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Famous Hyena Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Schwartz, Delmore
...al
The cuckold, the cuckoo, the conqueror, and the coxcomb.

It is to him in the zoo that the zoo cries out and the hyena:
"Hello, take off your hat, king of the beasts, and be seated, 
Mr. Bones."

And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous.
He must die a little death each morning.
He must swallow his toad and study his vomit
as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval.

The poet must be or become both Keats and Renoir and
Keats as...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...de drifts on
Old in her cruel bed.

Over the graveyard in the water
Mountains and galleries beneath
Nightingale and hyena
Rejoicing for that drifting death

Sing and howl through sand and anemone
Valley and sahara in a shell,
Oh all the wanting flesh his enemy
Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl


Is old as water and plain as an eel;
Always good-bye to the long-legged bread
Scattered in the paths of his heels
For the salty birds fluttered and fed

And the tall grains...Read more of this...

by Corso, Gregory
...of of great worms
 Rip open your belly Bomb
 from your belly outflock vulturic salutations
 Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps
 along the brink of Paradise
 O Bomb O final Pied Piper
 both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz
 God abandoned mock-nude
 beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse
 He cannot hear thy flute's
 happy-the-day profanations
 He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear
 His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax
 Clogged clarions untrumpet...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...
cellar-lighting, electricity of the blue
and evil eye. Night ringed with eyes,

gutter-glow of new-soused theatre,
hyena, leopard, caracal (that caramel cat
with ear tufts, anxious to feed her cubs)
watching the lame foal weakened by drought.

All you know is, that you don't know,
and are afraid. Moonshadow
where the big rocks laugh apart.
Predator-senses. Cilia. Heat detectors

crowd this long auditorium, segment
after segment of the midnight shuffle...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...le mass entwined,
The rock-fish, the ray with the thorny back,
And the hammer-fish's misshapen kind,
And the shark, the hyena dread of the sea,
With his angry teeth, grinned fiercely on me."

"There hung I, by fulness of terror possessed,
Where all human aid was unknown,
Amongst phantoms, the only sensitive breast,
In that fearful solitude all alone,
Where the voice of mankind could not reach to mine ear,
'Mid the monsters foul of that wilderness drear."

"Thus shudde...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...d, or a hundred swords
 Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel:
 For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,
 Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,
 Whose very dogs would execrations howl
 Against his lineage: not one breast affords
 Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,
Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

 Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,
 Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,
 To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame,
 Behind a broad...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...Rush the roused people at the sound!
Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
And banded murder closes round!
The hyena-shapes (that women were!),
Jest with the horrors they survey;
They hound--they rend--they mangle there--
As panthers with their prey!
Naught rests to hollow--burst the ties
Of life's sublime and reverent awe;
Before the vice the virtue flies,
And universal crime is law!
Man fears the lion's kingly tread;
Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;
And still...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...hill 
Just as the corn appears. 
I've seen it rise at certain times 
For years and years and years. 


What the Hyena Said

The moon is but a golden skull, 
She mounts the heavens now, 
And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms 
Are wreathed around her brow. 

The Moon-Worms are a doughty race: 
They eat her gray and golden face. 
Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head: 
These caverns are their dwelling-place. 

The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies, 
From the gre...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyena scream,
And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
Through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty;
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free,
That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestu...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...
The Daemon COMMERCE on your shore
Pours all the horrors of his train,
And hark! where from the field of gore
Howls the hyena o'er the slain!
Lo! where the flaming village fires the skies!
Avenging Power awake--arise!

Arise thy children's wrong redress!
Ah heed the mother's wretchedness
When in the hot infectious air
O'er her sick babe she bows opprest--
Ah hear her when the Christians tear
The drooping infant from her breast!
Whelm'd in the waters he shall rest!
Hear thou t...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...women of Rome, who applauded those deeds 
 And who hailed the forthcoming enjoyment, must needs 
 Shame the restless hyena. 
 
 They who figured as guests on that ultimate eve, 
 In their turn on the morrow were destined to give 
 To the lions their food; 
 For, behold, in the guise of a slave at that board, 
 Where his victims enjoyed all that life can afford, 
 Death administering stood. 
 
 Such, O monarchs of earth! was your banquet of power, 
 But the tocsin...Read more of this...

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