Famous Stumbles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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4:02 p.m

...to mother
sings berber the gold
haired one favored me, rode
and ripped my flesh, i now
have food to eat

brooklyn lover
stumbles—streets ragged under sneakers
she carries her heart
banged up against
thighs crying ghetto
look, look what's been done with
my flesh, my trust, humanity,
somebody tell me
something good...Read more of this...
by Hammad, Suheir


A Minor Poet

...good ;"
"The world's great harmonies;""must be content
With knowing God works all things for the best,
And Nature never stumbles." Then again,
"The common good," and still, "the common, good;"
And what a small thing was our joy or grief
When weigh'd with that of thousands. Gentle Tom,
But you might wag your philosophic tongue
From morn till eve, and still the thing's the same:
I am myself, as each man is himself--
Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves
With his own l...Read more of this...
by Levy, Amy

A Runnable Stag

...e, 
His hoofs on fire, his horns like flame, 
A stag, a runnable stag.

'Let your gelding be: if you check or chide 
He stumbles at once and you're out of the hunt 
For three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, 
On hunters accustom'd to bear the brunt, 
Accustom'd to bear the brunt, 
Are after the runnable stag, the stag, 
The runnable stag with his kingly crop, 
Brow, bay and tray and three on top, 
The right, the runnable stag.

By perilous paths in coomb and dell, 
The heathe...Read more of this...
by Davidson, John

Farewell To Arcady

...driven faster and still faster
Before the dusky-mantled Master,
The light fades from her fearful eyes,
She hastens, stumbles, falls, and dies.
Beside me Amaryllis weeps;
The swelling tears obscure the deeps
Of her dark eyes, as, mistily,
The rushing rain conceals the sea.
Here, lay my tuneless reed away,—
I have no heart to tempt a lay.[Pg 124]
I scent the perfume of the rose
Which by my crystal fountain grows.
...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul

Footsteps

...otsteps rattling the stairs.
And now in a faint the miserable Lares,
burrow in the depth of the shrine,
one tumbles and stumbles upon the other,
one little god falls over the other
for they understand what sort of clamor this is,
they are already feeling the footsteps of the Furies....Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P


In Time Of The Breaking Of Nations

...I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

 II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onwards the same
Though Dynasties pass.

 III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Go whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die....Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Lucretius

...clauses onward to the proof
That Gods there are, and deathless. Meant? I meant?
I have forgotten what I meant, my mind
Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed.

"Look where another of our Gods, the Sun
Apollo, Delius, or of older use
All-seeing Hyperion -- what you will -- 
Has mounted yonder; since he never sware,
Except his wrath were wreak'd on wretched man,
That he would only shine among the dead
Hereafter -- tales! for never yet on earth 
Could dead flesh creep, or bit...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Marriage

...ich
the shining of the earth
is but deformity -- a fire
"as high as deep as bright as broad
as long as life itself,"
he stumbles over marriage,
"a very trivial object indeed"
to have destroyed the attitude
in which he stood --
the ease of the philosopher
unfathered by a woman.
Unhelpful Hymen!
"a kind of overgrown cupid"
reduced to insignificance
by the mechanical advertising
parading as involuntary comment,
by that experiment of Adam's
with ways out but no way in --
the ritu...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne

Music In The Bush

...itter tears.

She ceases and is still, as if to pray;
 There is no sound, the stars are all alight --
Only a wretch who stumbles on his way,
 Only a vagrant sobbing in the night....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Praying Drunk

...u know-
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears. Although you see right through him,
he's there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that's clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe. It make me think,
sometimes, of you. What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes. As I fall past, remember me....Read more of this...
by Hudgins, Andrew

Runagate Runagate

...Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness 
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror 
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing 
and the night cold and the night long and the river 
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning 
and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere
morning and keep on going and never turn back and ke...Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert

Sainte-Nitouche

...lly. 

“Stumble at first? I may do that; 
And I may grope, and hate the night; 
But there’s a guidance for the man 
Who stumbles upward for the light,

“And I shall have it all from her, 
The foam-born child of innocence. 
I feel you smiling while I speak, 
But that’s of little consequence; 

“For when we learn that we may find
The truth where others miss the mark, 
What is it worth for us to know 
That friends are smiling in the dark? 

“Could we but share the lonely pride 
...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Sleeping Out: Full Moon

...aths full of comfort. And radiant bands,
The gracious presence of friendly hands,
Help the blind one, the glad one, who stumbles and strays,
Stretching wavering hands, up, up, through the praise
Of a myriad silver trumpets, through cries,
To all glory, to all gladness, to the infinite height,
To the gracious, the unmoving, the mother eyes,
And the laughter, and the lips, of light....Read more of this...
by Brooke, Rupert

Snow

...dare to speak when he was here.

Their number’s—twenty-one? The thing won’t work.
Someone’s receiver’s down. The handle stumbles.

The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
It’s theirs. She’s dropped it from her hand and gone.”

“Try speaking. Say ‘Hello’!”

“Hello. Hello.”

“What do you hear?”

“I hear an empty room—
You know—it sounds that way. And yes, I hear—
I think I hear a clock—and windows rattling.
No step though. If she’s there she’s sitting down.”

“Shout, she ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Sonnet CXCI

...ears renew!And I my treasure tremblingly pursue,Like some scared thing that stumbles o'er the ground.[Pg 203]Methinks I find her now, and now perceiveShe's distant; now I soar, and now descend;Now what I wish, now what is true believe.Stay and enjoy, blest air, the living beam;Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The Dance Of Death

...one by one,
And their shrouds, ere they vanish, they carefully don,

And under the turf all is quiet.

But one of them stumbles and shuffles there still,

And gropes at the graves in despair;
Yet 'tis by no comrade he's treated so ill

The shroud he soon scents in the air.
So he rattles the door--for the warder 'tis well
That 'tis bless'd, and so able the foe to repel,

All cover'd with crosses in metal.

The shroud he must have, and no rest will allow,

There remains for re...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

...ar
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere....Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

The ride to bumpville

...Bumpville.

This calico mare both gallops and trots
While whisking you off to Bumpville;
She paces, she shies, and she stumbles, in spots,
In the tortuous road to Bumpville;
And sometimes this strangely mercurial steed
Will suddenly stop and refuse to proceed,
Which, all will admit, is vexatious indeed,
When one is en route to Bumpville!

She's scared of the cars when the engine goes "Toot!"
Down by the crossing at Bumpville;
You'd better look out for that treacherous brute
...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Shooting Of Dan McGrew

...the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands -- my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could HEAR;
W...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Speakers

...ows, but you
Should know Elizabethans had
Sweeneys and Mrs. Porters too.
The past goes down and disappears,
The present stumbles home to bed,
The future stretches out in years
That no one knows, and you'll be dead....Read more of this...
by Kees, Weldon

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