Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Clammy Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Kipling, Rudyard
...that City by the Sea
 Turned to flee --
Fled, with each returning spring-tide from its ills
 To the Hills.
From the clammy fogs of morning, from the blaze
 Of old days,
From the sickness of the noontide, from the heat,
 Beat retreat;
For the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
 Was their own.
But the Merchant risked the perils of the Plain
 For his gain.
Now the resting-place of Charnock, 'neath the palms,
 Asks an alms,
And the burden of its lamentation is, Briefly, ...Read more of this...



by Austin, Alfred
...she wends with wintry gaze,
To walls that house a hollow vow, 
To hearth where love hath ceas’d to blaze: 
Watches the clammy twilight wane, 
With grief too fix’d for woe or tear; 
And, with her forehead ’gainst the pane,
Envies the dying year....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...t the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
 Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
 Oh the clammy fog that hovers
 And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry --
 What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring --
 As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
 To the ghat below the curling wreat...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...eon core of that wild wood:
I fled three days--when lo! before me stood
Glaring the angry witch. O Dis, even now,
A clammy dew is beading on my brow,
At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse.
"Ha! ha! Sir Dainty! there must be a nurse
Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express,
To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee: yes,
I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch:
My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch.
So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies
Unheard o...Read more of this...

by Lear, Edward
...Jj Jammy, Mammy, Clammy, Jammy, Sweety, swammy, Jar of jam! ...Read more of this...



by Kinnell, Galway
...sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started 
 on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their 
 clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," 
 came to him while eating oatmeal alone. 
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering 
 furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lun...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...althy ranger,
 When the moon is decently hiding. Hark!
What was that? Was it just the shiver
 Of an eerie wind or a clammy hand?
The rustle of grass, or the passing quiver
 Of one of the ghosts of No Man's Land?

It's only at night when the ghosts awaken,
 And gibber and whisper horrible things;
For to every foot of this God-forsaken
 Zone of jeopard some horror clings.
Ugh! What was that? It felt like a jelly,
 That flattish mound in the noisome grass;
You three big ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ell.
They found him dead! All looked on me,
The spasms of my despair to see;
But I was calm. I went away;
I was clammy-cold like clay.
I did not weep; I did not speak; 
But day by day, week after week,
I walked about like a corpse alive.
Alas! sweet friend, you must believe
This heart is stone--it did not break.

My father lived a little while,
But all might see that he was dying,
He smiled with such a woful smile.
When he was in the churchyard lying
A...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...e the stains of sin away
In Christ's redeeming name,

Then did the cheek of Rudiger
Assume a death-pale hue,
And on his clammy forehead stood
The cold convulsive dew;

And faltering in his speech he bade
The Priest the rites delay,
Till he could, to right health restor'd,
Enjoy the festive day.

When o'er the many-tinted sky
He saw the day decline,
He called upon his Margaret
To walk beside the Rhine.

"And we will take the little babe,
"For soft the breeze that blows...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...per grows her dearness
And more and more times laces round and round my heart,
The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers there,
Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains them, strains them;
Meantime some tongue cries ‘What, Teryth! what, thou poor fond father!
How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air so rich about thee,
Is all, all sheared away, thus!’ Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet ’tis not a funeral,
Some...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...eir demonstrative glee delight he seemed to lack;
Indeed it almost seemed that he - was "keeping something back."
A clammy sweat was on his brow, and pallid as a sheet:
"I feel I must be going now," he'd plaintively repeat.
Aye, though with drinks and smokes galore, they tempted him to stay,
With sudden bolt he gained the door, and made his get-away.

And ere next night his story was the talk of Dawson Town,
But gone and reft of glory was the wrathful Major Brown;...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...here!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death -- ye wish it -- God, ye wish it! Stone --
Gritstone, a crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through --
And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
-- Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers --
Old Gandolf -- at me, ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...
Without the storm's red ruin, for the singer is divine;

The little laugh of water falling down
Is not so musical, the clammy gold
Close hoarded in the tiny waxen town
Has less of sweetness in it, and the old
Half-withered reeds that waved in Arcady
Touched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony.

Spirit of Beauty, tarry yet awhile!
Although the cheating merchants of the mart
With iron roads profane our lovely isle,
And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art...Read more of this...

by Wilmot, John
...hand, her foot, her very look's a ****.

Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o'er
My panting bosom, "Is there then no more?"
She cries. "All this to love and rapture's due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?"

But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive,
To show my wished obedience vainly strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot swive.
Eager desires confound my first inte...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...faces seared, and cheeks red smeared, and haunting eyes of woe,
 And clotted holes the khaki couldn't hide.
Oh, the clammy brow of anguish! the livid, foam-flecked lips!
 The reeling ranks of ruin swept along!
The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger tips!
 And oh, the dreary rhythm of their song!

"They left us on the veldt-side, but we felt we couldn't stop
 On this, our England's crowning festal day;
We're the men of Magersfontein, we're the men o...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes' bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth's apparelling;
O vespering bird, how do you know,
How do you know? 

How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction's strength,
And day put on some moments' length...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...l more later flowers for the bees  
Until they think warm days will never cease 10 
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor  
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15 
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep  
Drowsed with the fume of poppies while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twin¨¨d flowers; 
And sometime...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...et more invitations
Than a gossip writer. 

Yes, your throat is froggy, 
And your eyes are swimmy, 
And you hand is clammy, 
And you nose is brimmy, 
But you woo my girls 
And their hearts you jimmy 
While I sit here 
With the cold you gimmy....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Clammy poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs