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Famous Fingering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lawrence, D. H.
...he mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice. 

Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide 
Under the pallid moonlight's fingering, 
I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide 
My eyes from diligent work, malingering. 

Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw 
The blind to hide the garden, where the moon 
Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw 
Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon. 

And I do lift my aching arms to you, 
And I do lift my anguished, avid breast, ...Read more of this...



by Lowell, Amy
...As I would free the white almond from the green husk
So would I strip your trappings off,
Beloved.
And fingering the smooth and polished kernel
I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting....Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...irrors.
So you were there when the white foam was up
And the salt spatter and the rack and the dulse—
You were done fingering these, and high, higher and higher
Your feet went and it was your voice went, “Hai, hai, hai,”
Up where the rocks let nothing live and the grass was gone,
Not even a hank nor a wisp of sea moss hoping.
Here your feet and your same singing, “Hai, hai, hai.”

Was there anything else to answer than, “Hai, hai, hai,”?
Did I go up those same cra...Read more of this...

by Smith, Stevie
...Drugs made Pauline vague.
 She sat one day at the breakfast table
 Fingering in a baffled way
 The fronds of the maidenhair plant.

Was it the salt you were looking for dear?
said Dulcie, exchanging a glance with the Brigadier.

 Chuff chuff Pauline what's the matter?
 Said the Brigadier to his wife
 Who did not even notice
 What a handsome couple they made....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...she steered light
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,
Where nested was an arbour, overwove
By many a summer's silent fingering;
To whose cool bosom she was used to bring
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
And minstrel memories of times gone by.

 So she was gently glad to see him laid
Under her favourite bower's quiet shade,
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves
When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,
And...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...still,
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill.
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,
And elbow-deep with feverous fingering
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree
Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;
And, in the middle, there is softly pight
A golden butterfly; upon whose wings
There must be surely character'd strange things...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...st in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you--
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken--

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You f...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...e draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish 
it.
Her soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He 
speaks to her
of debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises 
that she
shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant.
But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot 
with violet,
pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit room.
Suddenly the Emperor calls h...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...ir fall; but, for time’s aftercast, 
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest. 

And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolv?d dreams 
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown. 

She leans on him with such contentment fond 
As well the sister sits, would well the wife; 
His looks, the soul’s own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life. 

But ah, bright forelo...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
..., or a traitor proven, or hound 
Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame 
Creep with his shadow through the court again, 
Fingering at his sword-handle until he stood 
There on the castle-bridge once more, and thought, 
`I will go back, and slay them where they lie.' 

And so went back, and seeing them yet in sleep 
Said, `Ye, that so dishallow the holy sleep, 
Your sleep is death,' and drew the sword, and thought, 
`What! slay a sleeping knight? the King hath bound 
And sw...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...many slain, You must 
forgive me for a little fright."
And he forgave her, not alone for that, But because she was 
fingering his heart,
Pressing and squeezing it, and thinking so Only 
to ease her smart
Of painful, apprehensive longing. At
Their feet the river swirled and chucked. They sat
An hour there. The thrush flew to 
and fro.

XIX
The Lady Eunice supped alone that day, As 
always since Sir Everard had gone,
In the oak-panelled parlour, whose array ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...s haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor,...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ning and her heart
Followed his bow. But often she would sit,
While he was playing, quite withdrawn apart,
Absently fingering and touching it,
The locket, which now seemed to her a bit
Of some gone youth. His music drew her tears,
And through the notes he played, her dreading ears
Heard Heinrich's voice, saying he had not changed;
Beer merchants had no ecstasies to take
Their minds off love. So far her thoughts had ranged
Away from her stern vow, she chanced to ta...Read more of this...

by Roethke, Theodore
...rummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.

I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the wind...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...nd loth by brainless war 
To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet; 
Till one of those two brothers, half aside 
And fingering at the hair about his lip, 
To prick us on to combat 'Like to like! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' 
A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow! 
For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff, 
And sharp I answered, touched upon the point 
Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 
'Decide it here: why not? we are three to three.<...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...panions, scarcely
known
To me--yet still because of the sense of their closeness clinging
densely to me,
And slowly fingering up my stem and following all tinily
The way that I have gone and now am leading, they are dear to me.

  They keep me assured, and when my soul feels lonely,
  All mistrustful of thrusting its shoots where only
  I alone am living, then it keeps
  Me comforted to feel the warmth that creeps
  Up dimly from their striving; it heartens my stri...Read more of this...

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