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Famous Stricken Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...the crime once more.

My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known - 
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

II

My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
E...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler



...’ honor! {16f} Innocent both
were the loved ones she lost at the linden-play,
bairn and brother, they bowed to fate,
stricken by spears; ’twas a sorrowful woman!
None doubted why the daughter of Hoc
bewailed her doom when dawning came,
and under the sky she saw them lying,
kinsmen murdered, where most she had kenned
of the sweets of the world! By war were swept, too,
Finn’s own liegemen, and few were left;
in the parleying-place {16g} he could ply no longer
weapon,...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...n preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake; 
and the former was a hoodoo, while the latter was a cake. 

So upon that stricken multitude, grim melancholy sat; 
for there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat. 

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all. 
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball. 

And when the dust had lifted, 
and men saw what had occurred, 
there was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third. 

T...Read more of this...
by Thayer, Ernest Lawrence
...ht to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs:
Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
Deep from within she seems half-way
To lift some weight with sick assay,
And eyes the maid and seeks delay;
Then suddenly, as one defied,
Collects herself in scorn and pride,
And lay down by the maiden's side!-
And in her arms the maid she took,
Ah, well-a-day!
And with low voice and doleful look
These words did say:

'In ...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...is His,
The sea is His: He made it.' 

Enoch rose,
Cast his strong arms about his drooping wife,
And kiss'd his wonder-stricken little ones;
But for the third, sickly one, who slept
After a night of feverous wakefulness,
When Annie would have raised him Enoch said
`Wake him not; let him sleep; how should this child
Remember this?' and kiss'ed him in his cot.
But Annie from her baby's forehead clipt
A tiny curl, and gave it: this he kept
Thro' all his future; but now hastily ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...I 

There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
And danced the night away. 

I asked the cause: the aged man grew sad:
They pointed to a building gray and tall,
And hoarsely answered "Step inside, my lad,
And then you'll see it all." 


Yet what are all such gaieties to me
Whose thoughts are full of indic...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...ying
North, as of wild souls crying
The cry of things undying,
That know what life must be;
Or as the old year's heart, stricken
Too sore for hope to quicken
By thoughts like thorns that thicken,
Broke, breaking with the sea....Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
..., 
And Gareth lashed so fiercely with his brand 
He drave his enemy backward down the bridge, 
The damsel crying, 'Well-stricken, kitchen-knave!' 
Till Gareth's shield was cloven; but one stroke 
Laid him that clove it grovelling on the ground. 

Then cried the fallen, 'Take not my life: I yield.' 
And Gareth, 'So this damsel ask it of me 
Good--I accord it easily as a grace.' 
She reddening, 'Insolent scullion: I of thee? 
I bound to thee for any favour asked!' 
'Then he sha...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...!
Sense failed in the mortal strife:
Like the watch-tower of a town
Which an earthquake shatters down,
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
Spun about,
Like a foam-topped water-spout
Cast down headlong in the sea,
She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life ?

Life out of death.
That night long Lizzie watched by her,
Counted her pulse's flagging stir,
Felt for her breath,
Held water to her lips, and cooled her face
With tea...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina
...warrior to the doors. 
A murmuring whisper through the nunnery ran, 
Then on a sudden a cry, `The King.' She sat 
Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armd feet 
Through the long gallery from the outer doors 
Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell, 
And grovelled with her face against the floor: 
There with her milkwhite arms and shadowy hair 
She made her face a darkness from the King: 
And in the darkness heard his armd feet 
Pause by her; then came silence, then a vo...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...med crest? 
The shaft is sped — the arrow's in his breast! 
That fatal gesture left the unguarded side, 
And Death hath stricken down yon arm of pride. 
The word of triumph fainted from his tongue; 
That hand, so raised, how droopingly it hung! 
But yet the sword instinctively retains, 
Though from its fellow shrink the falling reins; 
These Kaled snatches: dizzy with the blow, 
And senseless bending o'er his saddle-bow 
Perceives not Lara that his anxious page 
Beguiles his ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...of you all.
I seek her from afar,
I come from temples where her altars are,
From groves that bear her name,
Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,
And cymbals struck on high and strident faces
Obstreperous in her praise
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only a...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...he primitive chants of the Nile boatmen; 
The sacred imperial hymns of China, 
To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone;) 
Or to Hindu flutes, and the fretting twang of the vina,
A band of bayaderes. 

12
Now Asia, Africa leave me—Europe, seizing, inflates me; 
To organs huge, and bands, I hear as from vast concourses of voices, 
Luther’s strong hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott; 
Rossini’s Stabat Mater dolorosa;
Or, floating in some high cathedral ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...and be but a land of saints,
And Wales a land of thieves,

"I say you yet shall weary
Of the working of your word,
That stricken spirits never strike
Nor lean hands hold a sword.

"And if ever ye ride in Ireland,
The jest may yet be said,
There is the land of broken hearts,
And the land of broken heads."

Not less barbarian laughter
Choked Harold like a flood,
"And shall I fight with scarecrows
That am of Guthrum's blood?

"Meeting may be of war-men,
Where the best war-man wi...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...ay,
Or but the watchfires trembling here and there,
Like hopes on memory's devastated way,
In moonless wastes of planet-stricken air?
O many-childed mother great and grey,
O multitudinous bosom, and breasts that bare
Our fathers' generations, whereat lay
The weanling peoples and the tribes that were,
Whose new-born mouths long dead
Those ninefold nipples fed,
Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair,
Fostress of obscure lands,
Whose multiplying hands
Wove the world's we...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...m, though they be more fang'd than wolves and bears."

 "Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?
 A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,
 Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll;
 Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening,
 Were never miss'd."--Thus plaining, doth she bring
 A gentler speech from burning Porphyro;
 So woful, and of such deep sorrowing,
 That Angela gives promise she will do
Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.

 Which was, to le...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...hrough the casement,
How could I keep at any vast distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct.
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What mea...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...d and flopped,
 Till fainting he fell to the ground.

The Bandersnatch fled as the others appeared
 Led on by that fear-stricken yell:
And the Bellman remarked "It is just as I feared!"
 And solemnly tolled on his bell.

He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace
 The least likeness to what he had been:
While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white--
 A wonderful thing to be seen!

To the horror of all who were present that day,
 He uprose in full...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...land.

     Who else dared give—ah! woe the day,
     That I such hated truth should say!—
     The Douglas, like a stricken deer,
     Disowned by every noble peer,
     Even the rude refuge we have here?
     Alas, this wild marauding
     Chief Alone might hazard our relief,
     And now thy maiden charms expand,
     Looks for his guerdon in thy hand;
     Full soon may dispensation sought,
     To back his suit, from Rome be brought.
     Then, though an exi...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
..., and why--
Pass not away upon the passing stream.'
" 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
"I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand
"Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador,
Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
Unt...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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