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Famous Stilted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilbur, Richard
...With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the 
arid
Sun. They are slow, proud, 

And move with a stilted stride
To the land of sheer horizon, hunting Traherne's
Sensible emptiness, there where the brain's lantern-slide
Revels in vast returns.

O connoisseurs of thirst, 
Beasts of my soul who long to learn to drink
Of pure mirage, those prosperous islands are accurst
That shimmer on the brink

Of absence; auras, lustres, 
And all shinings need to be ...Read more of this...



by Cheney-Coker, Syl
...feel,
I offer an inventory of abuse by these men,
with this wretched earth on my palms,
so as to remind them of our stilted growth
the length of a cutlass, or if you prefer
the size of our burnt-out brotherhood....Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...holesome and more sweet 
Than ever yet were known to the "elite."

Herein can dwell no pretence and no seeming; 
No stilted pride thrives in this atmosphere, 
Which stimulates a tendency to dreaming. 
The shores of the ideal world, from here, 
Seem sometimes to be tangible and near.

We have no use for formal codes of fashion; 
No "Etiquette f Courts" we emulate; 
We know it needs sincerity and passion 
To carry out the plans of God, or fate; 
We do not strive to ...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...and doorstep,
Winter passes as the lighted streetcar
Moves at midnight, one scene of the past,
Droll and unreal, stiff, stilted and hooded....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing Stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;

A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and...Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...ust be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

 II

What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But wha...Read more of this...

by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am a...Read more of this...

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