Famous Pricking Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pricking poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pricking poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pricking poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ardens brown leaves fall,
Flutter,
Fall.
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.
Blue-black, the sky over Venice,
With a pricking of yellow stars.
There is no moon,
And the waves push darkly against the prow
Of the gondola,
Coming from Malamocco
And streaming toward Venice.
It is black under the gondola hood,
But the yellow of a satin dress
Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger.
Yellow compassed about with darkness,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
The boatman sin...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...0 That second Richard must be clapp'd i' th' Tower?
41 Or is it the fatal jar, again begun,
42 That from the red, white pricking Roses sprung?
43 Must Richmond's aid the Nobles now implore
44 To come and break the tushes of the Boar?
45 If none of these, dear Mother, what's your woe?
46 Pray, do not fear Spain's bragging Armado.
47 Doth your Ally, fair France, conspire your wrack,
48 Or doth the Scots play false behind your back?
49 Doth Holland quit you ill for all your love...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...nd poyson know.
XVII
His mother deere, Cupid offended late,
Because that Mars, growne slacker in her loue,
With pricking shot he did not throughly moue
To keepe the place of their first louing state.
The boy refusde for fear of Marses hate,
Who threatned stripes if he his wrath did proue;
But she, in chafe, him from her lap did shoue,
Brake bowe, brake shafts, while Cupid weeping sate;
Till that his grandame Nature, pitying it,
Of Stellaes brows made him two be...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...ith child
and a twist of her gray hair
been dipped in oil
and set alight, releasing the essence
of her life’s elixir, pricking
the nostrils of her children
and her children’s children
whose amber faces nod and shine
like a ring of lanterns
strung around her final flare--
but instead, she lives in this white room
gnawing on a plastic bracelet
as she is emptied, filled and emptied....Read more of this...
by
Taylor, Marilyn L
...of all that checks your will,
All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,
Or even to be an atheistic priest!
Suppose a pricking to incontinence--
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So, stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:
I re...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ath top, pot sink and
Cooking with a Yorkist range blackleaded
Every day and blackberrying down Knostrop
With thorns pricking blood from our fingers
Like the wicked witch in the wood and jam
Jar fulls of frogspawn on the windowsills.
10
The Roundhouse at Holbeck
Housed the engines of Empire
Kirkstall Forge hammered out
Axles and bogeys for wagons
Yellow flames in the velvet
Dark with the great wheel stuck
In the earth for two hundred
Years; when a man jammed in ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ot say that I was not annoyed,
But something of the same serenity
That fortified me later made me feel
For their skin-pricking arrows not so much
Of pain as of a vigorous defect
In this world’s archery. I might have tried,
With a flat facetiousness, to demonstrate
What they had only snapped at and thereby
Made out of my best evidence no more
Than comfortable food for their conceit;
But patient wisdom frowned on argument,
With a side nod for silence, and I smoked
A s...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...and allow them bright;
And in this show what Christ hath done.
That which before was darkned clean
With bushy groves, pricking the looker's eye,
Vanisht away, when Faith did change the scene:
And then appear'd a glorious sky.
What though my body run to dust?
Faith cleaves unto it, counting ev'ry grain
With an exact and most particular trust,
Reserving all for flesh again....Read more of this...
by
Herbert, George
...'
What recketh he his rider's angry stir,
His flattering 'Holla,' or his 'Stand, I say?'
What cares he now for curb of pricking spur?
For rich caparisons or trapping gay?
He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
Nor nothing else with his proud sight agrees.
Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel a common one,
In sh...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
"Lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
"Come buy," call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
"O! cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men."
Lizzie covered up her eyes
Covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glos...Read more of this...
by
Rossetti, Christina
...never birth,
Since Alexander's days till now,
As thy Bucephalus and thou:
All Scythia's fame to thine should yield
For pricking on o'er flood and field.'
Mazeppa answered - " Ill betide
The school wherein I learned to ride!
Quoth Charles -'Old Hetman, wherefore so,
Since thou hast learned the art so well?
Mazeppa said - "Twere long to tell;
And we have many a league to go,
With every now and then a blow,
And ten to one at least the foe,
Before our steeds may graze at ease,
B...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ging heavily, in life's last day,His suffering frame, on pious journey bent,Pricking with earnest prayers his good intent,Though bow'd with years, and weary with the way,He reaches Rome, still following his desireThe likeness of his Lord on earth to see,Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to meet;So I, too, seek, nor in the fo...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...ill air,Nor proud ships riding on the tranquil main,Nor armed knights light pricking o'er the plain,Nor deer in glades disporting void of care,Nor tidings hoped by recent messenger,Nor tales of love in high and gorgeous strain,Nor by clear stream, green mead, or shady laneSweet-chaunted roundelay of lady fair;Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...unravished Artemis
Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.
Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!
It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
Th...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...
382 Crispin as hermit, pure and capable,
383 Dwelt in the land. Perhaps if discontent
384 Had kept him still the pricking realist,
385 Choosing his element from droll confect
386 Of was and is and shall or ought to be,
387 Beyond Bordeaux, beyond Havana, far
388 Beyond carked Yucatan, he might have come
389 To colonize his polar planterdom
390 And jig his chits upon a cloudy knee.
391 But his emprize to that idea soon sped.
392 Crispin dwelt in the land...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...nk to him reserved.
Therefore he was a prickasour* aright: *hard rider
Greyhounds he had as swift as fowl of flight;
Of pricking* and of hunting for the hare *riding
Was all his lust,* for no cost would he spare. *pleasure
I saw his sleeves *purfil'd at the hand *worked at the end with a
With gris,* and that the finest of the land. fur called "gris"*
And for to fasten his hood under his chin,
He had of gold y-wrought a curious pin;
A love-knot in the greater end there was.
H...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ts, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,
Wherein all plunged and perished!
- Save one who, stout a Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As he, the manu...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...mote slit by streaks of red,
He sees it split and stream, and all about his head
Spikes and spears of gold are licking, pricking, flicking,
Scratching against the walls and furniture, and nicking
The darkness into sparks, chipping away the gloom.
The Boy's nose smarts with the pungence in the room.
The wind pushes an elm branch from before the door
And the sun widens out all along the floor,
Filling the barn-chamber with white, straightforward light,
So not one blurred outlin...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...
The storm-king flies,
His whip he plies,
And bellows down the wind.
The lightning rash
With blinding flash
Comes pricking on behind.
Rise, waters, rise,
And taunt the skies
With your swift-flitting form.
Sweep, wild winds, sweep,
And tear the deep
To atoms in the storm.
And the waters leapt,
And the wild winds swept,
And blew out the moon in the sky,
And I laughed with glee,
It was joy to me
As the storm went raging by!
...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...er,
Making his sport, that manie makes to weep:
A sword-fish small him from the rest did sunder,
That in his throat him pricking softly vnder,
His wide Abysse him forced forth to spewe,
That all the sea did roare like heauens thunder,
And all the waues were stain'd with filthie hewe.
Hereby I learned haue, not to despise,
What euer thing seemes small in common eyes.
6
An hideous Dragon, dreadfull to behold,
Whose backe was arm'd against the dint of speare
With shields of br...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
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