Famous Yelling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Relief of Mafeking

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Success to Colonel Baden-Powell and his praises loudly sing,
For being so brave in relieving Mafeking,
With his gallant little band of eight hundred men,
They made the Boers fly from Mafeking like sheep escaping from a pen. 

'Twas in the year of 1900 and on the 18th of May,
That Colonel Baden-Powell beat the Boers without dismay,
And made them fly from Mafeking...Read more of this...

Ode to Envy

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Deep in th' abyss where frantic horror bides, 
In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight's murky hour
Thy origin began: 
Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire. 
The FATES conspir'd their ills to twine,
About thy heart's infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating...Read more of this...

To the Muse of Poetry

by Mary Darby Robinson
 EXULT MY MUSE! exult to see 
Each envious, waspish, jealous thing, 
Around its harmless venom fling, 
And dart its powerless fangs at THEE! 
Ne'er shalt THOU bend thy radiant wing, 
To sweep the dark revengeful string; 
Or meanly stoop, to steal a ray, 
E'en from RINALDO'S glorious lay, 
Tho' his transcendent Verse should twine 
About thy heart, each bliss...Read more of this...

To Winter

by William Blake
 O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.'
He hears me not, but o'er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain'd, sheath?d
In ribb?d steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear'd his sceptre o'er the world.

Lo! now the...Read more of this...

Echo to Him Who Complains

by Mary Darby Robinson
 O FLY thee from the shades of night,
Where the loud tempests yelling rise; 
Where horrror wings her sullen flight
Beneath the bleak and lurid skies. 

As the pale light'ning swiftly gleams
O'er the scorch'd wood, thy well-known form 
More radiant than an angel seems,
Contending with the ruthless storm. 

I see the scowling witch, DESPAIR
Drink the big tear that scalds thy cheek;...Read more of this...

To a Contemporary Bunkshooter

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he...Read more of this...

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

by A E Housman
 CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with...Read more of this...

The Negro Girl

by Mary Darby Robinson
 I. 

Dark was the dawn, and o'er the deep
The boist'rous whirlwinds blew;
The Sea-bird wheel'd its circling sweep,
And all was drear to view--
When on the beach that binds the western shore
The love-lorn ZELMA stood, list'ning the tempest's roar.


II. 

Her eager Eyes beheld the main,
While on her DRACO dear
She madly call'd, but call'd in vain,
No sound could DRACO hear,
Save the shrill...Read more of this...

May 24 1980

by Joseph Brodsky
 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore and...Read more of this...

The Pennsylvania Disaster

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1889, and in the month of June,
Ten thousand people met with a fearful doom,
By the bursting of a dam in Pennsylvania State,
And were burned, and drowned by the flood-- oh! pity their fate! 

The embankment of the dam was considered rather weak,
And by the swelled body of water the embankment did break,
And burst o'er...Read more of this...

The Coastwise Lights

by Rudyard Kipling
 Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when...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...

May 24 1980

by Joseph Brodsky
I have braved for want of wild beasts steel cages 
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters 
lived by the sea flashed aces in an oasis 
dined with the-devil-knows-whom in tails on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world the earthly
width. Twice have drowned thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore...Read more of this...

Alix

by Carl Sandburg
 THE MARE Alix breaks the world’s trotting record one day. I see her heels flash down the dust of an Illinois race track on a summer afternoon. I see the timekeepers put their heads together over stopwatches, and call to the grand stand a split second is clipped off the old world’s record and a new world’s record fixed.

I...Read more of this...

A Man Young And Old: IV. The Death Of The Hare

by William Butler Yeats
 I have pointed out the yelling pack,
The hare leap to the wood,
And when I pass a compliment
Rejoice as lover should
At the drooping of an eye,
At the mantling of the blood.

Then suddenly my heart is wrung
By her distracted air
And I remember wildness lost
And after, swept from there,
Am set down standing in the wood
At the death of the hare....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...

Louse Hunting

by Isaac Rosenberg
 Nudes -- stark and glistening,
Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces
And raging limbs
Whirl over the floor one fire.
For a shirt verminously busy
Yon soldier tore from his throat, with oaths
Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice.
And soon the shirt was aflare
Over the candle he'd lit while we lay.

Then we all sprang up and stript
To hunt the verminous brood.
Soon like a...Read more of this...

A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L

by Sidney Lanier
 By Sidney and Clifford Lanier.

O wish that's vainer than the plash
Of these wave-whimsies on the shore:
"Give us a pearl to fill the gash --
God, let our dead friend live once more!"

O wish that's stronger than the stroke
Of yelling wave and snapping levin;
"God, lift us o'er the Last Day's smoke,
All white, to Thee and her in Heaven!"

O wish that's swifter...Read more of this...

The Burning of the Peoples Variety Theatre Aberdeen

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1896, and on the 30th of September,
Which many people in Aberdeen will long remember;
The burning of the People's Variety Theatre, in Bridge Place
Because the fire spread like lightning at a rapid pace. 

The fire broke out on the stage, about eight o'clock,
Which gave to the audience a very fearful shock;
Then a stampede ensued, and...Read more of this...

Threatening Signs

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IF Venus in the evening sky
Is seen in radiant majesty,
If rod-like comets, red as blood,
Are 'mongst the constellations view'd,
Out springs the Ignoramus, yelling:
"The star's exactly o'er my dwelling!
What woeful prospect, ah, for me!
Then calls his neighbour mournfully:
"Behold that awful sign of evil,
Portending woe to me, poor devil!
My mother's asthma ne'er will leave her,
My child is sick with wind and...Read more of this...

Live

by Anne Sexton
 Live or die, but don't poison everything...

Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked...Read more of this...

The Old Timers Steeplechase

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The sheep were shorn and the wool went down 
At the time of our local racing; 
And I'd earned a spell -- I was burnt and brown -- 
So I rolled my swag for a trip to town 
And a look at the steeplechasing. 
Twas rough and ready--an uncleared course 
As rough as the blacks had found it; 
With...Read more of this...

The Fury Of Sunrises

by Anne Sexton
 Darkness 
as black as your eyelid, 
poketricks of stars, 
the yellow mouth, 
the smell of a stranger, 
dawn coming up, 
dark blue, 
no stars, 
the smell of a love, 
warmer now 
as authenic as soap, 
wave after wave 
of lightness 
and the birds in their chains 
going mad with throat noises, 
the birds in their tracks 
yelling into their...Read more of this...

Dulce Et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen
 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick,...Read more of this...

A Call To Arms

by Barry Tebb
 It was like chucking-out time

In a rough Victorian pub

Cherubic Dylan was first to go

Lachrymose but with a show

Of strength, yelling "Buggerall,

Buggerall, this is my boat-house

In Laugherne, these are my books,

My prizes, I ride every wave-crest,

My loves are legion. What’s this

You’re saying about fashion?

Others follow where I lead,

Schoolchildren copy my verse,

No anthology omits me

Put me down! Put me down!

George Barker...Read more of this...

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