Famous Stiffening Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Home Burial

...ered under him.
'I will find out now -- you must tell me, dear.'
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and a while he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, 'Oh' and again, 'Oh.'
'What is it -- what?' she said.
'Just that I see.'
'You don't,' she challenged. 'Tell me what it is.'
'The wonder is I didn't see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be won...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


Looking into a Face

...Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body 
Bringing fish up near the sun 
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!

I have wandered in a face for hours 
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born 
Existing like a light around the body
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon....Read more of this...
by Bly, Robert

Mazeppa

...And backward to the forest fly,
By instinct, from a human eye.
They left me there to my despair,
Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch,
Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch,
Relieved from that unwonted weight,
From whence I could not extricate
Nor him nor me - and there we lay
The dying on the dead!
I little deemed another day
Would see my houseless, helpless head.
And there from morn till twilight bound,
I felt the heavy hours toll round,
With just enough of life to se...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Song of Myself

...esh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from
 myself; 
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, 
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, 
Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose, 
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, 
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, 
They bribed...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Standardization

..."; 

I see, stooping among her orchard trees, 
The old, sound Earth, gathering her windfalls in, 
Broad in the hams and stiffening at the knees, 
Pause and I see her grave malicious grin. 

For there is no manufacturer competes 
With her in the mass production of shapes and things. 
Over and over she gathers and repeats 
The cast of a face, a million butterfly wings. 

She does not tire of the pattern of a rose. 
Her oldest tricks still catch us with surprise. 
She cannot rec...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)


The Dog

...ling
dirges, shrieking a little, terrifying
hearts with my whimpering cries before I died
by pulling the one leg up and stiffening.
There is a look we have with the hair of the chin
curled in mid-air, there is a look with the belly
stopped in the midst of its greed. The lover of dead things
stoops to feel me, his hand is shaking. I know
his mouth is open and his glasses are slipping.
I think his pencil must be jerking and the terror
of smell—and sight—is overtaking him;
I kno...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

The Last Leap

...ps beaded cling, 
Small ear drooping, nostril full, 
Glazing to a scarlet ring, 
Flanks and haunches quivering, 
Sinews stiffening, void and null, 
Dumb eyes sorrowful. 

Satin coat that seems to shine 
Duller now, black braided tress 
That a softer hand than mine 
Far away was wont to twine, 
That in meadows far from this 
Softer lips might kiss. 

All is over! this is death, 
And I stand to watch thee die, 
Brave old horse! with bated breath 
Hardly drawn through tight-clen...Read more of this...
by Gordon, Adam Lindsay

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point

...head,
He shivered from head to foot;
Till, after a time, he lay instead
Too suddenly still and mute.
I felt, beside, a stiffening cold, . . .
I dared to lift up just a fold . . .
As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.

XXIII.
But my fruit . . . ha, ha!--there, had been
(I laugh to think on't at this hour! . . .)
Your fine white angels, who have seen
Nearest the secret of God's power, . . .
And plucked my fruit to make them wine,
And sucked the soul of that child of mine,
A...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point

...head,
He shivered from head to foot;
Till, after a time, he lay instead
Too suddenly still and mute.
I felt, beside, a stiffening cold, . . .
I dared to lift up just a fold . . .
As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.

XXIII.
But my fruit . . . ha, ha!--there, had been
(I laugh to think on't at this hour! . . .)
Your fine white angels, who have seen
Nearest the secret of God's power, . . .
And plucked my fruit to make them wine,
And sucked the soul of that child of mine,
A...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Seven Old Men

...n your narrow veins 
My story flows as flows the rising sap. 

One morn, disputing with my tired soul, 
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, 
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar 
Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified 
The houses either side of that sad street, 
So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood 
Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, 
Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- 
A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. 
Then suddenly an aged man, ...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles

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