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Famous Stunted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...face the birth-pangs of a world:
We hear the stifled cry of Nations all but born—
The wail of women ravished of their stunted brood!
We see the nakedness of Toil, the poverty of Wealth,
We know the Anarchy of Empire, and doleful Death of Life!
And hearing, seeing, knowing all, we cry:
Save us, World-Spirit, from our lesser selves!
Grant us that war and hatred cease,
Reveal our souls in every race and hue!
Help us, O Human God, in this Thy Truce,
To make Humanity div...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.



...ownward. Boulders fall
Splitting the echoes from the mountain wall.
No voice, save when the nameless birds complain,
in stunted trees, female echoing male;
or, in the moonlight, the lost cuckoo's cry,
piercing the traveller's heart. Wayfarer from afar,
why are you here? what brings you here? why here?'

VII

Why here. Nor can we say why here. The peachtree bough
scrapes on the wall at midnight, the west wind
sculptures the wall of fog that slides
seaward, over the Gulf Stream...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
In a forgotten place near the fence
Where the thickets from Siever's woods
Have crept over, growing sparsely.
And you, you are a leader in New York,
The wife of a noted millionaire,
A name in the society columns,
Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps
By the mirage of distance.
You have succeeded, I have failed
In the eyes of the world.
You ...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee
...the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
Even in the ...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...f dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep 
Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep. 
Stunted "peak" of granite gleaming, glaring! like a molten mass 
Turned, from some infernal furnace, on a plain devoid of grass. 

Miles and miles of thirsty gutters -- strings of muddy waterholes 
In the place of "shining rivers" (walled by cliffs and forest boles). 
"Range!" of ridgs, gullies, ridges, barren! where the madden'd flies -- 
Fiercer than the p...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry



...ces haunt me
 As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
 For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste. 

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
 Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal—
 But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow....Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...

Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze 
Are everything that seems to grow and thrive 
Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn 
Stands here and there, indeed; and from a pit 
An oak uprises, Springing from a seed 
Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago.

In days bygone-- 
Long gone--my father's mother, who is now 
Blest with the blest, would take me out to walk. 
At such a time I once inquired of her 
How looked the spot when first she settled here. 
The answer I rem...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...Super-caveman, one might say;
The pride of youth, the maiden's dream,
And in the chase the first to slay.
Where we are stunted he is tall:
In short, a menace to us all.

"He struts with throwing stone and spear;
And is he not the first to wear
Around his waist with bully leer
The pelt of wolf and baby bear!
Admitting that he made the kill
Why should he so exploit his skill?

"Comrades, grave counsel we must take,
And as he struts with jest and jibe,
Let us act swiftly lest h...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...ht tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields 
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields. 

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,
As farther off the scythe of night is swung, 
And little stars come rolling from their husk. 

And all the earth is gone into a dust 
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold, 
Covered with aged liche...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.
...ead,
And now in distance dies.
But give me back my barren hills
Where colder breezes rise;

Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees
Can yield an answering swell,
But where a wilderness of heath
Returns the sound as well.

For yonder garden, fair and wide,
With groves of evergreen,
Long winding walks, and borders trim,
And velvet lawns between;

Restore to me that little spot,
With grey walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.

T...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Anne
...Because we love bare hills and stunted trees
And were the last to choose the settled ground,
Its boredom of the desk or of the spade, because
So many years companioned by a hound,
Our voices carry; and though slumber-bound,
Some few half wake and half renew their choice,
Give tongue, proclaim their hidden name -- 'hound voice.'

The women that I picked spoke sweet and low
And yet gave ton...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...re flower, thin, 
sparse of leaf, 

more precious 
than a wet rose 
single on a stem -- 
you are caught in the drift. 

Stunted, with small leaf, 
you are flung on the sand, 
you are lifted 
in the crisp sand 
that drives in the wind. 

Can the spice-rose 
drip such acrid fragrance 
hardened in a leaf?...Read more of this...
by Doolittle, Hilda
...load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...My life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides
Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals
On the side of me which you in the village could see.
From the dust I lift a voice of protest:
My flowering side you never saw!
Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed
Who do not know the ways of the wind
And the unseen forces
That govern the processes of life....Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee
...illed! 
Our willing workmen, strong and skilled, 
Within our cities idle stand, 
And cry aloud for leave to toil. 

The stunted children come and go 
In squalid lanes and alleys black: 
We follow but the beaten track 
Of other nations, and we grow 
In wealth for some -- for many, woe. 

And it may be that we who live 
In this new land apart, beyond 
The hard old world grown fierce and fond 
And bound by precedent and bond, 
May read the riddle right, and give 
New hope to tho...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...e ye warp not. Look, our hall! 
Our statues!--not of those that men desire, 
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode, 
Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she 
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 
The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 
The Carian Artemisia strong in war, 
The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, 
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows 
Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose 
Convention, since to look on noble fo...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...opers were three hundred yards behind, 
While we emptied our six-shooters on the bushrangers at bay, 
In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind! 
There you grappled with the leader, man to man, and horse to horse, 
And you roll'd together when the chestnut rear'd; 
He blazed away and missed you in that shallow water-course -- 
A narrow shave -- his powder singed your beard! 

In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young 
Come back to us; how cl...Read more of this...
by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...t Mr. Hirata--
Who was Japanese, who would be sent the next week
To a place called Manzanar, a detention camp
Hidden in stunted pines almost above
The Sierra timberline--could take my picture.
I remember the way he lovingly relished 
Each camera angle, the unwobbling tripod, 
The way he checked each aperture against
The light meter, in love with all things
That were not accidental, & I remember
The care he took when focusing; how
He tried two different lens filters before
He ...Read more of this...
by Levis, Larry
...come you as the Abbey Road becomes you,

As you became that road through silent years,

From the famous crossing to the stunted bridge

Caparisoned with carnivals of children,

Cohorts of coloured clowns and Father Christmases.



The years become you as the Clothworkers’ Hall in gold

Became you, and you became it through the protest years,

When the Brotherton’s Portland stone, its white stone

Of innocence was snow in the School of English garden,

‘A living sculpture’, a ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...f dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep 
Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep. 
Stunted peak of granite gleaming, glaring like a molten mass 
Turned from some infernal furnace on a plain devoid of grass. 

Miles and miles of thirsty gutters -- strings of muddy water-holes 
In the place of `shining rivers' -- `walled by cliffs and forest boles.' 
Barren ridges, gullies, ridges! where the ever-madd'ning flies -- 
Fiercer than the plagues ...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things