Famous Menacing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Menacing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous menacing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous menacing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...
But the street, squatting down, bawled:
¡°Let¡¯s go and guzzle!¡±
Krupps and Krupplets1 paint
a bristling of menacing brows on the city,
but in the mouth
corpselets of dead words putrefy;
and only two thrive and grow fat:
¡°swine,¡±
and another besides,
apparently ¨C ¡°borsch.¡±
Poets,
soaked in plaints and sobs,
break from the street, rumpling their matted hair
over: ¡°How with two such words celebrate
a young lady
and love
and a fl...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...rums
are his knell.
He is heavy, his feet beat the floor
As I drag him about in the swell
Of the waltz. With a menacing roar,
The trumpets crash in through the door.
One! Two! Three! clangs his funeral bell.
One! Two! Three! In the chaos
of space
Rolls the earth to the hideous glee
Of death! And so cramped is this place,
I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three!
Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles
me!
He has covered my mouth with his face!
And his blood h...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ike an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold, and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian--he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...enius of poets of old lands,
As to me directing like flame its eyes,
With finger pointing to many immortal songs,
And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said;
Know’st thou not, there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?
And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,
The making of perfect soldiers?
2
Be it so, then I answer’d,
I too, haughty Shade, also sing war—and a longer and greater one than
any,
Waged in my book with varying fortune—with flight, ad...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...you stand;
With still the inextinguishable glance, and the clench’d and lifted fist,
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner, utterly crush’d beneath
you;
The menacing, arrogant one, that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the
murderous knife;
—Lo! the wide swelling one, the braggart, that would yesterday do so much!
To-day a carrion dead and damn’d, the despised of all the earth!
An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn’d....Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...ed.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...t us;
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back to the works on
this
hill;
Till we turn’d, menacing, here, and then he left us.
That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong;
Few return’d—nearly all remain in Brooklyn.
That, and here, my General’s first battle;
No women looking on, nor sunshine to bask in—it did not conclude with applause;
Nobody clapp’d hands here then.
But in darkness, in mist...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Death is like the insect
Menacing the tree,
Competent to kill it,
But decoyed may be.
Bait it with the balsam,
Seek it with the saw,
Baffle, if it cost you
Everything you are.
Then, if it have burrowed
Out of reach of skill --
Wring the tree and leave it,
'Tis the vermin's will....Read more of this...
by
Tsvetaeva, Marina
...anite is dross.
Dove, naked and brilliant,
It has no mate.
Solomon's ashes
Over vanity that's great.
Time's menacing chalkmark,
Not to be overthrown.
Means God knocks at the door
-- Once the house has burned down!
Not choked yet by refuse,
Days' and dreams' conqueror.
Like a thunderbolt -- Spirit
Of early grey hair.
It's not you who've betrayed me
On the home front, years.
This grey is the triumph
Of immortal powers....Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...fearful in his cavern
Hid the naked troglodyte,
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed ...
Woe to all poor wreteches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!
From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeeking in those savage regions
Her lost daughter Prosperine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temp...Read more of this...
by
Crane, Stephen
...of moving bronze, emerald, yellow,
Circle the throat and the arms of her,
And over the sands serpents move warily
Slow, menacing and submissive,
Swinging to the whistles and drums,
The whispering, whispering snakes,
Dreaming and swaying and staring,
But always whispering, softly whispering.
The dignity of the accursed;
The glory of slavery, despair, death,
Is in the dance of the whispering snakes....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
other across the sky;
—These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and
masterful;
All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
Yet there with my soul I fed—I fed content, supercilious.
2
’Twas well, O soul! ’twas a good preparation you gave me!
Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;
Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;
Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cit...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...n the hand the hilt remain'd alone.
Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes
Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear,
And shouted: Rustum!--Sohrab heard that shout,
And shrank amazed; back he recoil'd one step,
And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form,
And then he stood bewilder'd; and he dropp'd
His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side.
He reel'd, and staggering back, sank to the ground;
And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fel...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...l The States, and between any two of them:
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with
menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:
—And a song make I, of the One form’d out of all;
The fang’d and glittering One whose head is over all;
Resolute, warlike One, including and over all;
(However high the head of any else, that head is over all.)
I will acknowledge contemporary lands;
I will trail the whole geograp...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...f anguish fell.
"The thing on the blind side of the heart,
On the wrong side of the door,
The green plant groweth, menacing
Almighty lovers in the spring;
There is always a forgotten thing,
And love is not secure."
And all that sat by the fire were sad,
Save Ogier, who was stern,
And his eyes hardened, even to stones,
As he took the harp in turn;
Earl Ogier of the Stone and Sling
Was odd to ear and sight,
Old he was, but his locks were red,
And jests were all the w...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...Of cruel Nero, and Antonius:
Although at that time they were yet unborn,
Yet was their death depainted there beforn,
By menacing of Mars, right by figure,
So was it showed in that portraiture,
As is depainted in the stars above,
Who shall be slain, or elles dead for love.
Sufficeth one ensample in stories old,
I may not reckon them all, though I wo'ld.
The statue of Mars upon a carte* stood *chariot
Armed, and looked grim as he were wood*, *mad
And over his head ther...Read more of this...
by
Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
...nd the sun's last dipping ring
The impress of its shadow drooping low;
And lower, lower fell that mighty cloud,
With menacing shape as in defiance proud,
Until at last all sky and earth and sea
Seemed filled with shadows from its darkening wings—-
That dreadful spell cast over waves once free,
Hushed into silence deep all living things.
And still the maiden's watching, eager eyes
Were fixed unmoved on black'ning sea and skies;
So motionless she stood with hands clas...Read more of this...
by
Green, Adrian
...y sands
and dark against the dreamlit sky
the trees arise from hedgerows,
and the hills
alive with monstrous shapes
are menacing with soundless fear,
and still below the blundering man,
the beery and uncertain head,
the stubbled fields hold secrets now
and silence fills the river bed....Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...assions
Disappeared like load from misuse.
To her -- descended -- the Almighty ordered
To be the fearful book of menacing news.
* IV *
x x x
Before the spring arrives there are such days:
Under the thick snow cover rests the lawn,
The dry-and-jolly trees are making noise,
Tender and strong, the wind is warm.
And body is amazed at its own lightness,
And your own home is alien to you,
And song that had just previously been tiring
With ...Read more of this...
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