Famous Yell Poems by Famous Poets

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

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At the Long Sault

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 A prisoner under the stars I lie, 
With no friend near; 
To-morrow they lead me forth to die, 
The stake is ready, the torments set, 
They will pay in full their deadly debt; 
But I fear them not! Oh, none could fear 
Of those who stood by Daulac's side­
While he prayed and laughed and sang and fought 
In the...Read more of this...

Casey At The Bat

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day, 
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play. 

And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, 
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game. 

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. 
The rest clung to that...Read more of this...

89. The Ordination

by Robert Burns
 KILMARNOCK wabsters, fidge an’ claw,
 An’ pour your creeshie nations;
An’ ye wha leather rax an’ draw,
 Of a’ denominations;
Swith to the Ligh Kirk, ane an’ a’
 An’ there tak up your stations;
Then aff to Begbie’s in a raw,
 An’ pour divine libations
 For joy this day.


Curst Common-sense, that imp o’ hell,
 Cam in wi’ Maggie Lauder; 1
But Oliphant 2...Read more of this...

Child Development

by Billy Collins
 As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

Aztec Mask

by Carl Sandburg
 I wanted a man's face looking into the jaws and throat
of life
With something proud on his face, so proud no smash
of the jaws,
No gulp of the throat leaves the face in the end
With anything else than the old proud look:
Even to the finish, dumped in the dust,
Lost among the used-up cinders,
This face, men would say, is a flash,
Is laid...Read more of this...

The Rhyme of the Three Greybeards

by Henry Lawson
 He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat", 
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote", 
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote. 

And so his friends held meetings (Oh, narrow souls were theirs!) 
To advertise their little selves and Joseph's own affairs. 
They got up a collection for Joseph unawares. 

They...Read more of this...

The Arrivals

by Sharon Olds
 I pull the bed slowly open, I
open the lips of the bed, get
the stack of fresh underpants
out of the suitcase—peach, white,
cherry, quince, pussy willow, I
choose a color and put them on,
I travel with the stack for the stack's caress,
dry and soft. I enter the soft
birth-lips of the bed, take off my
glasses, and the cabbage-roses on the curtain
blur to Keats's...Read more of this...

Bearhug

by Michael Ondaatje
 Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son's room.
He is standing arms outstretched
waiting for a bearhug. Grinning.

Why do I give my emotion an animal's name,
give it that dark squeeze of death?
This is the hug which collects
all his small bones and his warm neck against...Read more of this...

138. Address to the Toothache

by Robert Burns
 MY curse upon your venom’d stang,
That shoots my tortur’d gums alang,
An’ thro’ my lug gies mony a twang,
 Wi’ gnawing vengeance,
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
 Like racking engines!


When fevers burn, or argues freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or colics squeezes,
Our neibor’s sympathy can ease us,
 Wi’ pitying moan;
But thee—thou hell o’ a’ diseases—
 They mock our groan.


Adown my beard the slavers...Read more of this...

79. Adam Armour's Prayer

by Robert Burns
 GUDE pity me, because I’m little!
For though I am an elf o’ mettle,
An’ can, like ony wabster’s shuttle,
 Jink there or here,
Yet, scarce as lang’s a gude kail-whittle,
 I’m unco *****.


An’ now Thou kens our waefu’ case;
For Geordie’s jurr we’re in disgrace,
Because we stang’d her through the place,
 An’ hurt her spleuchan;
For whilk we daurna show our face
 Within...Read more of this...

Gipsy Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IN the drizzling mist, with the snow high-pil'd,
In the Winter night, in the forest wild,
I heard the wolves with their ravenous howl,
I heard the screaming note of the owl:

Wille wau wau wau!


Wille wo wo wo!

Wito 
hu!

I shot, one day, a cat in a ditch--
The dear black cat of Anna the witch;
Upon me, at night, seven were-wolves came down,
Seven women...Read more of this...

Investigating Flora

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Twas in scientific circles 
That the great Professor Brown 
Had a world-wide reputation 
As a writer of renown. 
He had striven finer feelings 
In our natures to implant 
By his Treatise on the Morals 
Of the Red-eyed Bulldog Ant. 
He had hoisted an opponent 
Who had trodden unawares 
On his "Reasons for Bare Patches 
On the Female Native Bears"....Read more of this...

444. Song—A Fiddler in the North

by Robert Burns
 AMANG the trees, where humming bees,
 At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,
 And to her pipe was singing, O:
’Twas Pibroch, Sang, Strathspeys, and Reels,
 She dirl’d them aff fu’ clearly, O:
When there cam’ a yell o’ foreign squeels,
 That dang her tapsalteerie, O.


Their capon craws an’ ***** “ha, ha’s,”
 They made our lugs...Read more of this...

The Rebel Surprise Near Tamai

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas on the 22nd of March, in the year 1885,
That the Arabs rushed like a mountain torrent in full drive,
And quickly attacked General M'Neill's transport-zereba,
But in a short time they were forced to withdraw. 

And in the suddenness of surprise the men were carried away,
Also camels, mules, and horses were thrown into wild disarray,
By thousands of the Arabs that...Read more of this...

The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old. 

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.


I

Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

An All-Night Sea Fight

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Mars, come list to me,
And I will relate to ye
A great and heroic naval fight,
Which will fill your hearts with delight. 

The fight was between the French Frigate "Pique" and the British Frigate "Blanche,"
But the British crew were bold and staunch;
And the battle was fought in West Indian waters in the year of 1795,
And for to...Read more of this...

57. Holy Willie's Prayer

by Robert Burns
 O THOU, who in the heavens does dwell,
Who, as it pleases best Thysel’,
Sends ane to heaven an’ ten to hell,
 A’ for Thy glory,
And no for ony gude or ill
 They’ve done afore Thee!


I bless and praise Thy matchless might,
When thousands Thou hast left in night,
That I am here afore Thy sight,
 For gifts an’ grace
A burning and a...Read more of this...

The Hero of Rorkes Drift

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Twas at the camp of Rorke's Drift, and at tea-time,
And busily engaged in culinary operations was a private of the line;
But suddenly he paused, for he heard a clattering din,
When instantly two men on horseback drew rein beside him. 

"News from the front!" said one, "Awful news!" said the other,
"Of which, we are afraid, will put us to great...Read more of this...

Benevolence

by Allama Muhammad Iqbal
On the bough of a tree was seated
A nightingale that was saddened

Saying that-
Over me the night is past
And in pecking day is lost!

Towards their nest
How will they (birds) reach
When the shadow of dark
Has fastened its glitch

When heard this yell and wail
Of the nightingale
Said the glowworm
In a voice so calm

With my heart and soul
To you I am of avail
So what if...Read more of this...

Tortoise Shout

by D. H. Lawrence
 I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?

A...Read more of this...

Fact Or Fable?

by Victor Hugo
 (BISMARCK AND NAPOLEON III.) 
 
 ("Un jour, sentant un royal appétit.") 
 
 {Bk. III. iii., Jersey, September, 1852.} 


 One fasting day, itched by his appetite, 
 A monkey took a fallen tiger's hide, 
 And, where the wearer had been savage, tried 
 To overpass his model. Scratch and bite 
 Gave place, however, to mere...Read more of this...

This My Song Is Made For Kerensky

by Vachel Lindsay
 (Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.)


O market square, O slattern place,
Is glory in your slack disgrace?
Plump quack doctors sell their pills,
Gentle grafters sell brass watches,
Silly anarchists yell their ills.
Shall we be as weird as these?
In the breezes nod and wheeze?

Heaven's mass is sung, 
Tomorrow's mass is sung 
In a spirit tongue 
By wind and...Read more of this...

Mother Doesn't Want a Dog

by Judith Viorst
Mother doesn't want a dog.Mother says they smell,And never sit when you say sit,Or even when you yell.And when you come home late at nightAnd there is ice and snow,You have to go back out becauseThe dumb dog has to go.Mother doesn't want a dog.Mother says they shed,And always let the strangers inAnd bark at friends instead,And do disgraceful things...Read more of this...

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