Famous Thickened Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Among Children

...or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the widows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job until the windows
pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
with light, her foolish words transformed
into song, I would like to arm each one
with a quiver ...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip


Blackberry-Picking

...one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had ...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus

Dream Song 47: April Fools Day or St Mary of Egypt

..., on the threshold,
she considered her fair shoulders
and all them hundreds who have them, all
the more who to her mime thickened & maled
from the supple stage,

and seeing her feet, in a visit, side by side
paused on the sill of The Tomb, she shrank: 'No.
They are not worthy,
fondled by many' and rushed from The Crucified
back through her followers out of the city ho
across the suburbs, plucky

to dare my desert in her late daylight
of animals and sands. She fall prone.
Only...Read more of this...
by Berryman, John

Invocation To The Muses

...trage see.
Where music is not played nor sung,
Though the great voice be there, no sound from the dry throat across the thickened tongue
Comes forth; nor has he heart for it.
Beauty in all things—no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it.
Here it may dwell;
And with your aid, Melpomene
And all thy sister-muses (for ye are, I think, daughters of Memory)
Within the tortured mind as well.

Reaped are those fields with dragon's-teeth so lately sown;
Many the he...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Love Is Not All

...the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the m...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna


Mazeppa

...d chill;
My ear with uncouth noises rang,
My heart began once more to thrill;
My sight returned, though dim; alas! 
And thickened, as it were, with glass.
Methought the dash of waves was nigh.,
There was a gleam too of the sky
Studded with stars; - it is no dream;
The wild horse swims the wilder stream! 
The bright broad river's gushing tide 
Sweeps, winding onward, far and wide,
And we are half-way, struggling o'er 
To yon unknown and silent shore.
The waters broke my hollow...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Ode to Stephen Bowling Dots Decd

...hicken,
And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of
Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear, with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
H...Read more of this...
by Twain, Mark

On The Skeleton Of A Hound

...ew flow upward to his throat.
Now catbird feathers plume the apple mound,
And starlings drowse to winter up the ground.
thickened away from speech by fear, I move
Around the body. Over his forepaws, steep
Declivities darken down the moonlight now,
And the long throat that bayed a year ago
Declines from summer. Flies would love to leap
Between his eyes and hum away the space
Between the ears, the hollow where a hare
Could hide; another jealous dog would tumble
The bones apart,...Read more of this...
by Wright, James

Paradise Lost: Book 11

...drove 
From under Heaven; the hills to their supply 
Vapour, and exhalation dusk and moist, 
Sent up amain; and now the thickened sky 
Like a dark cieling stood; down rushed the rain 
Impetuous; and continued, till the earth 
No more was seen: the floating vessel swum 
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow 
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else 
Flood overwhelmed, and them with all their pomp 
Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea, 
Sea without shore; and in thei...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Something Has Fallen

...

the damp bed you struggled from 
to dress in half-light and go out 

into a world that never tired. 
Later, your hand thickened and flat 

slid out of a rubber glove, 
as you stood, your mask raised, 

to light a cigarette and rest 
while the acid tanks that were 

yours to dean went on bathing 
the arteries of broken sinks. 

Remember, you were afraid 
of the great hissing jugs. 

There were stories of burnings, 
of flesh shredded to lace. 

On other nights men spoke 
of r...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

The End Of The Library

...the end, in
February, flames
Consumed the Greek
Tragedians and Baudelaire,
Proust, Robert Burton
And the Po-Chu-i. Ice
Thickened on the sills.
More for the sake of the cat,
We said, than for ourselves,
Who huddled, shivering,
Against the stove
All winter long....Read more of this...
by Kees, Weldon

The Lady of the Lake

...A moment gazed adown the dale,
     A moment snuffed the tainted gale,
     A moment listened to the cry,
     That thickened as the chase drew nigh;
     Then, as the headmost foes appeared,
     With one brave bound the copse he cleared,
     And, stretching forward free and far,
     Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var.
     III.

     Yelled on the view the opening pack;
     Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back;
     To many a mingled sound at once
     The ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Pike

...ghtness
Ran under the water.
Out from under the reeds
Came the olive-green light,
And orange flashed up
Through the sun-thickened water.
So the fish passed across the pool,
Green and copper,
A darkness and a gleam,
And the blurred reflections of the willows on the opposite bank
Received it....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Princess (part 2)

...ome Astræan age, 
Sat compassed with professors: they, the while, 
Discussed a doubt and tost it to and fro: 
A clamour thickened, mixt with inmost terms 
Of art and science: Lady Blanche alone 
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments, 
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown, 
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat 
In act to spring. 
At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens: there 
One walked reciting by herself, and one 
In this hand held a volume a...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Testing-Tree

...ed by angel’s hair,
spotting the print of the deer
and the red fox’s scats.
Once I owned the key
to an umbrageous trail
thickened with mosses
where flickering presences
gave me right of passage
as I followed in the steps
of straight-backed Massassoit
soundlessly heel-and-toe
practicing my Indian walk.

3

Past the abandoned quarry
where the pale sun bobbed
in the sump of the granite,
past copperhead ledge,
where the ferns gave foothold,
I walked, deliberate,
on to the clearin...Read more of this...
by Kunitz, Stanley

The Waters Chant

...d locked, the great shop 
where we forged, a plane of rubble, 
the old hurt faces turned away. 
My brother was with me, thickened 
by the years, but still my brother, 
and when we embraced I felt the rough 
cheek and his hand upon my back tapping 
as though to tell me, I know! I know! 
brother, I know! 
 Here in California 
a new day begins. Full dull clouds ride 
in from the sea, and this dry valley 
calls out for rain. My brother has 
risen hours ago and hobbled to the show...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

With going to and fro in this sad vale

...With going to and fro in this sad vale
Thou art grown double, and thy credit stale,
Thy nails are thickened like a horse's hoof,
Thy beard is ragged as an ass's tail....Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar

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