Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Crutches Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Horace,
...earful sight it was to see
          Through two long nights and days.

               XIV

     For aged folks on crutches,
          And women great with child,
     And mothers sobbing over babes
          That clung to them and smiled,
     And sick men borne in litters
          High on the necks of slaves,
     And troops of sun-burned husbandmen
          With reaping-hooks and staves,

               XV

     And droves of mules and asses
          La...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...e-yards of the hills have hurried to see! 
Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear! 
Cock’d hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist! 
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men’s shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums? 
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for fire-locks, and level
 them?


If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President’s marshal; 
If you groan such gro...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...dy zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...

On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things----

Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness. Why should I walk

Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles?
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,

I am not a smile. 
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man: his red ribs,

The nerves bursting...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...e seen them: they'd slipped death's clutches,
 But sadder a sight you will rarely find;
One had a leg off and walked on crutches,
 The other, a bit of a boy, was blind.
And they both sat down, and the lad was trying
 To grope his way as a blind man tries;
And half of the women around were crying,
 And some of the men had tears in their eyes.

How he stirred me, this blind boy, clinging
 Just like a child to his crippled chum.
But I did not cry. Oh no; a singin...Read more of this...



by Herrick, Robert
...Thou see'st me, Lucia, this year droop;
Three zodiacs fill'd more, I shall stoop;
Let crutches then provided be
To shore up my debility:
Then, while thou laugh'st, I'll sighing cry,
A ruin underpropt am I:
Don will I then my beadsman's gown;
And when so feeble I am grown
As my weak shoulders cannot bear
The burden of a grasshopper;
Yet with the bench of aged sires,
When I and they keep termly fires,
With my weak voice I'll sing, or say
Some o...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...gazed and gazed with eager glance
Into a window that displayed
The picture of a ballet dance.
And as she leaned on crutches twain,
Before that poster garland-gay
She looked so longingly and vain
I thought she'd never go away.

The last one was a sightless man
Who to the tune of a guitar
Caught coppers in a dingy can,
Patient and sad as blind men are.
So old and grey and grimy too,
His fingers fumbled on the strings,
As emptily he looked at you,
And sang as only s...Read more of this...

by Binyon, Laurence
...There are five men in the moonlight
That by their shadows stand;
Three hobble humped on crutches,
And two lack each a hand.


Frogs somewhere near the roadside 
Chorus their chant absorbed: 
But a hush breathes out of the dream-light 
That far in heaven is orbed. 


It is gentle as sleep falling
And wide as thought can span,
The ancient peace and wonder 
That brims in the heart of man.


Beyond the hills it shines now
On no peace bu...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...h,
And iced his bloated cheeks with death;
His tatter'd robes exposed him bare
To every blast of ruder air;
On two weak crutches propp'd he stood,
That bent at every step he trod;
Gilt titles graced their sides so slender,
One, "Regulation," t'other, "Tender;"
His breastplate graved, with various dates,
"The Faith of all th' United States;"
Before him went his funeral pall,
His grave stood, dug to wait his fall.


"I started, and aghast I cried,
"What means this spectre a...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...ON Forty First Street
near Eighth Avenue
a frame house wobbles.

If houses went on crutches
this house would be
one of the cripples.

A sign on the house:
Church of the Living God
And Rescue Home for Orphan Children.

From a Greek coffee house
Across the street
A cabalistic jargon
Jabbers back.
 And men at tables
 Spill Peloponnesian syllables
 And speak of shovels for street work.
 And the new embankments of the Erie Railr...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...blood on the rockface

that we murder ourselves
is no setback - we arise
from the tomb unprovided
what-is-known is our crutches
let the light kick them from us
the sun eats us up and renews us

inside me am i turning to stone
the drill niggles downwards
there may be oil in my bone
though the flesh is all gone
only in the dark was it dumb

if we squeeze our darkness
through a doorway
what new voice might come

(v)
how old the world is
trying to put
grey on a green shoot

how ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...luge, the mighty torrents' roar,
At nine o'clock at night the storm did rage and moan
When Carl Springel set out on his crutches all alone -- 

From the handsome little hut in which he dwelt,
With some food to his father, for whom he greatly felt,
Who was watching at the railway bridge,
Which was built upon a perpendicular rocky ridge. 

The bridge was composed of iron and wooden blocks,
And crossed o'er the Devil's Gulch, an immense cleft of rocks,
Two hundred feet wide ...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...r pilgrims.
. . . . . . . .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome c?me hither!
Not now to n?me even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
. . . . . . . .
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure...Read more of this...

by Kees, Weldon
...

Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six or more:
One with his face gone rotten,
Most hideous of all,
Whose crutches shriek on the sidewalk
As a fingernail on a slate
Tears open some splintered door
Of childhood. Down the hall
We enter a thousand rooms
That pour the hours back,
That silhouette the walls
With shadows ripped from war,
Accusing and rigid, black
As the streets we are discolored by.
The crutches fall to the floor. 

Not a third that walks b...Read more of this...

by Taylor, Ann
...ge green
First in every sport was seen. 

Now, alas! I'm weak and low,
Cannot either work or play; 
Tottering on my crutches, slow, 
Thus I drag my weary way: 
Now no longer dance and sing, 
Gaily, in the merry ring. 

Many sleepless nights I live, 
Turning on my weary bed; 
Softest pillows cannot give
Slumber to my aching head; 
Constant anguish makes it fly
From my heavy, wakeful eye. 

And, when morning beams return, 
Still no comfort beams for me: 
Still my li...Read more of this...

by Simic, Charles
...Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

My mother and father smile at each other
Knowingly above the mantel.
The cat sleeps on, the dog
Growls in his sleep.
The stove is cold and so is the bed.

Now there are only these crutches
To contend with.
Go a...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Crutches poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things