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Famous Topples Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Doty, Mark
...l 
nudges the highest row of moldings 
and the whole thing wavers as though we'd dreamed it, 
our black classic, and it topples all at once....Read more of this...



by Flynn, Nick
...now they are holding on,
awkwardly dancing through the room, upending

a table of small framed photographs. A chair
topples, Sinatra's band punches the air with horns, I

lean forward, into the screen, they are eye-to-eye,
as stiff as my brother & me when we attempt

to hug. Soon, the gun fires and the music
quiets, the camera stops tracking and they

relax, shoulders drop, their jaws go slack
& we are all suspended in that perfect moment

when no one knows who took t...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...uld dote and pore on yonder cloud
 
That rises upward always higher,
   And onward drags a labouring breast,
   And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
 
XVI
What words are these have falle'n from me?
   Can calm despair and wild unrest
   Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
 
Or cloth she only seem to take
   The touch of change in calm or storm;
   But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...s in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire....Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...all is in its ancient state,
Save where many a palace gate
With green sea-flowers overgrown
Like a rock of Ocean's own,
Topples o'er the abandoned sea
As the tides change sullenly.
The fisher on his watery way,
Wandering at the close of day,
Will spread his sail and seize his oar
Till he pass the gloomy shore,
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death
O'er the waters of his path.

Those who alone thy towers b...Read more of this...



by Plath, Sylvia
...tched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eye...Read more of this...

by Amichai, Yehuda
...re they distribute Bibles free, 
free, free. More than one prophet 
has left this tangle of lanes 
while everything topples above him and he becomes someone else. 

On Rabbi Kook's street I walk 
--your bed on my back like a cross-- 
though it's hard to believe 
a woman's bed will become the symbol of a new religion....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...heir returns to me. 

I go hunting polar furs and the seal—leaping chasms with a pike-pointed
 staff—clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

I ascend to the foretruck; 
I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest; 
We sail the arctic sea—it is plenty light enough; 
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty; 
The enormous masses of ice pass me, and I pass them—the scenery is plain in
 all directions;
The white-topt mountain...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
..., the spindling king, 
This Gama swamped in lazy tolerance. 
When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, 
And topples down the scales; but this is fixt 
As are the roots of earth and base of all; 
Man for the field and woman for the hearth: 
Man for the sword and for the needle she: 
Man with the head and woman with the heart: 
Man to command and woman to obey; 
All else confusion. Look you! the gray mare 
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills 
From tile ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...to lose his head, 
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, 
The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
In mock heroics stranger than our own; 
Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out; 
Too comic for the serious things they are, 
Too solemn for the comic touches in them, 
Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 
As some of theirs--God bless the ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.

You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.

I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her setvant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine a...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...s ancient state, 
Save where many a palace-gate 90 
With green sea-flowers overgrown, 
Like a rock of ocean's own, 
Topples o'er the abandon'd sea 
As the tides change sullenly. 
The fisher on his watery way, 95 
Wandering at the close of day, 
Will spread his sail and seize his oar 
Till he pass the gloomy shore, 
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep, 
Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 100 
Lead a rapid masque of death 
O'er the waters of his path. 

...Read more of this...

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