Famous Suspense Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Suspense poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous suspense poems. These examples illustrate what a famous suspense poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
He strained my faith --
Did he find it supple?
Shook my strong trust --
Did it then -- yield?
Hurled my belief --
But -- did he shatter -- it?
Racked -- with suspense --
Not a nerve failed!
Wrung me -- with Anguish --
But I never doubted him --
'Tho' for what wrong
He did never say --
Stabbed -- while I sued
His sweet forgiveness --
Jesus -- it's...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Now I 'm convinced the Lord is kind
To men of heart sincere;
Yet once my foolish thoughts repined,
And bordered on despair.
I grieved to see the wicked thrive,
And spoke with angry breath,
"How pleasant and profane they live !
How peaceful is their death !
"With well-fed flesh and haughty eyes,
They lay their fears to sleep;
Against the heav'ns their slanders rise,
While saints in silence...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Who never drinks and never bets,
But loves his wife and pays his debts
And feels content with what he gets?
Tom Collins.
Who has the utmost confidence
That all the banks now in suspense
Will meet their paper three years hence?
Tom Collins.
Who reads the Herald leaders through,
And takes the Evening News for true,
And thought...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"You're bloody right - I was a Red,"
The Man from Cook's morosely said.
And if our chaps had won the War
Today I'd be the Governor
Of all Madrid, and rule with pride,
Instead of just a lousy guide.
"For I could talk in Councils high
To draw down angels from the sky.
They put me seven years in gaol, -
You see how I am prison-pale...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Tis so appalling -- it exhilarates --
So over Horror, it half Captivates --
The Soul stares after it, secure --
A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more --
To scan a Ghost, is faint --
But grappling, conquers it --
How easy, Torment, now --
Suspense kept sawing so --
The Truth, is Bald, and Cold --
But that will hold --
If any are not sure --
We show...Read more of this...
by
Sarojini Naidu
The new hath come and now the old retires:
And so the past becomes a mountain-cell,
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget
Old longings in fulfilling new desires.
And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense
Expectancy and anguish of suspense,
On the dim chamber-threshold...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bronte
Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above.
It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.
One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.
The...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 159] SONNET CXXXV. Amor mi manda quel dolce pensero. LIFE WILL FAIL HIM BEFORE HOPE. Love to my mind recalling that sweet thought,The ancient confidant our lives between,Well comforts me, and says I ne'er have beenSo near as now to what I hoped and sought.I, who at...Read more of this...
by
William Vaughn Moody
After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I
Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Suspense -- is Hostiler than Death --
Death -- tho'soever Broad,
Is Just Death, and cannot increase --
Suspense -- does not conclude --
But perishes -- to live anew --
But just anew to die --
Annihilation -- plated fresh
With Immortality --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Trusty as the stars
Who quit their shining working
Prompt as when I lit them
In Genesis' new house,
Durable as dawn
Whose antiquated blossom
Makes a world's suspense
Perish and rejoice....Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
"What knight or what vassal will be so bold
As to plunge in the gulf below?
See! I hurl in its depths a goblet of gold,
Already the waters over it flow.
The man who can bring back the goblet to me,
May keep it henceforward,--his own it shall be."
Thus speaks the king, and he hurls from the height
Of the cliffs that, rugged and...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
The listless Palm-trees catch the breeze above
The pile-built huts that edge the salt Lagoon,
There is no Breeze to cool the heat of love,
No wind from land or sea, at night or noon.
Perfumed and robed I wait, my Lord, for you,
...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I know Suspense -- it steps so terse
And turns so weak away --
Besides -- Suspense is neighborly
When I am riding by --
Is always at the Window
Though lately I descry
And mention to my Horses
The need is not of me --...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLIV. Mie venture al venir son tarde e pigre. FEW ARE THE SWEETS, BUT MANY THE BITTERS OF LOVE. Ever my hap is slack and slow in coming,Desire increasing, ay my hope uncertainWith doubtful love, that but increaseth pain;For, tiger-like, so swift it is in parting.Alas! the snow black shall...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Soul within sense, immeasurable, obscure,
Insepulchred and deathless, through the dense
Deep elements may scarce be felt as pure
Soul within sense.
From depth and height by measurers left immense,
Through sound and shape and colour, comes the unsure
Vague utterance, fitful with supreme suspense.
All that may pass, and all that must endure,
Song speaks not, painting shews not: more intense
And keen than these, art wakes...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
In the last spring I ever knew,
In those last days,
I sat in the forsaken orchard
Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
The hills at Miller's Ford;
Just to muse on the apple tree
With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
Never to grow in fruit.
And there was I with my spirit girded
By the...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Rosenberg
The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.
The wheels lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them not, though their bones crunched;
Their shut mouths made no moan,
They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man, and...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
A sad tale of the sea, I will unfold,
About Mrs Lingard, that Heroine bold;
Who struggled hard in the midst of the hurricane wild,
To save herself from being drowned, and her darling child.
'Twas on the 8th of September, the Barque "Lynton" sailed for Aspinwall,
And the crew on board, numbered thirteen in all;
And the weather at the time, was really...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Wonder -- is not precisely Knowing
And not precisely Knowing not --
A beautiful but bleak condition
He has not lived who has not felt --
Suspense -- is his maturer Sister --
Whether Adult Delight is Pain
Or of itself a new misgiving --
This is the Gnat that mangles men --...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Sleepless I listen to the surge and drone
And drifting roar of the town’s undertone;
Till through quiet falling rain I hear the bells
Tolling and chiming their brief tune that tells
Day’s midnight end. And from the day that’s over
No flashes of delight I can recover;
But only dreary winter streets, and faces
Of people moving in loud...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
"How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife,
And hated to be twitted on the subject;
Others because he'd come within a day
Or so of having one, and then been Jilted;
Others because he'd had one once, a good one,
Who'd...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Now Ramazan has come, the vintage passed, and
pledging of the cup and simple customs are afar. Yet
full the wine pots are, and still untouched, and houris wait
for us in fond suspense....Read more of this...
by
Eleanor Wilner
It was a pure white cloud that hung there
in the blue, or a jellyfish on a waveless
sea, suspended high above us; we were
the creatures in the weeds below.
It seemed so effortless in its suspense,
perfectly out of time and out of place
like the ghost of moon in the sky
of a brilliant afternoon.
After a while it seemed to grow, and...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Long years ago, within a distant clime,
Ere Love had touched me with his wand sublime,
I dreamed of one to make my life's calm May
The panting passion of a summer's day.
And ever since, in almost sad suspense,
I have been waiting with a soul intense
To greet and take unto myself the beams,
Of her, my star, the lady of my dreams.
O Love, still...Read more of this...
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