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Famous Thundering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...massive waxen piles,
Are doom’d by Man, that tyrant o’er the weak,
The death o’ devils, smoor’d wi’ brimstone reek:
The thundering guns are heard on ev’ry side,
The wounded coveys, reeling, scatter wide;
The feather’d field-mates, bound by Nature’s tie,
Sires, mothers, children, in one carnage lie:
(What warm, poetic heart but inly bleeds,
And execrates man’s savage, ruthless deeds!)
Nae mair the flow’r in field or meadow springs,
Nae mair the grove with airy concert rings,
E...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...c, I'll jeer to superfluity. 

Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm devoid, 
there's not a single grey hair in my soul! 
Thundering the world with the might of my voice, 
I go by -- handsome, 
twenty-two-year-old. 

Gentle ones! 
You lay your love on a violin. 
The crude lay their love on a drum. 
but you can't, like me, turn inside out entirely, 
and nothing but human lips become! 

Out of chintz-covered drawing-rooms, come 
and learn- 
decorous bureaucrats of ang...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...On every side 
More horribly the multitudinous streams
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock
The calm and spangled sky. The little boat
Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled--
As if that frail and wasted human form 
Had been an elemental god.

At mi...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...
But ratling Nonsense in full Vollies breaks;
And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering Tyde!

But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,
Still pleas'd to teach, and not proud to know?
Unbiass'd, or by Favour or by Spite;
Not dully prepossest, nor blindly right;
Tho' Learn'd well-bred; and tho' well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and Humanly severe?
Who to a Friend his Faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the Merit of a Foe?
Bl...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...teries; 
While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas 
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep 
To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, 
And Mariposa through the purple calms 
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms 
Where East and West are met, -- 
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set 
To say that East and West are twain, 
With different loss and gain: 
The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet. 


IV 

Alas! what sounds are these that come 
Sullenly ov...Read more of this...
by Moody, William Vaughn



...agrations
curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.

I wish that spring
would start the thundering traffic of feet
new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.

I wish it were spring, thundering
delicate, tender spring.
I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corruption
were not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.

Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance,
exultin...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.
...ly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail:
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Am...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rms and your cattle."
Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his nostrils,
While his huge, brown hand came thundering down on the table,
So that the guests all started; and...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...n of Gorlos: 
For there was no man knew from whence he came; 
But after tempest, when the long wave broke 
All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos, 
There came a day as still as heaven, and then 
They found a naked child upon the sands 
Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea; 
And that was Arthur; and they fostered him 
Till he by miracle was approven King: 
And that his grave should be a mystery 
From all men, like his birth; and could he find 
A woman in her womanhood a...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...appeared in hue as when the force 
Of subterranean wind transprots a hill 
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side 
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible 
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, 
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, 
And leave a singed bottom all involved 
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole 
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate; 
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood 
As gods, and by their own recovered strength, 
...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...om this day onward; which I feel begun 
Both in me, and without me; and so last 
To perpetuity;--Ay me!that fear 
Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution 
On my defenceless head; both Death and I 
Am found eternal, and incorporate both; 
Nor I on my part single; in me all 
Posterity stands cursed: Fair patrimony 
That I must leave ye, Sons! O, were I able 
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none! 
So disinherited, how would you bless 
Me, now your curse! Ah, why shou...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...fully. 
158 The rumbling broadened as it fell. The wind, 
159 Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry, 
160 Came bluntly thundering, more terrible 
161 Than the revenge of music on bassoons. 
162 Gesticulating lightning, mystical, 
163 Made pallid flitter. Crispin, here, took flight. 
164 An annotator has his scruples, too. 
165 He knelt in the cathedral with the rest, 
166 This connoisseur of elemental fate, 
167 Aware of exquisite thought. The storm was one 
168 Of m...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...ng too, the parson owned his skill,
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around,
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.

But past is all his fame. The very spot
Where many a time he triumphed is forgot.
Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,
Where once the signpost caught the passing eye,
Low lies that house where nut-...Read more of this...
by Goldsmith, Oliver
...s the oar,
Till Port Leone's safer shore
Receives him by the lovely light
That best becomes an Eastern night.


... Who thundering comes on blackest steed,
With slackened bit and hoof of speed?
Beneath the clattering iron's sound
The caverned echoes wake around 
In lash for lash, and bound for bound;
The foam that streaks the courser's side
Seems gathered from the ocean-tide:
Though weary waves are sunk to rest,
There's none within his rider's breast;
And though tomorrow's te...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...*
Of five and twenty year his age I cast* *reckon
His beard was well begunnen for to spring;
His voice was as a trumpet thundering.
Upon his head he wore of laurel green
A garland fresh and lusty to be seen;
Upon his hand he bare, for his delight,
An eagle tame, as any lily white.
An hundred lordes had he with him there,
All armed, save their heads, in all their gear,
Full richely in alle manner things.
For trust ye well, that earles, dukes, and kings
Were gather'd in this no...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...lers with his eyes;
     For the death-wound and death-halloo
     Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew:—
     But thundering as he came prepared,
     With ready arm and weapon bared,
     The wily quarry shunned the shock,
     And turned him from the opposing rock;
     Then, dashing down a darksome glen,
     Soon lost to hound and Hunter's ken,
     In the deep Trosachs' wildest nook
     His solitary refuge took.
     There, while close couched the thicket ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...paw on the south wall to
 steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
 Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
 but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I a...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...the blue god.
Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly;
Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load.
Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened;
Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends.
Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer;
Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel.
Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the swift-whirling spindles,
Through the strings o...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...y treat 
On royal plate of gold. 

Sharp blew the sleet upon my face, 
And, rising wild, the gusty wind 
Drove on those thundering waves apace, 
Our crew so late had left behind; 
But, spite of frozen shower and storm, 
So close to thee, my heart beat warm, 
And tranquil slept my mind. 

So now­nor foot-sore nor opprest
With walking all this August day,
I taste a heaven in this brief rest,
This gipsy-halt beside the way.
England's wild flowers are fair to view,
Like balm is E...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...y treat 
On royal plate of gold. 

Sharp blew the sleet upon my face, 
And, rising wild, the gusty wind 
Drove on those thundering waves apace, 
Our crew so late had left behind; 
But, spite of frozen shower and storm, 
So close to thee, my heart beat warm, 
And tranquil slept my mind. 

So now­nor foot-sore nor opprest
With walking all this August day,
I taste a heaven in this brief rest,
This gipsy-halt beside the way.
England's wild flowers are fair to view,
Like balm is E...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry