'Apollo! young Apollo!
The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!'
I fled, it follow'd me, and cried 'Apollo!'
O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt
Those pains of mine; O Saturn, hadst thou felt,
Ye would not call this ...Read More

by Brown, Fleda
...t as long as I don't bother her, she's glad 

to know I care. She's talked my father into taking 
a drive later, stopping for an A & W root beer. 
She is dreaming of foam on the glass, the tray propped 

on the car window. And trees, farmhouses, the expanse 
of the world as seen from inside the car. It is no 
use to try to get her out to watch airplanes 

take off, or walk a trail, or hear this poem 
and offer anything more than "Isn't that sweet!" ...Read More

by Plath, Sylvia
...te, anesthetized.

And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses....Read More

by Brautigan, Richard
...ide in a truck. He picked me up at

a traffic signal beside a bean field and he never said a word

to me.

 His stopping and picking me up and driving me down the

road was as automatic a thing to him as closing the barn

door, nothing need be said about it, but still I was in motion

traveling thirty-five miles an hour down the road, watching

houses and groves of trees go by, watching chickens and

mailboxes enter and pass through my vision.

 Then I did not see...Read More

by Whitman, Walt
...ons ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d, 
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!


14
 O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? 
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d, Pioneers! O
 pioneers! 

15
 All the pulses of the world, 
Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat; 
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the...Read More

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...and bright;
Every now and then he has a cup of tea
With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he's keeping on the watch,
Only stopping here and there to catch a flea.
You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.
But you saw him at Dumfries, where he speaks to the police
If there's anything they ought to know about:
When...Read More

by Whitman, Walt
...1
I WANDER all night in my vision, 
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, 
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, 
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, 
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still! 
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles! 

The wretched features of ennuyés, the white features of corpses,...Read More

by Whitman, Walt
...ght hand and left hand, 
The picture alive, every part in its best light, 
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road. 

O highway I travel! O public road! do you say to me, Do not leave me? 
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost? 
Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beaten and undenied—adhere to me? 

O public road! I say back, I am not af...Read More

by Frost, Robert
...Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it *****
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, da...Read More

by Chesterton, G K
...ng may be of war-men,
Where the best war-man wins;
But all this carrion a man shoots
Before the fight begins."

And stopping in his onward strides,
He snatched a bow in scorn
From some mean slave, and bent it on
Colan, whose doom grew dark; and shone
Stars evil over Caerleon,
In the place where he was born.

For Colan had not bow nor sling,
On a lonely sword leaned he,
Like Arthur on Excalibur
In the battle by the sea.

To his great gold ear-ring Harold
Tugged bac...Read More

by Stevens, Wallace
...rous melancholy; he 
108 That wrote his couplet yearly to the spring, 
109 As dissertation of profound delight, 
110 Stopping, on voyage, in a land of snakes, 
111 Found his vicissitudes had much enlarged 
112 His apprehension, made him intricate 
113 In moody rucks, and difficult and strange 
114 In all desires, his destitution's mark. 
115 He was in this as other freemen are, 
116 Sonorous nutshells rattling inwardly. 
117 His violence was for aggrandizeme...Read More

by Frost, Robert
...walk.
What, son?"
"Then I should think you'd try to find
Somewhere to walk----"
"The highway as it happens--
We're stopping for the fortnight down at Dean's."
"But if that's all--Joel--you realize--
You won't think anything. You understand?
You understand that we have to be careful.
This is a very, very lonely place.
Joel!" She spoke as if she couldn't turn.
The swinging lantern lengthened to the ground,
It touched, it struck it, clattered and went ou...Read More

by Hughes, Langston
...ears. 
Sometimes, the road was hot with the sun, 
But I had to keep on till my work was done: 
I had to keep on! No stopping for me -- 
I was the seed of the coming Free. 
I nourished the dream that nothing could smother 
Deep in my breast -- the ***** mother. 
I had only hope then , but now through you, 
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true: 
All you dark children in the world out there, 
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair. 
Remember my years, hea...Read More

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