Famous Stupor Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Prisoner in a Dungeon Deep

by Anne Bronte
 A prisoner in a dungeon deep
Sat musing silently;
His head was rested on his hand,
His elbow on his knee. 
Turned he his thoughts to future times
Or are they backward cast?
For freedom is he pining now
Or mourning for the past?

No, he has lived so long enthralled
Alone in dungeon gloom
That he has lost regret and hope,
Has ceased to mourn his doom.

He pines...Read more of this...

104. The Lament

by Robert Burns
 O THOU pale orb that silent shines
 While care-untroubled mortals sleep!
Thou seest a wretch who inly pines.
 And wanders here to wail and weep!
 With woe I nightly vigils keep,
Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam;
 And mourn, in lamentation deep,
How life and love are all a dream!


I joyless view thy rays adorn
 The faintly-marked, distant hill;
I joyless view thy trembling...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

Happy Dust

by Aleister Crowley
 For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter,...Read more of this...

Did Our Best Moment last

by Emily Dickinson
 Did Our Best Moment last --
'Twould supersede the Heaven --
A few -- and they by Risk -- procure --
So this Sort -- are not given --

Except as stimulants -- in
Cases of Despair --
Or Stupor -- The Reserve --
These Heavenly Moments are --

A Grant of the Divine --
That Certain as it Comes --
Withdraws -- and leaves the dazzled Soul
In her...Read more of this...

Shepherd And Goatherd

by William Butler Yeats
 Shepherd. That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the...Read more of this...

The Priestess of Panormita

by Aleister Crowley
 Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed...Read more of this...

September 1, 1939

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September night. Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge...Read more of this...

Dream Song 26: The glories of the world struck me

by John Berryman
 The glories of the world struck me, made me aria, once.
-”What happen then, Mr Bones?
if be you cares to say.
-”Henry. Henry became interested in women's bodies,
his loins were & were the scene of stupendous achievement.
Stupor. Knees, dear. Pray.

All the knobs & softnesses of, my God,
the ducking & trouble it swarm on Henry,
at one time.
-”What happen then, Mr Bones?
you seems...Read more of this...

The Discontent

by Anne Killigrew
 I.
HEre take no Care, take here no Care, my Muse,
 Nor ought of Art or Labour use:
 But let thy Lines rude and unpolisht go,
Nor Equal be their Feet, nor Num'rous let them flow.
 The ruggeder my Measures run when read,
They'l livelier paint th'unequal Paths fond Mortals tread.
 Who when th'are tempted by the smooth Ascents,
 Which flatt'ring Hope...Read more of this...

Why Is This Age Worse...?

by Anna Akhmatova
 Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in....Read more of this...

The Watchman

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 My Claudia, it is long since we have met, 
So kissed, so held each other heart to heart! 
I thought to greet thee as a conqueror comes, 
Bearing the trophies of his prowess home, 
But Jove hath willed it should be otherwise­
Jove, say I? Nay, some mightier stranger-god 
Who thus hath laid his heavy hand on me, 
No victor,...Read more of this...

The North Wind

by Anne Bronte
 That wind is from the North, I know it well;
No other breeze could have so wild a swell.
Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell,
The faintly dies,
And softly sighs,
And moans and murmurs mournfully.
I know its language; thus is speaks to me --
'I have passed over thy own mountains dear,
Thy northern mountains -- and they still are free,
Still lonely,...Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen: Chapter III

by William Blake
 1. The voice ended, they saw his pale visage
Emerge from the darkness; his hand
On the rock of eternity unclasping
The Book of brass. Rage siez'd the strong

2. Rage, fury, intense indignation
In cataracts of fire blood & gall
In whirlwinds of sulphurous smoke:
And enormous forms of energy;
All the seven deadly sins of the soul
In living creations appear'd
In the flames of eternal fury.

3....Read more of this...

Colloquy in Black Rock

by Robert Lowell
Here the jack-hammer jabs into the ocean;
My heart, you race and stagger and demand
More blood-gangs for your ******-brass percussions,
Till I, the stunned machine of your devotion,
Clanging upon this cymbal of a hand,
Am rattled screw and footloose. All discussions

End in the mud-flat detritus of death.
My heart, beat faster, faster. In Black Mud
Hungarian workmen give their blood
For the martyrs Stephen who was...Read more of this...

After great pain a formal feeling comes

by Emily Dickinson
 After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow...Read more of this...

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