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Famous Terrified Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.

I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discr...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia



...cat, half-through, was cracked like a nut 
And the soft black thud was dumped on the floor. 
Then the boy was suddenly terrified 
And he bit his knuckles and cried and cried; 
But he had to do something with the dead thing there. 
His eyes squeezed beads of salty prayer 
But the wound of fear gaped wide and raw; 
He dared not touch the thing with his hands 
So he fetched a spade and shovelled it 
And dumped the load of heavy fur 
In the spidery cupboard under the stair 
Wher...Read more of this...
by Scannell, Vernon
...what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI 
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Waver...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...to pull. 
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band 
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. 

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie 
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. 
The tigers in the panel that she made 
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid....Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne
...-end,
And thanked God Who so mercifully did him defend. 

Black Beard derived his name from his long black beard,
Which terrified America more than any comet that had ever appeared;
But, thanks be to God, in this age we need not be afeared,
Of any such pirates as the inhuman Black Beard....Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz



...then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food;
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himse...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...nd endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----

Its snaky acids ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...your eyes before; 
 Vampires and dogs, your sepulchre is here. 
 Enter." 
 
 He pointed to the gulf so near. 
 All terrified upon their knees they fell. 
 "Oh! take us not in your dread realm to dwell," 
 Said Sigismond. "But, phantom! do us tell 
 What thou wouldst have from us—we will obey. 
 Oh, mercy!—'tis for mercy now we pray." 
 "Behold us at your feet, oh, spectre dread!" 
 And no old crone in feebler voice could plead 
 Than Ladisläus did. 
 
 But not a...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...How far is it to peace, the piper sighed,
The solitary, sweating as he paused.
Asphalt the noon; the ravens, terrified,
Fled carrion thunder that percussion caused.

The envelope of earth was powder loud;
The taut wings shivered, driven at the sun.
The piper put his pipe away and bowed.
Not here, he said. I hunt the love-cool one,

The dancer with the clipped hair. Where is she?
We shook our heads, parting for him to pass.
Our lady was of no such trim degree,
And n...Read more of this...
by Van Doren, Mark
...
Upon her husband; saw their shame that sought 
Vain covertures; but when he saw descend 
The Son of God to judge them, terrified 
He fled; not hoping to escape, but shun 
The present; fearing, guilty, what his wrath 
Might suddenly inflict; that past, returned 
By night, and listening where the hapless pair 
Sat in their sad discourse, and various plaint, 
Thence gathered his own doom; which understood 
Not instant, but of future time, with joy 
And tidings fraught, to Hell ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death
 stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,
Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon
 secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Moun-
 tain boasts to store
its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millenia
 while our Galaxy spirals around its nebulous core.
I enter your secret places with my mind, I speak with 
 your presence, I roar your Lion Roar with mortal
 mouth.
One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of 
 he...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]

IX

Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood
While listening to my ...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna
...ns of the moon
To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: --
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper.
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you."...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...re slipping.
I think his pencil must be jerking and the terror
of smell—and sight—is overtaking him;
I know he has that terrified faraway look
that death brings—he is contemplating. I want him
to touch my forehead once again and rub my muzzle
before he lifts me up and throws me into 
that little valley. I hope he doesn't use
his shoe for fear of touching me; I know,
or used to know, the grasses down there; I think
I knew a hundred smells. I hope the dog's way
doesn't overtake...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...uch woe; 
 His heir the monster's prey, while the whole land 
 In dread both of the beast and king did stand; 
 Sore terrified were all. 
 
 By came a knight 
 That road, who halted, asking, "What's the fright?" 
 They told him, and he spurred straight for the site! 
 The beast was seen to smile ere joined they fight, 
 The man and monster, in most desperate duel, 
 Like warring giants, angry, huge, and cruel. Beneath his shield, all blood and mud and mess: 
 Where...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...ll from trees, molten with age, 
without memory - they stand aloof in their 
nakedness - they limber; 
like the gods terrified into silence, 
like tall brooding deities looming out of the 
fog: 

The forest hugs them 
carves them into stones, 
Etches them into the slow 
eastern landscape: rivers, hills 
the slow running water, 
times broken inscapes…

The willows are burdened with ice 
the white shrouds of burial spread 
upon the earth's ravaged face; the eyes...Read more of this...
by Nwakanma, Obi
...the pair of us

What lay ahead. Like Charlotte’s your hair lay in dark ringlets

On the pillow while I lay stunned and terrified and lost.

From then till now, two children grew, two fathers died;

One mad, one sad, but both alone. Together or apart our lives

Have changed beyond repair, the text altered and the cover bare

But still the same story more or less, echoing down hospital corridors,

Left in faded waiting rooms and lost like our children.



Cyril Williams, grave...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...ped my sister
then it kicked my dad
then it pushed my mother
oh! that really made me mad

it went and tickled rover
and terrified the cat
it sliced apart my necktie
and rudely crushed my hat

it smeared my head with honey
and filled the tub with rocks
and when i yelled in anger
it stole my shoes and socks

that's just the way it happened
it happened all today
before it bowed politely
and softly went away...Read more of this...
by Prelutsky, Jack
...not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. 

3
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, 
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, 
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of
 diseas’d
 corpses, 
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, 
It gives such divi...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...stent and irrepressible,
I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats;
I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning,
And running away from the sound of a woman in labour, something like an owl whooing,
And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb,
The first wail of an infant,
And my mother singing to herself,
And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to dea...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry