Famous Stabbing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Acknowledgment

...sees all eternity.


III.

If I do ask, How God can dumbness keep
While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time,
Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep,
And staining holy walls with clots of crime? --
Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact
Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply
Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked
Of grace or bread? -- or, How may Power deny
Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope --
These heart-break Hamlets who so ba...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney


Authors Prologue

...and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my swan, splay sounds),
Out of these s...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

Beowulf (Modern English)

...A braided breast-net lay across his shoulders,
and it saved his life, against point and blade alike,
withstanding the stabbing attack.
Then the son of Ecgtheow, the Geatish champion 
might have perished upon the broad lake-floor,
except his battle-byrnie effected him help,
the hardened war-net, as well as Holy God
parceling out battle-victory. The knowing Lord,
Ruler of the Heavens determined it by right,
with much ease—when he stood up again. (1543-56)

 

XXIII...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Good-Bye Little Cabin

...ted so.
The shadows enfold you, it's drawing to-night;
The evening star needles the sky:
And huh! but it's stinging and stabbing my sight --
God bless you, old cabin, good-bye!...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Hypochondriac

...n the bony cage of my lungs
I can feel the heart attack’s prologue,
the opening words of some prolific pain
like a bird stabbing its incessant beak 
into the ripe red meat of my heart....Read more of this...
by Tusa, Chris


Malmaison

...r, I suppose. That -- all green, 
and red,
and glitter, with flesh as dark as ebony -- that is a slave; a bloodthirsty,
stabbing, slashing heathen, come from the hot countries to cure 
your tongue
of idle whispering.

A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sailing over the 
trees.

"Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star 
I pinned
to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember 
her prophecy!
My dear friend, not here, the servants...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Muckers

...TWENTY men stand watching the muckers.
Stabbing the sides of the ditch
Where clay gleams yellow,
Driving the blades of their shovels
Deeper and deeper for the new gas mains
Wiping sweat off their faces
With red bandanas
The muckers work on . . pausing . . to pull
Their boots out of suckholes where they slosh.

Of the twenty looking on
Ten murmer, "O, its a hell of a job,"
Ten others, "Jesus, I wi...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

...as big as a barn door;
The gas-lamp flickered away to a sputtering blue star,
And the keyhole went out with it.
Such a stabbing, and jabbing,
And sticking, and picking,
And poking, and pushing, and prying
With that key;
And there is no denying that Mr. Spruggins rapped out an oath or 
two,
Rub-a-dub-dubbing them out to a real snare-drum roll.
But the door opened at last,
And Mr. Spruggins blew through it into his own hall
And slammed the door to so hard
That the knocker bang...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Rain After a Vaudeville Show

...The last pose flickered, failed. The screen's dead white 
Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light 
Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out 
The curtain rose. A fat girl with a pout 
And legs like hams, began to sing "His Mother". 
Gusts of bad air rose in a choking smother; 
Smoke, the wet steam of clothes, the stench of plush, 
Powder, cheap perfume, mingled in a rush. 
I stepped into the lobby -- and stood still 
Struck dumb by sudden beauty, body and ...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

...e blades with a subtle poison, so
A twofold result may follow the blow.
These are purchased by men who feel
The need of stabbing society's heel,
Which egotism has brought them to think
Is set on their necks. I have foils to pink
An adversary to quaint reply,
And I have customers who buy
Scalpels with which to dissect the brains
And hearts of men. Ultramundanes
Even demand some finer kinds
To open their own souls and minds.
But the other half of my business deals
With visions ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Drug-Shop or Endymion in Edmonstoun

...ifting feather 
My love slipped from my knee. 

Within, the lights were yellow 
In drowsy rooms and warm; 
Without, the stabbing lightning 
Shattered across the storm. 

Within, the great logs crackled, 
The drink-horns emptied soon; 
Without, the black cloaks of the clouds 
Strangled the waning moon. 

My love crossed o'er the threshold -- 
God! but the night was murk! 
I set myself against the cold, 
And left them to their work. 

Their shouts rolled to the rafters; 
A bitt...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

The Everlasting Mercy

...fleas, 
You suck blood from kindly friends, 
And kill them when it serves your ends., 
Double traitors, double black, 
Stabbing only in the back, 
Stabbing with the knives you borrow 
From the friends you bring to sorrow. 
You stab all that's true and strong, 
Truth and strength you say are wrong, 
Meek and mild, and sweet and creeping, 
Repeating, canting cadging, peeping, 
That's the art and that's the life 
To win a man his neighbour's wife. 
All that's good and all that'...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The house where I was born (04)

...d, I went in haste, looking for
At least some kind of shed, beneath the load
Of branches that were full of
Rough edges, stabbing pains, points, cries.

And voices that cast shadows on the road,
Or called to me, and, my heart beating fast,
I turned around to face the empty road....Read more of this...
by Bonnefoy, Yves

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...hilt flew down, and left
Lord Raoul unfriended of his weapon.
Then
The fool cried shrilly, "Shall a knight of France
Go stabbing his own cattle?" And Lord Raoul,
Calm with a changing mood, sat still and called:
"Here, huntsmen, 'tis my will ye seize the hind
That broke my dagger, bind him to this tree
And slice both ears to hair-breadth of his head,
To be his bloody token of regret
That he hath put them to so foul employ
As catching villainous breath of strolling priests
That...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Lie

...to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing—
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing— 
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill....Read more of this...
by Raleigh, Sir Walter

The Sea And the Hills

...s!

Who hath desired the Sea? -- the immense and contemptuous surges?
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing bow-sprit emerges?
The orderly clouds of the Trades, the ridged, roaring sapphire thereunder --
Unheralded cliff-haunting flaws and the headsail's low-volleying thunder --
His Sea in no wonder the same his Sea and the same through each wonder:
 His Sea as she rages or stills?
So and no otherwise -- so and no otherwise -- hillmen desire their Hills.
...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

To A Young Artist

...e sold the armor, you have bought shining
 with burning, one should be stronger than
 strength
To fight baresark in the stabbing field
In the rage of the stars: I tell you unconsciousness
 is the treasure, the tower, the fortress;
Referred to that one may live anything;
The temple and the tower: poor dancer on the flints
 and shards in the temple porches, turn home....Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson

Town and Country

...Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side
Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.
In every touch more intimate meanings hide;
And flaming brains are the white heart of all.

Here, million pulses to one centre beat:
Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,
Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet
On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.

Here the green-purple clanging royal nigh...Read more of this...
by Brooke, Rupert

With Scindia to Delphi

...rike a blow,
 For foot to foot, ay, breast to breast, the battle held us fast --
Save where the naked hill-men ran, and stabbing from below
 Brought down the horse and rider and we trampled them and passed.

To left the roar of musketry rang like a falling flood --
 To right the sunshine rippled red from redder lance and blade --
Above the dark Upsaras* flew, beneath us plashed the blood,
 And, bellying black against the dust, the Bhagwa Jhanda swayed.

* The Choosers of the ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

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