Famous Petrified Poems by Famous Poets

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

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At the Top of My voice

...My most respected
 comrades of posterity!
Rummaging among
 these days’ 
 petrified crap,
exploring the twilight of our times,
you,
 possibly,
 will inquire about me too.

And, possibly, your scholars
 will declare,
with their erudition overwhelming
 a swarm of problems;
once there lived
 a certain champion of boiled water,
and inveterate enemy of raw water.

Professor,
 take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
 those ...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir


Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

...s worked the mines up there in the mountains;
sometimes among men you will find a piece of polished
primeval pain, or a petrified slag from an ancient volcano.
Yes, that came from there. Once we were rich.-

And she leads him gently through the vast landscape
of Lamentation, shows him the columns of temples,
the ruins of strongholds from which long ago
the princes of Lament wisely governed the country.
Shows him the tall trees of tears,
the fields of flowering sadness,
(the l...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria

Kaspar Is Dead

...l over our eyes day by day.
who will turn the coffee mills in the primal barrel.
who will lure the idyllic roe from his petrified paperbag.
who will sneeze oceanliners unbrellas windudders beekeepers spindles
of ozone who will pick clean the pyramids' bones.
alas alas alas our good kaspar is dead. holy saint bong kaspar is dead.
the clappers raise heart-rending echoes of sorrow in the barns of the bells
when we murmur his name. therefore i will only sigh out his surname
kaspa...Read more of this...
by Arp, Jean

Morning Walk

...ts to pattern

The moist stone virgins.

The lawns are white-coated

their throats red

With berries and bird-song;

in petrified gardens

Hyacinth tongues lip the wall.

Leaf mould muffles my heel-taps

the enormous trees totter

In the hyaline air; I hear the

Sunday strollers in their

Mist-making walks, pressing through them

like some voiceless ghost....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Part 8 of Trout Fishing in America

...ll of flies and lures and hooks.

 Some of the hooks still had worms on them. The worms

were years and decades old and petrified to the hooks. The

worms were now as much a part of the hooks as the metal it-

self.

 There was some old Trout Fishing in America armor in

the trunk and beside a weather-beaten fishing helmet, I saw

an old diary. I opened the diary to the first page and it said:

The Trout Fishing Diary of Alonso Hagen

 It seemed to me that was the name of the...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard


Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law

...verything on the whatnot every day of life.

 5

Dulce ridens, dulce loquens,
she shaves her legs until they gleam
like petrified mammoth-tusk.

 6

When to her lute Corinna sings
neither words nor music are her own;
only the long hair dipping 
over her cheek, only the song
of silk against her knees
and these 
adjusted in reflections of an eye.

Poised, trembling and unsatisfied, before
an unlocked door, that cage of cages,
tell us, you bird, you tragical machine--
is this fe...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Sonnet II: High on a Rock

...er'd o'er
With deathless roses arm'd with many a thorn,
Lead to the altar. On the frozen floor,
Studded with tear-drops petrified by scorn,
Pale vestals kneel the Goddess to adore,
While Love, his arrows broke, retires forlorn....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

...- angular branches
  hook claw throttle frederick in their creaking
  joints
   jagged weird
  knotted and misshapen
  petrified maniacal
  figures frantically contorted
  grotesque eccentric in the moon-toothed
  half-light
  tug clutch struggle
  with the haggard form
  zigzag he staggers
  awe-plagued giddy
  near-garrotted mind-deranged
  forcing his sagging limbs through the mangled danger

  till almost beyond redemption beyond self-care
  he once again survives to bre...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

The Book of Urizen: Chapter IV

...
In heavy pain striving, struggling. 
Two Ears in close volutions.
From beneath his orbs of vision
Shot spiring out and petrified
As they grew. And a fourth Age passed
And a state of dismal woe. 

10. In ghastly torment sick;
Hanging upon the wind;
Two Nostrils bent down to the deep. 
And a fifth Age passed over;
And a state of dismal woe.

11. In ghastly torment sick;
Within his ribs bloated round, 
A craving Hungry Cavern;
Thence arose his channeld Throat,
And like a red fl...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Double Image

...wall, my own
Dorian Gray.

And this was the cave of the mirror,
that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother
and she cried.

7.

I could not get you back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you will stay for good. I will for...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Emigrants: Book II

...prison daily hear'st
The savage howl of Murder, as it seeks
Thy unoffending life: while sad within
Thy wretched Mother, petrified with grief,
Views thee with stony eyes, and cannot weep!-- 
Ah! much I mourn thy sorrows, hapless Queen!
And deem thy expiation made to Heaven
For every fault, to which Prosperity
Betray'd thee, when it plac'd thee on a throne 
Where boundless power was thine, and thou wert rais'd
High (as it seem'd) above the envious reach
Of destiny! Whate'er thy...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Gramaphone At Fond-Du-Lac

...that frame-up, you bet; them caverns of sunset agleam;
Them still peaks aglow, them shadders below, an' the lake like a petrified dream;
The teepees that stood by the edge of the wood; the evenin' star blinkin' alone;
The peace an' the rest, an' final an' best, the music of Ed's grammyfone.

Then sudden an' clear there rang on my ear a song mighty simple an' old;
Heart-hungry an' high it thrilled to the sky, all about "silver threads in the gold".
'Twas tender to tears, an' i...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Harvest Moon

...vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come! 

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world. 

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry `We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills. ...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Ted

The Hermit of Mont-Blanc

...eling ! feeding still
The throbbing heart, with anguish, or with Scorn.

One dreary night when Winter's icy breath
Half petrified the scene, when not a star
Gleam'd o'er the black infinity of space,
Sudden, the HERMIT started from his couch
Fear-struck and trembling! Ev'ry limb was shook
With painful agitation. On his cheek
The blanch'd interpreter of horror mute
Sat terribly impressive! In his breast
The ruddy fount of life convulsive flow'd
And his broad eyes, fix'd motionl...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

The Marmoreal Slumbers

...

And their bodies, where the original blood has congealed,
Sealed within the marbles, austerely patrician,
Are the petrified Phantoms of ancient times
...Read more of this...
by Delville, Jean

The Task: Book V The Winter Morning Walk (excerpts)

...clad
And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,
Fretful if unsupply'd; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall the upright remna...Read more of this...
by Cowper, William

Waking in the Blue

...eaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")

What use is my sense of humour?
I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

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