Famous Stalled Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Approaching The Veil Scientifically

...ndow.
Astronomers look
for the beginning
and find there is no end.

Down to earth
there are frozen lines,
winter trees,
stalled cars in dirty snow,
sorrow over endings.

The real world is through the window,
infinite, ageless.
Though a clear veil
keeps us distant,
the soul of what 
we can never prove
keeps us close....Read more of this...
by Subraman, Belinda


Balin and Balan

...e this crown-royal upon shield?' 
Said Balin 'For the fairest and the best 
Of ladies living gave me this to bear.' 
So stalled his horse, and strode across the court, 
But found the greetings both of knight and King 
Faint in the low dark hall of banquet: leaves 
Laid their green faces flat against the panes, 
Sprays grated, and the cankered boughs without 
Whined in the wood; for all was hushed within, 
Till when at feast Sir Garlon likewise asked 
'Why wear ye that crown-r...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Certain Maxims Of Hafiz

...I.
If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai,
Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
If She be pleasant to look on, what does the Young Man say?
"Lo! She is pleasant to look on, give Her to me to-day!"

 II.
Yea, though a Kafir die, to him is remitted Jehannum
If he borrowed in life from a native at sixty per cent. per anuum.

 III.
Blister we not for bur...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Hot

...blue couch
with scotch on the rocks
crossing her legs and swinging her ankles
like she did,
2 more stops. . .
the truck stalled at a traffic light, it was hell
kicking it over
again. . .
I had to be home by 8,8 was the deadline for Miriam.
I made the last pickup and the truck stalled at a signal
1/2 block from the station. . .
it wouldn't start, it couldn't start. . .
I locked the doors, pulled the key and ran down to the 
station. . .
I threw the keys down. . .signed out. . ...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Meditation On Saviors

...sion, sufficient
 blindness, and clemency for love.

This is the breath of rottenness I smelt; from the world
 waiting, stalled between storms, decaying a little,
Bitterly afraid to be hurt, but knowing it cannot draw the
 savior Caesar but out of the blood-bath.

The apes of Christ lift up their hands to praise love: but
 wisdom without love is the present savior,
Power without hatred, mind like a many-bladed machine subduing
 the world with deep indifference.

The apes of C...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson


Night Shift

...ded in wept guesswork: 
Framed in windows of Main Street's 
Silver factory, immense 

Hammers hoisted, wheels turning, 
Stalled, let fall their vertical 
Tonnage of metal and wood; 
Stunned in marrow. Men in white 

Undershirts circled, tending 
Without stop those greased machines, 
Tending, without stop, the blunt 
Indefatigable fact....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Priscilla

...Croix de Guerre?
Bless you, that's all old stuff:
Beast of a night on the Verdun road,
Jerry stuck with a woeful load,
Stalled in the mud where the red lights glowed,
Prospect devilish tough.

"Little Priscilla" he called his car,
Best of our battered bunch by far,
Branded with many a bullet scar,
Yet running so sweet and true.
Jerry he loved her, knew her tricks;
Swore: "She's the beat of the best big six,
And if ever I get in a deuce of a fix
Priscilla will pull me through...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...phon off the life of the studio, deflate
Its mapped space to enactments, island it.
That operation has been temporarily stalled
But something new is on the way, a new preciosity
In the wind. Can you stand it,
Francesco? Are you strong enough for it?
This wind brings what it knows not, is
Self--propelled, blind, has no notion
Of itself. It is inertia that once
Acknowledged saps all activity, secret or public:
Whispers of the word that can't be understood
But can be felt, a chi...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Syringa

...Is wrong. For although memories, of a season, for example,
Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure
That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting;
It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal,
Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt,
Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this
Is to become the tossing reeds of that slow, 
Powerful stream, the trailing grasses
Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action
No more than this. Then ...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

The Klondike

...is own way—no, you needn’t shake him— 
Your own turn will come, so let the man sleep. 
For this is what we know: we are stalled here together— 
Hands and feet and hearts of us, to find the golden river.

And there’s a quicker way than sleep? … Never mind the looks of him: 
All he needs now is a finger on the eyes of him. 
You there on the left hand, reach a little over— 
Shut the stars away, or he’ll see them all night: 
He’ll see them all night and he’ll see them all tomorro...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Magpie Evening: A Prayer

...ed a cable, performed CPR on
The carburetor while my three children shivered
Through the unanswerable questions about stalled.
He chose shotgun, full in the face, so no one stepped
Into the cold, blowing on his hands, to fix him.
Let him rest now, the minister says.  Let this be,
Repeating himself to four brothers, five sisters,
All of them my neighbors until they grew and left.
Let us pray.  Let us manage what we need to say.
Let this house with its three hand-made ...Read more of this...
by Fincke, Gary

The Mower

...The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of ...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Two Views Of A Cadaver Room

...dle in the hands
Of the death's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

White Flock

...stars up high
City of clean water towers,
Golden Bakchisarai

There behind a colored fencing
By the pensive water stalled
Village of the Tsar's gardens
With rejoicing we recalled.

And the eagles of Catherine
Suddenly recognized - it's that!
He had flown to valley bottom
From the ornate bronze-clad gate.

That the song of parting heartache
In the memory longer lives,
The dark-bodied mother autumn
Brought to me the redding leaves

And she sprinkled on her s...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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