Famous Stocking Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Stocking poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous stocking poems. These examples illustrate what a famous stocking poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas Moore
Great Sultan, how wise are thy state compositions!
And oh, above all, I admire that Decree,
In which thou command'st, that all she politicians
Shall forthwith be strangled and cast in the sea.
'Tis my fortune to know a lean Benthamite spinster --
A maid, who her faith in old Jeremy puts;
Who talks, with a lisp, of the "last new Westminster,"
And hopes you're delighted...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
APENECK SWEENEY spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.
Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees
Slips...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
These -- saw Visions --
Latch them softly --
These -- held Dimples --
Smooth them slow --
This -- addressed departing accents --
Quick -- Sweet Mouth -- to miss thee so --
This -- We stroked --
Unnumbered Satin --
These -- we held among our own --
Fingers of the Slim Aurora --
Not so arrogant -- this Noon --
These -- adjust -- that ran to...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
NEAR Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.
Saint Edward cried, “It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin!
An old gray-beard and the frost so keen:
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.”
He stripped...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'A ticket for the lottery
I've purchased every week,' said she
'For years a score
Though desperately poor am I,
Oh how I've scrimped and scraped to buy
One chance more.
Each week I think I'll gain the prize,
And end my sorrows and my sighs,
For I'll be rich;
Then nevermore I'll eat bread dry,
With icy hands to cry and cry
And stitch and...Read more of this...
by
Diane Wakoski
Photograph negative
her black arm: a diving porpoise,
sprawled across the ice-banked pillow.
Head: a sheet of falling water.
Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light.
This woman,
photographed sleeping.
The man,
making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain.
Sleep stain them both,
as if cloudy semen
rubbed shiningly over the surface
will be used to develop their images.
on the desert
the porpoises curl up,
their...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
Well, eight months ago one clear cold day,
I took a ramble up Broadway,
And with my hands behind my back
I strolled along on the streetcar track—
(I walked on the track, for walking there
Gives one, I think, a distinguished air.)
“Well, all of a sudden I felt a jar
And I said, “I’ll bet that’s a trolley car,”
And, sure enough, when I looked...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs … near the shingle mill … winter morning.
Falling of a dry leaf might be heard … circular steel tears through a log.
Slope of woodland … brown … soft … tinge of blue such as pansy eyes.
Farther, field fires … funnel of yellow smoke … spellings of other yellow in corn stubble.
Bobsled...Read more of this...
by
Suheir Hammad
poem supposed to be about
one minute and the lives of three women in it
writing it and up
the block a woman killed
by her husband
poem now about one minute
and the lives of four women
in it
haitian mother
she walks through
town carrying her son's
head—banging it against
her thigh calling out
creole come see, see what
they've done to my flesh
holds on to him grip tight
through hair...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.
In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
I count my treasures o'er with care.--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.
Long years ago this holy time,
My little one--my all to me--
Sat robed in white upon my knee
And heard the merry Christmas chime.
"Tell me, my little golden-head,
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright,--
What treasure...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
What tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
vA...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas on the 9th of September, a very beautiful day,
That a numerous English army came in grand array,
And pitched their tents on Flodden field so green
In the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and thirteen.
And on the ridge of Braxton hill the Scottish army lay,
All beautifully arrayed, and eager for the fray,
And near by stood their noble king...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Johnny shall have a new bonnet,
And Johnny shall go to the fair,
And Johnny shall have a blue ribbon
To tie up his bonny brown hair.
And why may not I love Johnny?
And why may not Johnny love me?
And why may not I love Johnny
As well as another body?
And here's a leg for a stocking,
...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light
'We think differently at night'
she told me once
lying back languidly
And she would quote Cocteau
'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
The women are all wearing imitation silk scarves,
Blackpool or Biarritz, sipping Woman, masticating
The morning’s post, new babies and bathrooms, going
To file, snip, fiddle and smile through fish-eyes,
Crinkly green gloss, store it in stocking-tops
For next year abroad, that Pill, so perfect!
Flashing smiles from shiny domes and polished eye-lenses,
The men are glossy all over, snapping mortgages and scores
They slap fellow-souls at...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp was strung,
Without one word of...Read more of this...
by
Erin Belieu
I've known the pleasures of being
fired at least eleven times—
most notably by Larry who found my snood
unsuitable, another time by Jack,
whom I was sleeping with. Poor attitude,
tardiness, a contagious lack
of team spirit; I have been unmotivated
squirting perfume onto little cards,
while stocking salad bars, when stripping
covers from romance novels, their heroines
slaving on the chain gang of obsessive love—
and always the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas just this time, last year, I died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms --
It had the Tassels on --
I thought how yellow it would look --
When Richard went to mill --
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.
I thought just how Red -- Apples wedged
The Stubble's joints between --
And the...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John
Went to bed with his breeches on,
One stocking off, and one stocking on;
Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John....Read more of this...
by
Paul Verlaine
High-heels were struggling with a full-length dress
So that, between the wind and the terrain,
At times a shining stocking would be seen,
And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness.
Also, at times a jealous insect's dart
Bothered out beauties. Suddenly a white
Nape flashed beneath the branches, and this sight
Was a delicate feast for a young fool's heart.
Evening fell, equivocal, dissembling,
The women who...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen it...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
The lump of coal my parents teased
I'd find in my Christmas stocking
turned out each year to be an orange,
for I was their sunshine.
Now I have one C. gave me,
a dense node of sleeping fire.
I keep it where I read and write.
"You're on chummy terms with dread,"
it reminds me. "You kiss ambivalence
on both cheeks. But if you close your
heart to...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Beside a crib that holds a baby’s stocking,
A tattered picture book, a broken toy,
A sleeping mother dreams that she is rocking
Her fair-haired cherub boy.
Upon the cradle’s side her light touch keeping,
She gently rocks it, crooning low a song;
And smiles to think her little one is sleeping,
So peacefully and long.
Step light, breathe low, break not her rapturous dreaming,
Wake not the...Read more of this...
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