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Famous Unsteady Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...even gender. 

Now for the start, and here they come, 
And the hoof-strokes roar like a mighty drum 
Beat by a hand unsteady; 
They come like a rushing, roaring flood, 
Hurrah for the speed of the Chester blood; 
For Acme is making the pace so good 
They are some of 'em done already. 

But round the track she begins to tire, 
And a mighty shout goes up "Crossfire!" 
The magpie jacket's leading; 
And Crossfire challenges fierce and bold, 
And the lead she'll have and t...Read more of this...



by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...Christabel she looked askance!-
One moment- and the sight was fled!
But Christabel in dizzy trance
Stumbling on the unsteady ground
Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound;
And Geraldine again turned round,
And like a thing that sought relief,
Full of wonder and full of grief,
She rolled her large bright eyes divine
Wildly on Sir Leoline.

The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone,
She nothing sees- no sight but one!
The maid, devoid of guile and sin,
I know not ...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...unt the perennial bloom --
But Certain June!

Get Gabriel -- to tell -- the royal syllable --
Get Saints -- with new -- unsteady tongue --
To say what trance below
Most like their glory show --
Fittest the Crown!...Read more of this...

by Belloc, Hilaire
...Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men--
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspep...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...h in breath more scant: 

Who, climbing, gains at length the place
That crowns the upward track.
And, entering with unsteady pace,
Receives a buffet in the face
That lands him on his back: 

And feels himself, like one in sleep,
Glide swiftly down again,
A helpless weight, from steep to steep,
Till, with a headlong giddy sweep,
He drops upon the plain - 

So I, that had resolved to bring
Conviction to a ghost,
And found it quite a different thing
From any human arguing,
Y...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...s cocktail down.
The Major gasped with horror as the trio smacked their lips.
He twiddled at his eye-glass with unsteady finger-tips.
Into his starry cocktail with a look of woe he peered,
And its ice-worm, to his thinking, mosy incontinently leered.
Yet on him were a hundred eyes, though no one spoke aloud,
For hushed with expectation was the waiting, watching crowd.
The Major's fumbling hand went forth - the gang prepared to cheer;
The Major's falt'ring ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...ight o'clock on Thursday morning, everything was ready
For the passengers to leave the burning steamer that was rolling unsteady. 

Then Captain Land on his officers loudly did call,
And the cheery manliness of him inspired confidence in all;
Then he ordered the men to lower the boats without delay,
So the boats were launched on the stormy sea without dismay. 

Then women and children were first put into them,
Also a quantity of provisions, then followed the men;
And ...Read more of this...

by Kinnell, Galway
...t produce less black bitter than the quantity
of sweet clear you poured in--forgetting about
how much I spilled through unsteady walking,
and that lot I threw on the ground
in suspicion, and for fear I wasn't worthy,
and all I poured out for reasons I don't understand yet.
"Break a leg!" somebody tells her.
Back in my seat, I can see she is nervous
when she comes out; her hand shakes as she
re-dog-ears the top corners of the big pages
that look about to flop over on t...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...est things, I lied:
And should be cursed forevermore
With Love in laces, like a whore,
And neighbours cold, and friends unsteady,
And Spring on horseback, like a lady!...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...street; I turn
And look one instant at the half-dark gardens,
Where skeleton elm-trees reach with frozen gesture
Above unsteady lamps,—with black boughs flung
Against a luminous snow-filled grey-gold sky.
'Beauty!' I cry. . . .My feet move on, and take me
Between dark walls, with orange squares for windows.
Beauty; beheld like someone half-forgotten,
Remembered, with slow pang, as one neglected . . .
Well, I am frustrate; life has beaten m...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...g love,
And some were blinking with hypocrisy,
And some were overfilmed by sense, and some
Blazed with ambition's wild, unsteady fire,
And some were burnt i' the sockets black, and some
Were dead as embers when the fire is out.
A curious zone circled the Spectre's waist,
Which seemed with strange device to symbol Time.
It was a silver-gleaming thread of day
Spiral about a jet-black band of night.
This zone seemed ever to contract and all
The frame with momentary s...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray, 
Are joined in their fall, and, side by side, 
Come clinging along their unsteady way; 
As friend with friend, or husband with wife, 
Makes hand in hand the passage of life; 30 
Each mated flake 
Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake. 

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste 
Stream down the snows, till the air is white, 
As, myriads by myriads madly chased, 35 
They fling themselves from their shadowy height.Read more of this...

by Thompson, Francis
...Bear upon their laden wing
To such hearts impregnating.
For flowers that night-wings fertilize
Mock down the stars' unsteady eyes,
And with a happy, sleepless glance
Gaze the moon out of countenance.
I think thy girlhood's watchers must
Have took thy folded songs on trust,
And felt them, as one feels the stir
Of still lightnings in the hair,
When conscious hush expects the cloud
To speak the golden secret loud
Which tacit air is privy to;
Flasked in the grape the wine...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 Pallid and trembling—glancing not behind 
 From mystic fear that did thy senses bind, 
 Yet made thee hasten with unsteady pace? 
 Oh, Master grave! whose musings lone we trace 
 Throughout thy works we look on reverently. 
 Amidst the gloomy umbrage thy mind's eye 
 Saw clearly, 'mong the shadows soft yet deep, 
 The web-toed faun, and Pan the green-eyed peep, 
 Who deck'd with flowers the cave where thou might'st rest, 
 Leaf-laden dryads, too, in verdure drest...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...’d routine, if
 these
 conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do
 not
 balk me, 
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all
 these I
 part aside. 

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; 
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; 
No pluck, no endurance in ot...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things