Famous Numb Poems by Famous Poets

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...inger by finger.

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.

Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death

I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia

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...You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come. 

You love me not,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
--I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds ...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas

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...like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that th...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan

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...r your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I’ve known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, ‘When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.’

But there, alas, where the s...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander

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...
Mouldered this many May.

I spilt the dew—
But took the morn—
I chose this single star
From out the wide night's numbers—
Sue—forevermore!

67

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

84
...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily

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...id fly
About the great Athenian admiral's mast?
What care, though striding Alexander past
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers
The glutted Cyclops, what care?--Juliet leaning
Amid her window-flowers,--sighing,--weaning
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,
Doth more avail than these: the silver flow
Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,
Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,
Are things to brood on with more ardency
Than the dea...Read more of this...

by Keats, John

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...merely given to the cold bleak air.
Have mercy, Goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!"

 That curst magician's name fell icy numb
Upon my wild conjecturing: truth had come
Naked and sabre-like against my heart.
I saw a fury whetting a death-dart;
And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright,
Fainted away in that dark lair of night.
Think, my deliverer, how desolate
My waking must have been! disgust, and hate,
And terrors manifold divided me
A spoil amongst them. I prepar'd to flee...Read more of this...

by Keats, John

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...r a wind so chill
To quench the flame of a freeman's will!

II

Days of toil when the bleeding hand
Of the pioneer grew numb,
When the untilled tracts of the barren land
Where the weary ones had come
Could offer nought from a fruitful soil
To stay the strength of the stranger's toil.

Days of pain, when the heart beat low,
And the empty hours went by
Pitiless, with the wail of woe
And the moan of Hunger's cry--
When the trembling hands upraised in prayer
Had only the strength...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb

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...The Count was something more than wroth -
I was unarmed; but if in steel,
All cap from head to heel,
What 'gainst their numbers could I do?
'Twas near his castle, far away
From city or from succour near, 
And almost on the break of day; 
I did not think to see another,
My moments seemed reduced to few; 
And with one prayer to Mary Mother,
And, it may be, a saint or two, 
As I resigned me to my fate, 
They led me to the castle gate:
Tleresa's doom I never knew, 
Our lot was he...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

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..., will be dear to her.
And will not Silence know
In the black shade of what obsidian steep
Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?
(Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home,
Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,
Reluctant even as she,
Undone Persephone,
And even as she set out again to grow
In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam).
She will love well," I said,
"The flowers of the dead;
Where dark Persephone the winter round,
Uncomforted for home, unco...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

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...ls, and a mirror to keep the snaky head
In safe perspective, could outface the gorgon-grimace
Of human agony: a look to numb
Limbs: not a basilisk-blink, nor a double whammy,
But all the accumulated last grunts, groans,
Cries and heroic couplets concluding the million
Enacted tragedies on these blood-soaked boards,
And every private twinge a hissing asp
To petrify your eyes, and every village
Catastrophe a writhing length of cobra,
And the decline of empires the thick coil of...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia

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...
husband had, and grown
Eager by his clear answers, straight allows
Her hidden hopes and fears to speak, and rouse
Her numbed love, which had slumbered unaware.

XVI
Under the orchard trees daffodils danced And 
jostled, turning sideways to the wind.
A dropping cherry petal softly glanced Over her hair, and slid 
away behind.
At the far end through twisted cherry-trees The old house glowed, 
geranium-hued, with bricks
Bloomed in the sun like roses, low and long, Gabled, 
and...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy

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...yed him as he came. 

As some rich woman, on a winter's morn,
Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge
Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire--
At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn,
When the frost flowers the whiten'd window-panes--
And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts
Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed
The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar
Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth
All the most valiant chiefs; long he perused
His sp...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew

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...on the fire broke in two.
He looked up quickly, "Sir, and you?"
I groped for something I should say;
Amazement held me numb. "To-day
You sweated at a fruitless task."
He spoke for me, "What do you ask?
How can I serve you?" "My kind host,
My penniless state was not a boast;
I have no money with me." He smiled.
"Not for that money I beguiled
You here; you paid me in advance."
Again I felt as though a trance
Had dimmed my faculties. Again
He spoke, and this time to explain.
"T...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy

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...e moon was showing...
Well? the naked man was there,
Down his hair the water flowing,
Wide his eyes, unmoved the stare;
Numb the dreadful-looking body,
Arms were hanging feeble, thin;
Crabs and cancers, black and bloody,
Sucked into the swollen skin.

As the peasant slammed the shutter
(Recognized his visitant)
Horror-struck he could but mutter
"Blast you!" and began to pant.
He was shuddering, awful chaos
All night through stirred in his brain,
While the knocking shook the h...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander

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...s feathers, was a-cold;
 The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
 And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
 Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told
 His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
 Like pious incense from a censer old,
 Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.

 His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
 Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
 And back returneth, me...Read more of this...

by Keats, John

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...st their might.
5.76 I cannot labour, nor I cannot fight:
5.77 My comely legs, as nimble as the Roe,
5.78 Now stiff and numb, can hardly creep or go.
5.79 My heart sometimes as fierce, as Lion bold,
5.80 Now trembling, and fearful, sad, and cold.
5.81 My golden Bowl and silver Cord, e're long,
5.82 Shall both be broke, by wracking death so strong.
5.83 I then shall go whence I shall come no more.
5.84 Sons, Nephews, leave, my death for to deplore.
5.85 In pleasures, and in la...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne

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...All that remained of your family was a hidden coat of red paint

Beneath the kitchen windowsill and on a faded page the number for

Your long-gone neighbour, Lilly Clarke, ninety if she lives at all,

The memory of a lilac tree, the Anderson shelter hidden by the fence,

And the incomer’s invitation to call again and then and then...



We were wrong from the beginning, you always said, wrong

To be together, wrong to go away or perhaps, as Hobsbaum said,

‘It was the place’s...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry

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...change to change their being rolls;
'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
Exhaust the energy of strongest souls
And numb the elastic powers.
Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,
And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,
To the just-pausing Genius we remit
Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been.

Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire;
Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead!
Else hadst th...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew

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...dripping
Through a snow-whitened net.

Almost white was the house,
Made of glass was the wing.
How many times with numb arm
Did I hold the doorbell's ring.

How many times.. play, soldiers,
I'll make my house, I'll espy
You from a roof that's inclined,
From the ivy that does not die.

But who at last did remove it,
Took away into foreign lands
Or took out from the memory
Forever the road thence..

Snow flies, like a cherry blossom,
Distant bagpipes desist.....Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna

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