Famous Thudding Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ryton Firs

by Lascelles Abercrombie
The Dream
All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out — let them make uproar loud as drums — 
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.

There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple...Read more of this...

News Of The Gold World Of May

by Delmore Schwartz
 News of the Gold World of May in Holland Michigan:
"Wooden shoes will clatter again
 on freshly scrubbed streets--"

The tulip will arise and reign again from awnings and
 windows
 of all colors and forms
 its vine, verve and valentine curves

 upon the city streets, the public grounds 
 and private lawns
 (wherever it is conceivable
 that a bulb might take...Read more of this...

Saltbush Bills Second Flight

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The news came down on the Castlereagh, and went to the world at large, 
That twenty thousand travelling sheep, with Saltbush Bill in charge, 
Were drifting down from a dried-out run to ravage the Castlereagh; 
And the squatters swore when they heard the news, and wished they were well away: 
For the name and the fame of Saltbush Bill...Read more of this...

The Cross-Roads

by Amy Lowell
 A bullet through his heart at dawn. On 
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the 
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...

The Gnat Nebula

by T Wignesan
Full pummelling fisticuffs
Stitch over stitch
In and out
Imperceptibly kaleidoscopic
Swirling from ear to ear
Sporadic
Thrumming mystical notes
Notes of whisper
Whisper in the ear
Now a bothered swish of clawing
Cleaving slipping fingers
Immalleable rolling universal ball

Microcosmic needle into
Macrocosmic wool all
Silently thudding kneading pulling
Sealing a sin all opened unforgiven
Eternally whispering to a few
And never really heard

Pummelling sewing the invisible centre
Round and round the darkless sun
Only the end that...Read more of this...

To a Very Wise Man

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames 
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. 
Your soul is full of cities with dead names, 
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone 
Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords
Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, 
Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords 
And wizardry of ghosts. 

II

In...Read more of this...

The Voices in the Dream (Ryton Firs)

by Lascelles Abercrombie
Follow my heart, my dancing feet,
Dance as blithe as my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.

I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths...Read more of this...

Manitoba Childe Roland

by Carl Sandburg
 LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf
song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not
understand.

A man...Read more of this...

Night Shift

by Sylvia Plath
 It was not a heart, beating. 
That muted boom, that clangor 
Far off, not blood in the ears 
Drumming up and fever 

To impose on the evening. 
The noise came from outside: 
A metal detonating 
Native, evidently, to 

These stilled suburbs nobody 
Startled at it, though the sound 
Shook the ground with its pounding. 
It took a root at...Read more of this...

Dream Song 135: I heard said Cats that walk by their wild lone

by John Berryman
 I heard said 'Cats that walk by their wild lone'
but Henry had need of friends. They disappeared
Shall I follow my dream?
Clothes disappeared in a backward sliding, zones
shot into view, pocked, exact & weird:
who is what he seem?

I will tell you now a story about Speck:
after other cuts, he put the knife in her eye,
one of the eight: 
he was...Read more of this...

The Death-Bed

by Siegfried Sassoon
 He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

Someone was holding water to his mouth.
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb...Read more of this...

Shandur Polo

by Omer Tarin
Had I seen the ghosts of this place
They would dance their victory dance;
Glorious vale
Cup, chalice,
Basin;
The glacial streams
Empty into that lake
Quiet, ever so silent,
Rippling lyre, reflection;
Snows and rocks frame it —
I have no words
Only emotions
Which boil and rise
With the thunder of horses,
The sound of stick
And ball thudding
Across the turf;
The ghosts of this place,
Had I but seen them,
Pale as the snow
Cold as...Read more of this...

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