Famous Stabs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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70. Epistle to the Rev. John M'Math

...tain
 In spite of foes:


In spite o’ crowds, in spite o’ mobs,
In spite o’ undermining jobs,
In spite o’ dark banditti stabs
 At worth an’ merit,
By scoundrels, even wi’ holy robes,
 But hellish spirit.


O Ayr! my dear, my native ground,
Within thy presbyterial bound
A candid liberal band is found
 Of public teachers,
As men, as Christians too, renown’d,
 An’ manly preachers.


Sir, in that circle you are nam’d;
Sir, in that circle you are fam’d;
An’ some, by whom your doct...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Call To Arms

...ve mixed it with

The chuckers-out; Kennedy, Morley

And Hulse suffered a sharp repulse.

Heath-Stubbs was making death stabs

With his blindman’s stick at the ankles

Of detractors from his position under

The high table of chivalry, intoning

A prayer to raise the spirit

Of Sidney Keyes.

Geoffrey Hill had Merlin and Arthur

Beside him and was whirling an axe

To great effect, headless New Gen poets

Running amok.

Andrew Crozier was leading a counter-attack

With Caddy an...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Ainsi Va le Monde

...ho best can fawn­and who can flatter most; 
While with a cunning arrogance they blend 
Sound without sense­and wit that stabs a friend; 
Slanders oblique­that check ambition's toil, 
The pois'nous weeds, that mark the barren soil. 
So the sweet blossoms of salubrious spring 
Thro the lone wood their spicy odours fling; 
Shrink from the sun, and bow their beauteous heads 
To scatter incense o'er their native beds, 
While coarser flow'rs expand with gaudy ray, 
Brave the rude w...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

An American

...by sloven friends,
 He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
 Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
 Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
 He dubs his dreary breathren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
 Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.

But, through the shift of mood and mood,
 Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
 T...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

An Expostulation

...side its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits 
Strangeness that moves us more than fear, 
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear, 
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart 
That finger-tip at which we start 
As if some thought too swift and shy 
For reason's grasp had just gone by?...Read more of this...
by Lewis, C S


An Opera House

...osses the stage behind.
Gold carving edges the balconies,
Rims the boxes,
Runs up and down fluted pillars.
Little knife-stabs of gold
Shine out whenever a box door is opened.
Gold clusters
Flash in soft explosions
On the blue darkness,
Suck back to a point,
And disappear.
Hoops of gold
Circle necks, wrists, fingers,
Pierce ears,
Poise on heads
And fly up above them in coloured sparkles.
Gold!
Gold!
The opera house is a treasure-box of gold.
Gold in a broad smear across the or...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Apples

....

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole....Read more of this...
by Lee, Laurie

Arion to a Dolphin On His Majestys passage into England

...Conscience laid, 
By Foes pursu'd, by Friends betray'd; 
Then Heaven, his secret potent friend, 
Did him from Drugs and Stabs defend; 
And, what's more yet, kept him upright 
‘Midst flattering Hope and bloudy Fight. 
Cromwell his whole Right never gain'd, 
Defender of the Faith remain'd, 
For which his Predecessors fought 
And writ, but none so dearly bought. 
Never was Prince so much beseiged, 
At home provok'd, abroad obliged; 
Nor ever Man resisted thus, 
No not great Atha...Read more of this...
by Philips, Katherine

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

...reputed rash, but yet
I doubt if all be gay within the house.
ERIPHYLE: O! O! another stroke! that makes the third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
CHORUS: If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct....Read more of this...
by Housman, A E

Futility

...
They char, they flicker and their pages turn. 

And as you stand to poke them in the flame,
You see a living line that stabs the heart.
Brave writing that! It seems a cursed shame
That to a bonfire it should play it's part.
Poor book! You're crying, and you're not alone:
Some day someone will surely burn my own. 

No, I will dust my books and put them by,
Yet never look into their leaves again;
For scarce a soul remembers them save I,
Re-reading them would only give me pain....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Her Voice

...a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty, - you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you....Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Isabella or The Pot of Basil

...ite
Of pride and avarice,--the dark pine roof
In the forest,--and the sodden turfed dell,
Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

XXXVIII.
Saying moreover, "Isabel, my sweet!
"Red whortle-berries droop above my head,
"And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
"Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed
"Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
"Comes from beyond the river to my bed:
"Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
"And it shall comfort me within the...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Monody to the Memory of Chatterton

...nviction's flame shall shed a radiant glow; 
His infant MUSE shall bind with nerves of fire 
The sacrilegious hand that stabs its sire. 
Methinks, I hear his wand'ring shade complain,
While mournful ECHO lingers on the strain; 
Thro' the lone aisle his restless spirit calls, 
His phantom glides along the minster's § walls; 
Where many an hour his devious footsteps trod, 
Ere Fate resign'd him TO HIS PITYING GOD. 

Yet, shall the MUSE to gentlest sorrow prone
Adopt his cause, ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

The Dream of Eugene Aram

...en, of bloody men, 
Whose deeds tradition saves; 
Of lonely folks cut off unseen, 
And hid in sudden graves; 
Of horrid stabs, in groves forlorn, 
And murders done in caves;

And how the sprites of injured men 
Shriek upward from the sod. -- 
Ay, how the ghostly hand will point 
To show the burial clod: 
And unknown facts of guilty acts 
Are seen in dreams from God!

He told how murderers walk the earth 
Beneath the curse of Cain, -- 
With crimson clouds before their eyes, 
A...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

The Portent

...aying (such the law), 
Gaunt the shadow on the green, 
Shenandoah! 
The cut is on the crown 
(Lo, John Brown), 
And the stabs shall heal no more. 

Hidden in the cap 
Is the anguish none can draw; 
So your future veils its face, 
Shenandoah! 
But the streaming beard is shown 
(Weird John Brown), 
The meteor of the war....Read more of this...
by Melville, Herman

The Relapse

...damp, 
Dark as my deeds, 
Should mist within me, and put out that lamp 
Thy spirit feeds; 
A darting conscience full of stabs and fears; 
No shade but Yew, 
Sullen, and sad eclipses, cloudy spheres, 
These are my due. 
But he that with his blood, (a price too dear,) 
My scores did pay, 
Bid me, by virtue from him, challenge here 
The brightest day; 
Sweet, downy thoughts; soft lily-shades; calm streams; 
Joys full and true; 
Fresh, spicy mornings; and eternal beams 
These are...Read more of this...
by Vaughan, Henry

The Soudan, The Sphinxes, The Cup, The Lamp

...read and meat." 
 "I have no hands," Ninus replies. "Yet, eat!" 


 Zim pierced to the very quick by these repeated stabs, 
 Sprang to his feet, while from him pealed a fearful shout, 
 And, furious, flung down upon the marble slabs 
 The richly carved and golden Lamp, whose light went out— 
 Then glided in a form strange-shaped, 
 In likeness of a woman, moulded in dense smoke, 
 Veiled in thick, ebon fog, in utter darkness draped, 
 A glimpse of which, in short, ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

The Waiting

...h.

My father needs O 2
all the time now. 
His innocence 
in countering the surgeons’ truth
with his wishes and beliefs
stabs me in the heart 
with love
while his every movement
is pain.

He says he is ready
but I feel his fear.

The hum of the universe
is machine noise,
a motor with it’s timing off.

I meditate on this:
silence is a whistle,
a din in the wind,
in the dark....Read more of this...
by Subraman, Belinda

Waikiki

...th from vine and tree
Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes
Somewhere an `eukaleli' thrills and cries
And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.
And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;
And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,
An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
Of t...Read more of this...
by Brooke, Rupert

Winged Man

...Dropping gold, dropping gold, where the mists of morning rolled, 
On he kept his way undaunted, though his breaths were stabs of cold, 
Through the mystery of dawning that no mortal may behold. 

Now he shouts, now he sings in the rapture of his wings, 
And his great heart burns intenser with the strength of his desire, 
As he circles like a swallow, wheeling, flaming, gyre on gyre. 

Gazing straight at the sun, half his pilgrimage is done, 
And he staggers for a moment, hurr...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

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