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Famous Stalking Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...e Adams got;
In ’s hand five taper staves as smooth ’s a bead,
Wi’ virls and whirlygigums at the head.
The Goth was stalking round with anxious search,
Spying the time-worn flaws in every arch;
It chanc’d his new-come neibor took his e’e,
And e’en a vexed and angry heart had he!
Wi’ thieveless sneer to see his modish mien,
He, down the water, gies him this guid-e’en:—


AULD BRIG“I doubt na, frien’, ye’ll think ye’re nae sheepshank,
Ance ye were streekit owre frae bank to...Read more of this...



by Newbolt, Sir Henry
...ning -- 
And when I mounted again to canter back 
I saw across a field in the broad sunlight 
A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along 
With a rook-rifle held at the read, and -- would you believe it? -- 
A domestic cat, soberly marching beside him. 

So I laughed, and felt quite well disposed to the youngster, 
And shouted out "the top of the morning" to him, 
And wished him "Good sport!" -- and then I remembered 
My rank, and his, and what I ought to be doing: 
And I ro...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...
 II.

What so wild as words are?
 I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
 Hawk on bough!

 III.

See the creature stalking
 While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
 Cheek on cheek!

 IV.

What so false as truth is,
 False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is
 Shun the tree—

 V.

Where the apple reddens
 Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
 Eve and I.

 VI.

Be a god and hold me
 With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
 With thine arm!

 VII.

Teach me...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...naught, High Heaven comes down to me,
And future ages pass in tall review.
I see the years to come as armies vast,
Stalking tremendous through the fields of time.
MAN is unborn. To-morrow he is born,
Flame-like to hover o'er the moil and grime,
Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone,
Sowing a million flowers, where now we mourn—
Laying new, precious pavements with a song,
Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn.
I have seen lovers by those new-buil...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...m in the street 
 Her arm that passers push aside. 
 
 If, with raised head and step alert, 
 She sees the rich man stalking by, 
 She touches his embroidered skirt, 
 And gently shows them where they lie. 
 
 She begs for them of careless crowd, 
 Of earnest brows and narrow hearts, 
 That when it hears her cry aloud, 
 Turns like the ebb-tide and departs. 
 
 O miserable he who sings 
 Some strain impure, whose numbers fall 
 Along the cruel wind that brings ...Read more of this...



by Cullen, Countee
...y, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink; no more
Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept.
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see;
What's your nakedness to me?
Here no leprous flowers rear
Fierce corollas ...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...April,
Spill the lank folly's hunter and the hard-held hope.

Down fall four padding weathers on the scarlet lands,
Stalking my children's faces with a tail of blood,
Time, in a rider rising, from the harnessed valley;
Hold hard, my country darlings, for a hawk descends,
Golden Glamorgan straightens, to the falling birds.
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily....Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...isclose the violet.
Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers,
And in that narrow boundary appears,
Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers,
Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon.
And all my hay is at one swoop impresst
By one low-flying swallow for her nest,
Strip god Priapus of each attribute
Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot.
The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon;
And all my vintage drips in a cocoon.
Generous are you, but I more generous still:
T...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...sy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf amoong the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own--
envoy from some vil...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
....

Sunrise and noon and sunset and strange night
And shadow of large clouds and faint starlight
And lonesome Terror stalking round the height,
I minded not, Nirvana.

The silence ground my soul keen like a spear.
My bare thought, whetted as a sword, cut sheer
Through time and life and flesh and death, to clear
My way unto Nirvana.

I slew gross bodies of old ethnic hates
That stirred long race-wars betwixt States and States.
I stood and scorned these fooli...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Sometimes an Eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a Lion
Stalking upon the mountains, and sometimes a Whale, I lash
The raging fathomless abyss; anon a Serpent folding
Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs
On the Canadian wilds I fold; feeble my spirit folds,
For chain'd beneath I rend these caverns: when thou bringest food
I howl my joy, and my red eyes seek to behold thy face--
In vain! these c...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...long thou shalt lament
These braveries in Irons loaden on thee.

Chor: His Giantship is gone somewhat crestfall'n,
Stalking with less unconsci'nable strides,
And lower looks, but in a sultrie chafe.

Sam: I dread him not, nor all his Giant-brood,
Though Fame divulge him Father of five Sons
All of Gigantic size, Goliah chief.

Chor: He will directly to the Lords, I fear, 
And with malitious counsel stir them up
Some way or other yet further to afflict thee.

S...Read more of this...

by Kay, Jackie
...must be now

V
She, my little foreigner
No longer familiar with my womb

Kicking her language of living
Somewhere past stalking her first words

She is six years old today
I am twenty-five; we are only

That distance apart yet
Time has fossilised

Prehistoric time is easier
I can imagine dinosaurs

More vivid than my daughter
Dinosaurs do not hurt my eyes

Nor make me old so terribly old
We are land sliced and torn....Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...in town: 
 Dawn coming—people going—some adown 
 Praying, some crying; pallid cheeks, swift feet, 
 And a huge lion stalking through the street. 
 It seemed scarce short of rash impiety 
 To cross its path as the fierce beast went by. 
 So to the palace and its gilded dome 
 With stately steps unchallenged did he roam; 
 He enters it—within those walls he leapt! 
 No man! 
 
 For certes, though he raged and wept, 
 His majesty, like all, close shelter kept, 
 So...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...way by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go - and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!


'How name ye yon lone Caloyer?
His features I have scanned before 
In mine own land: 'tis many a year,
Since, dashing by the lonely shore,
I saw him urge as fleet a steed
As ever served a horseman's need.
But once I ...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...the key
though we have all thought briefly we found it
drunk or in bed.

Black girls with thin legs and high necks stalking like herons,
plump girls with blue legs and green eyelids and
 strawberry breasts,
swept off to be frozen in fluorescent cubes,
the vacuum of your jobs sucks your brains dry
and fills you with the ooze of melted comics.
Living is later. This is your rented death.
You grasp at hard commodities and vague lusts
to make up, to pay for each d...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...
I saw the oak tree, shattered once by lightning,
Twisted, stripped clean.

I saw the Dioscuri— two black kittens,
Stalking relentlessly an empty spool;
I saw a little girl in scarlet mittens
Trudging through snow to school. 

XXVII 
John read the letter with his lovely smile. 
'Your father has a vigorous English style, 
And what he says is true, upon my word; 
But what's this war of which I never heard? 
We didn't fight in 1812.' 'Yes, John, 
That was the ti...Read more of this...

by Wyatt, Sir Thomas
...They flee from me that sometime did me seek
   With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
   That now are wild and do not remember
   That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
   Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after...Read more of this...

by Tate, James
...m the side
of the road and I zigzagged madly and don't
know if I nipped it or not because up ahead I
could see a coyote stalking the Collier's
cat. Oh well, I said, and drove the rest
of the way home without incident....Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...er gear is slowly through the house,
Up naked stairs, a turtle in a hearse,
Hauled to the dome,

Comes, like a scissors stalking, tailor age,
Deliver me who timid in my tribe,
Of love am barer than Cadaver's trap
Robbed of the foxy tongue, his footed tape
Of the bone inch

Deliver me, my masters, head and heart,
Heart of Cadaver's candle waxes thin,
When blood, spade-handed, and the logic time
Drive children up like bruises to the thumb,
From maid and head,

For, sunday faced...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs