Famous Unshaken Poems by Famous Poets

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

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At Pleasure Bay

by Robert Pinsky
 In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilings
And underwater chunks of still-mortared brick
In shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottom
Where the landing was for Price's Hotel...Read more of this...

The Battle of Waterloo

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1815, and on the 18th day of June,
That British cannon, against the French army, loudly did boom,
Upon the ever memorable bloody field of Waterloo;
Which Napoleon remembered while in St. Helena, and bitterly did rue. 
The morning of the 18th was gloomy and cheerless to behold,
But the British soon recovered from the severe cold
That they had...Read more of this...

Mystic Trumpeter The

by Walt Whitman
 1
HARK! some wild trumpeter—some strange musician, 
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. 

I hear thee, trumpeter—listening, alert, I catch thy notes, 
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me, 
Now low, subdued—now in the distance lost.

2
Come nearer, bodiless one—haply, in thee resounds 
Some dead composer—haply thy pensive life 
Was fill’d with aspirations high—unform’d ideals, 
Waves, oceans musical,...Read more of this...

1914 II: Safety

by Rupert Brooke
 Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest 
He who has found our hid security, 
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, 
And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?' 
We have found safety with all things undying, 
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, 
The deep night, and birds singing,...Read more of this...

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones,...Read more of this...

The Battle of Alexandria

by William Topaz McGonagall
 It was on the 21st of March in the year of 1801,
The British were at their posts every man;
And their position was naturally very strong,
And the whole line from sea to lake was about a mile long. 
And on the ruins of a Roman Palace, rested the right,
And every man amongst them was eager for the fight,
And the reserve...Read more of this...

Safety

by Rupert Brooke
 Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest 
He who has found our hid security, 
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, 
And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?' 
We have found safety with all things undying, 
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, 
The deep night, and birds singing,...Read more of this...

To My Lord Fairfax

by John Milton
 Fairfax, whose Name in Arms through Europe rings,
 And fills all Mouths with Envy or with Praise,
 And all her Jealous Monarchs with Amaze.
 And Rumours loud which daunt remotest Kings,
Thy firm unshaken Valour ever brings
 Victory home, while new Rebellions raise
 Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays
 Her broken League to Imp her Serpent Wings:
O yet! a...Read more of this...

The Petition for an Absolute Retreat

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Give me, O indulgent Fate! 
Give me yet before I die
A sweet, but absolute retreat,
'Mongst paths so lost and trees so high
That the world may ne'er invade
Through such windings and such shade
My unshaken liberty.

No intruders thither come
Who visit but to be from home!
None who their vain moments pass
Only studious of their glass;
News, that charm to list'ning ears,
That false alarm...Read more of this...

Man Sails The Deep Awhile

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 MAN sails the deep awhile;
Loud runs the roaring tide;
The seas are wild and wide;
O'er many a salt, o'er many a desert mile,
The unchained breakers ride,
The quivering stars beguile.

Hope bears the sole command;
Hope, with unshaken eyes,
Sees flaw and storm arise;
Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,
Steers, under changing skies,
Unchanged toward the land.

O wind that bravely blows!
O hope that sails with...Read more of this...

The Adieu to Love

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LOVE, I renounce thy tyrant sway,
I mock thy fascinating art,
MINE, be the calm unruffled day,
That brings no torment to the heart; 
The tranquil mind, the noiseless scene, 
Where FANCY, with enchanting mien, 
Shall in her right-hand lead along 
The graceful patroness of Song;
Where HARMONY shall softly fling 
Her light tones o'er the dulcet string; 
And with her magic LYRE...Read more of this...

Psalm 125

by Isaac Watts
 The saint's trial and safety.

Unshaken as the sacred hill,
And firm as mountains be,
Firm as a rock the soul shall rest
That leans, O Lord, on thee.

Not walls nor hills could guard so well
Old Salem's happy ground,
As those eternal arms of love
That every saint surround.

While tyrants are a smarting scourge
To drive them near to God,
Divine compassion does allay
The fury of the...Read more of this...

The Goddess in the Wood

by Rupert Brooke
 In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood,
Amazed with sorrow. Down the morning one 
Far golden horn in the gold of trees and sun 
Rang out; and held; and died.… She thought the wood 
Grew quieter. Wing, and leaf, and pool of light
Forgot to dance. Dumb lay the unfalling stream; 
Life one eternal instant rose in dream 
Clear out...Read more of this...

The Town Down by the River

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Said the Watcher by the Way 
To the young and the unladen, 
To the boy and to the maiden, 
"God be with you both to-day. 
First your song came ringing, 
Now you come, you two-- 
Knowing naught of what you do, 
Or of what your dreams are bringing.

"O you children who go singing 
To the Town down the River,...Read more of this...

The Old Age Of Queen Maeve

by William Butler Yeats
 A certain poet in outlandish clothes
Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,
Talked1 of his country and its people, sang
To some stringed instrument none there had seen,
A wall behind his back, over his head
A latticed window. His glance went up at time
As though one listened there, and his voice sank
Or let its meaning mix into the strings.

Maeve the great queen...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...

II. Safety

by Rupert Brooke
 Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, `Who is so safe as we?'
We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom,...Read more of this...

The Forsaken

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 I 
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished...Read more of this...

Goddess In The Wood The

by Rupert Brooke
 In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood,
Amazed with sorrow. Down the morning one
Far golden horn in the gold of trees and sun
Rang out; and held; and died. . . . She thought the wood
Grew quieter. Wing, and leaf, and pool of light
Forgot to dance. Dumb lay the unfalling stream;
Life one eternal instant rose in dream
Clear out of time,...Read more of this...

Recompense

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Straight through my heart this fact to-day, 
By Truth’s own hand is driven: 
God never takes one thing away, 
But something else is given.

I did not know in earlier years, 
This law of love and kindness; 
I only mourned through bitter tears
My loss, in sorrow’s blindness.

But, ever following each regret
O’er some departed treasure, 
My sad repining heart was met
With...Read more of this...

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