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Famous Staining Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...ing Blood,
     Let loose by steel in spirit-freeing flood,
   Forced from faint forms, by toil or torture torn
     Staining the patient gates of life new born.

   Colour of War and Rage, of Pomp and Show,
     Banners that flash, red flags that flaunt and glow,
   Colour of Carnage, Glory, also Shame,
     Raiment of women women may not name.

   I hide in mines, where unborn Rubies dwell,
     Flicker and flare in fitful fire in Hell,
   The outpressed life-bl...Read more of this...



by Kilmer, Joyce
...rment,
Made in the manner of the Japanese.
It is very blue --
I think that her eyes have made it more blue,
Sweetly staining it
As the pressure of her body has graciously given it form.
Loving her, Monsignore,
I love all her attributes;
But I believe
That even if I did not love her
I would love the blueness of her eyes,
And her blue garment, made in the manner of the Japanese.
Monsignore,
I have never before troubled you with a request.
The saints whose ears I...Read more of this...

by McKay, Claude
...e 
Whereon my passion played his fevered song. 

When June comes dancing o'er the death of May, 
With scarlet roses staining her fair feet, 
My soul takes leave of me to sing all day 
A love so fugitive and so complete....Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...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 barely fail
In life or art that but a hair's more scope...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...
To feed you so. 
But now our right hand hath no cup remaining, 
No work to do, 
The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining 
The whole earth through. 
Most ineradicable stains, for showing 
(Not interfused!) 
That brighter colours were the world’s foregoing, 
Than shall be used. 
Hearken, oh hearken! ye shall hearken surely 
For years and years, 
The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely, 
Of spirits’ tears. 
The yearning to a beautiful denied you, 
Shall...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...wild world's night
To thy perfect day.

God whose feet made sweet
Those wild ways they trod,
From thy fragrant feet
Staining field and street
With the blood of God;

God whose breast is rest
In the time of strife,
In thy secret breast
Sheltering souls opprest
From the heat of life;

God whose eyes are skies
Love-lit as with spheres
By the lights that rise
To thy watching eyes,
Orbed lights of tears;

God whose heart hath part
In all grief that is,
Was not man's the dart
T...Read more of this...

by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...lood for wine,
     Probe his blue veins and pasture on his breast.

   While far away He in the marshes lies,
     Staining the stagnant water with His breath,
   An endless hunger burning in His eyes,
     A famine unassuaged, whose food is Death.

   He hides among the ghostly mists that float
     Over the water, weird and white and chill,
   And peasants, passing in their laden boat,
     Shiver and feel a sense of coming ill.

   A thousand burn and die; He...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...ed e'en the outer rind of vice; no snare 
 With smiling show has lured her steps aside: 
 On her the past has left no staining mark; 
 Nor knows she aught of those bad thoughts which, dark 
 Like shade on waters, o'er the spirit glide. 
 
 She knows not—nor mayest thou—the miseries 
 In which our spirits mingle: vanities, 
 Remorse, soul-gnawing cares, Pleasure's false show: 
 Passions which float upon the heart like foam, 
 Bitter remembrances which o'er us come, 
...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...r, 
and she's herself. 

The little jewels 
on cheek and chin 
darken and go out, 

and in darkness 
nothing falls 
staining her lap....Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...ere as they crash upon the ground
A crowd of labourers gather round
And mix among the shadows dark
To rip the crackling staining bark
From off the tree and lay when done
The rolls in lares to meet the sun
Depriving yearly where they come
The green wood pecker of its home
That early in the spring began
Far from the sight of troubling man
And bord their round holes in each tree
In fancys sweet security
Till startld wi the woodmans noise
It wakes from all its dreaming joys
The b...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...rcely, briefly,
Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.
It is your juice
That runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.
When the earth rights itself again,
And taste tries to return to the tongue,
Your body has slammed shut. Forever.
No keys exist.

Then the window draws full upon
Your mind. There, just beyond
The sway of curtains, men walk.
Knowing something.
Going someplace.
But this time, I will simply
Stand...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...em now; 
 They have absorbed a mind 
 Which must endure the freezing snow 
 They endure and, freezing, find 
 A clear sustaining stream.

He learns to lose

 She was afraid 
 Of everything, 
 The little Digger girl. 
 Pah Utes had killed 
 Her older brother 
 Who may have been her lover 
 The way she cried 
 Over his ring -- 

 The heavy brass 
 On the heavy hand. 
 She carried it for weeks 
 Clenched in her fist 
 As if it might 
 Keep out the loneliness 
 Or the...Read more of this...

by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...The third night, a silvery ring of glass.
Patience arched to endure,
But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood
Was staining her gaze so pure.

Then up did rise our Roodoplh Reed
And pressed the hand of his wife,
And went to the door with a thirty-four
And a beastly butcher knife.

He ran like a mad thing into the night
And the words in his mouth were stinking.
By the time he had hurt his first white man
He was no longer thinking.

By the time he had hurt ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.

What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?
What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,
A-greater, a more gracious time has gone;
For painted forms or boxes of make...Read more of this...

by Davidson, John
.... 

The brave orb in state rose, 
And crimson he shone first; 
While from the high vine 
Of heaven the dawn burst, 
Staining the great rose 
From sky-line to sky-line. 

The red rose of morn 
A white rose at noon turn'd; 
But at sunset reborn 
All red again soon burn'd. 
Then the pale rose of noonday 
Rebloom'd in the night, 
And spectrally white 
 In the light 
Of the moon lay. 

But the vast rose 
 Was scentless, 
And this is the reason: 
When the blast rose...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...the gun
 the dog stayed at his heels

the man shot - twice - and the beast
bellowing with a disbelieving pain
exploded (staining the mist deep red) 
and fell to earth an old white horse

 good good said the gun
 the dog stayed at his heels

a mammoth buffalo brindled and bristling
a taste for death snorting from its snout
hurtled towards the man - with flecks 
of flesh still hanging from its jaws

 shoot shoot shoot said the gun
 the dog stayed at his heels

the man shot - th...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...tling 
the songs of Kate Smith. In the bathroom 
that night I posed naked before the mirror, 
the new cross of hair staining my chest, 
plunging to my groin. That was Wednesday, 
for every Wednesday ended in darkness. 

* 

One of those teenage boys was my brother. 
That night as we lay in bed, the lights 
out, we spoke of Froggy, of how at first 
we thought he would die and how little 
he seemed to care as the blood rose 
to fill and overflow his ear. Slo...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...be the sun descending 
O'er the level plain of water? 
Or the Red Swan floating, flying, 
Wounded by the magic arrow, 
Staining all the waves with crimson, 
With the crimson of its life-blood, 
Filling all the air with splendor, 
With the splendor of its plumage?
Yes; it is the sun descending, 
Sinking down into the water; 
All the sky is stained with purple, 
All the water flushed with crimson! 
No; it is the Red Swan floating, 
Diving down beneath the water; 
To the sky it...Read more of this...

by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...swift waves sunder
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
One gleam like a bloodshot swordblade swims on
The skyline, staining the green gulf crimson
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun
That strikes through his stormy winding sheet.

Oh, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, or your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never a man has ridden
In y...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...ield
and peer down a well
where an albino walrus huffs.
He has the gentlest eyes.
If the dirt keeps sifting in,
staining the water yellow,
why should I be blamed?
Never try to explain.
That single Model A
sputtering up the grade
unfurled a highway behind
where the tanks maneuver,
revolving their turrets.
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
I am lookin...Read more of this...

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