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Famous Crutch Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...us, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever!
O my land’s maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch! 
Lo! your pallid army follow’d!) 

7
But on these days of brightness, 
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled
 farm-wagons, and
 the fruits and barns, 
Shall the dead intrude?

Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Nature; 
They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass, 
And along the edg...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...man dare hold the lists
Against such odds and such
Sweet vantage as no strength resists?

Our strength is all a broken crutch,
Our eyes are dim with mists,
Our hearts are prisoners as we touch
Two flower-soft fists....Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...r by this song 
and by all that I have done wrong 
I will make it all up to thee. 
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, 
he said to me, "You must not ask for so much." 
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, 
she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?" 
Oh like a bird on the wire, 
like a drunk in a midnight choir 
I have tried in my way to be free....Read more of this...
by Cohen, Leonard
...
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his council I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...u makes too much
démand. I might be 'fording you a hat:
it gonna rain. —I knew a one of groans
& greed & spite, of a crutch,

who thought he had, a vile night, been-well-blest.
He see someone run off. Why not Henry,
with his grasp of desire?
—Hear matters hard to manage at de best,
Mr Bones. Tween what we see, what be,
is blinds. Them blinds' on fire....Read more of this...
by Berryman, John



...al,
As an enemy of the people,
In league with the master-foes of man.
Young idealists, broken warriors,
Hobbling on one crutch of hope,
Souls that stake their all on the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
Flocked about me and followed my voice
As the savior of the County.
But Solomon won the nomination;
And then I faced about,
And rallied my followers to his standard,
And made him victor, made him King
Of the Golden Mountain with the door
Which closed on my heels ju...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee
...he hard cellar bottom. And then someone
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or a little child, comes up. It wasn’t Toffile:
It wasn’t anyone who could be there.
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them — and good reason.
My first impulse was to get to the kno...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...hat Mulligan's talent can do; 
And if he gets nasty and dares to say much, 
I'll knock him as stiff as my grandfather's crutch." 

Then off to the town went the mare and the lad; 
The bailiff came out, never dreamt he was "had"; 
But marched to the stall with a confident air -- 
"I levy," said he, "upon Mulligan's mare." 

He watched her by day and he watched her by night, 
She was never an instant let out of his sight, 
For races were coming away in the West 
And Mulligan's ...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...p,
For half of love was planted in the lost,
And the unplanted ghost.

The broken halves are fellowed in a cripple,
The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,
Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble
Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep,
And stake the sleepers in the savage grave
That the vampire laugh.

The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded
The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees,
Sucking the dark, kissed on the cyanide,
And loosed the braidi...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...the darkness is against me. 
I can't see enough to sight 
my weapon, which becomes freight 
to be endured or at best 
a crutch to ease swollen feet 
that demand but don't get rest 

unless I invade your barn, 
which I do. Under my dark 
coat, monstrous and vague, I turn 
down your lane, float through the yard, 
and roost. Or so I appear 
to you who call me spirit 
or devil, though I'm neither. 
What's more, under all, I'm white 

and soft, more like yourself than 
you ever wo...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at t...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...ade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings leaned to Virtue's side;
But in his duty prompt at every call,
He watched a...Read more of this...
by Goldsmith, Oliver
...A cursing rogue with a merry face,
A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
Stumbled upon that windy place
Called Cruachan, and it was as much
As the one sturdy leg could do
To keep him upright while he cursed.
He had counted, where long years ago
Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,
A pair of lapwings, one old sheep,
And not a house to the plain's edge,
When close to his right hand a heap
Of grey stones and a rocky le...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...'em an' dem people lak to flew.
Cripple Joe, de old rheumatic, danced dat flo' f'om side to middle,
Th'owed away his crutch an' hopped it; what's rheumatics 'ginst a fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los' his grace,
Had to tek bofe feet an' hol' dem so 's to keep 'em in deir place.
An' de Christuns an' de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo',
Dat I don't see how dey 'd pahted ef de trump had chanced to blow.
Well, we danced dat way an' capahed in de m...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...tning of flashbulbs sinking in wealth,
that I said: "Shabine, this is ****, understand!"
But he get somebody to kick my crutch out his office
like I was some artist! That ***** was so grand,
couldn't get off his high horse and kick me himself.
I have seen things that would make a slave sick
in this Trinidad, the Limers' Republic.

I couldn't shake the sea noise out of my head,
the shell of my ears sang Maria Concepcion,
so I start salvage diving with a crazy Mick,
name O'Shau...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...vant; from Anglo-Saxon, "hyran," to hire;
the word was commonly applied to males.

8. Potent: staff; French, "potence," crutch, gibbet.

9. Je vous dis sans doute: French; "I tell you without doubt."

10. Dortour: dormitory; French, "dortoir."

12. The Rules of St Benedict granted peculiar honours and
immunities to monks who had lived fifty years -- the jubilee
period -- in the order. The usual reading of the words ending
the two lines is "loan" or "lone," and "alone;" but to...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...l her dreams and hopes and fears.
Ere it was opened I would see them in it,
The gray-haired dame, the daughter with her crutch;
So fond, so happy, hoarding every minute,
Like artists, for the final tender touch.

The opening day! I'm sure that to their seeming
Was never shop so wonderful as theirs;
With pyramids of jam-jars rubbed to gleaming;
Such vivid cans of peaches, prunes and pears;
And chocolate, and biscuits in glass cases,
And bon-bon bottles, many-hued and bright;
Y...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're love by me....Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things