Get Your Premium Membership

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).

See also:

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...y flesh
holds on to him grip tight
through hair wool
his head all that's 
left of her

in tunisia
she folds pay up into stocking
washes his european semen
off her head
hands her heart to god
and this month's rent to mother
sings berber the gold
haired one favored me, rode
and ripped my flesh, i now
have food to eat

brooklyn lover
stumbles—streets ragged under sneakers
she carries her heart
banged up against
thighs crying ghetto
look, look what's been done with
my flesh, my t...Read more of this...
by Hammad, Suheir



...shot 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 climbs up his thigh: gangrene....Read more of this...
by Brodsky, Joseph
...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 sl...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...walked away
as if so much good fortune
must be hurried away from,

before anyone realizes it's a mistake.
Carlotta, her stocking cap glazed
like feathers in the rain,

under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts,
must have wondered at my impulse to touch her,
which was like touching myself,

the way your own hand feels when you hold it
because you want to feel contained.
She said, You get home safe now, you hear?

In the same way Ezekiel turned back
to the benevolent stra...Read more of this...
by Doty, Mark
...sped his evening prayer
He asked the boon with childish grace;
Then, toddling to the chimney-place,
He hung this little stocking there.

That night, while lengthening shadows crept,
I saw the white-winged angels come
With singing to our lowly home
And kiss my darling as he slept.

They must have heard his little prayer,
For in the morn, with rapturous face,
He toddled to the chimney-place,
And found this little treasure there.

They came again one Christmas-tide,--
That angel...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene



..., 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 a distance, gun down the abusive

Clacking conductress, apologise over-loudly for their too

Quiet cars. Plump fingers stroke smooth cheeks - bounce

Bo...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...e flickering flare under her ribs, 
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse, 
for the mother's knee, for the stocking, 
for the garter belt, for the call -- 
the curious call 
when you will burrow in arms and breasts 
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair 
and answer the call, the curious call. 
She is so naked and singular 
She is the sum of yourself and your dream. 
Climb her like a monument, step after step. 
She is solid. 
As for me, I am a watercolor. 
I wa...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...her,
Elbowed and jostled her,
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.

White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood,
Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashed by tides obstreperously, --
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire, --
Like a...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina
...er children's lives are so sweet!) 
and because in the drunken, shimmering starlight 
the new moon whoops it up, 
and a stocking crackles a bit at the knee, 
gold in itself and tinged by the sun, 
like a reminder of life, 
and because there is resin on tree trunks, 
and because I was madly mistaken 
in thinking that my life was over, 
like a reminder of my life - 
you entered into me on stockinged feet. 
You entered - neither too late nor too early -
at exactly the right time...Read more of this...
by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
...e would smile and look away 
 light a cigarette for me
    sigh and rise

and stretch
 her sweet anatomy

   let fall a stocking...Read more of this...
by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...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 me ever I'll wreathe you in flames
and convert you to energy."

I don't ...Read more of this...
by Matthews, William
...uare sail of the gundelow 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Concheco town, 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways), 
The story of her early days, -- 
She made us welcome to her home; 
Old h...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...eeney’s knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganised upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore th...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...y, no there's not!'


The children wept all Christmas eve
And Jabez chortled up his sleeve.
No infant dared hang up his stocking
For fear of Jabez' ribald mocking.


He sprawled on his untidy bed,
Fresh malice dancing in his head,
When presently with scalp-a-tingling,
Jabez heard a distant jingling;
He heard the crunch of sleigh and hoof
Crisply alighting on the roof.
What good to rise and bar the door?
A shower of soot was on the floor.


What was beheld by Jabez Dawes?
The ...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...thrusting
This way or that to suit her. At last 
sitting,
Or rather plumping down upon a chair,
She took her work, the stocking she was knitting,
And watched the rain upon the window glare
In white, bright drops. Through the black glass a flare
Of lightning squirmed about her needles. "Oh!"
She cried. "What can be keeping Theodore so!"
A roll of thunder set the casements clapping.
Frau Altgelt flung her work aside and ran,
Pulled open the house door, with kerchief flapping
S...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...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 hung dreaming on our arms
Spoke in low voices, words that ha...Read more of this...
by Verlaine, Paul
...e pit of my body,
that I am not crushed in fragments by the tough 
butterfly wing
broken and crumpled like a black silk stocking,
if you imagine that my body is not
blackened
burned wood,
then you imagine a false woman.

This marriage could not change me.
Could not change my life.
Not is it that different from any other marriage.
They are all filled with desert journeys,
with Isis who hold us in her terror,
with Horus who will not let us see
the parts of his body joined
but m...Read more of this...
by Wakoski, Diane
...lice of bread and mutton-chop;
Or kindly, when his credit's out,
Surprise him with a pint of stout;
Or patch his broken stocking soles;
Or send him in a peck of coals;
Exalted in his mighty mind,
He flies and leaves the stars behind;
Counts all his labours amply paid,
Adores her for the timely aid.
Or, should a porter make inquiries
For Chloe, Sylvia, Phillis, Iris;
Be told the lodging, lane, and sign,
The bowers that hold those nymphs divine;
Fair Chloe would perhaps be foun...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan
...Thanksgiving, came,
If Father'd multiply the plates --
To make an even Sum --

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me --

But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year --
Themself, should come to me --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...ll bend the tree down and let you down by it."
I don't know much about the letting down;
But once I felt ground with my stocking feet
And the world came revolving back to me,
I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,
Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.
My brother said: "Don't you weigh anything?
Try to weigh something next time, so you won't
Be run off with by birch trees into space."

It wasn't my not weighing anything
So much as my not knowing anything-...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Stocking poems.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry