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Famous Thinning Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Hardy, Thomas
...en!) 
Upon that shore we are clean forgot, 
Gentlemen! 

We have lost somewhat of that, afar and near, 
Gentlemen, 
The thinning of our ranks each year 
Affords a hint we are nigh undone, 
That shall not be ever again 
The marked of many, loved of one, 
Gentlemen. 

In dance the polka hit our wish, 
Gentlemen, 
The paced quadrille, the spry schottische, 
"Sir Roger."--And in opera spheres 
The "Girl" (the famed "Bohemian"), 
And "Trovatore" held the ears, 
Gentlemen.<...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...nt; 
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle; 
But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them! 

It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General; 
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish. 

Meanwhile the British maneuver’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle; 
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle. 

We fought the fight in detachments;
Sallying forth,...Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...ing.
Henry was not a coward. Much.
He never deserted anything; instead
he stuck, when things like pity were thinning.

So may be Henry was a human being.
Let's investigate that.
... We did; okay.
He is a human American man.
That's true. My lass is braking.
My brass is aching. Come & diminish me, & map my way.

God's Henry's enemy. We're in business ... Why,
what business must be clear.
A cornering...Read more of this...

by Francis, Robert
...t graduate from black to Hallelujah. 

Such is the old drama of boy and father.
Praise from a grayhead now with thinning hair.
Sing Ebenezer, Robert, sing Hallelujah!...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...be
a writer.
some damned gall,
at 71,
my brain cells eaten
away by
life.
rows of books
behind me,
I scratch my thinning
hair
and search for the
word. 
for decades now
I have infuriated the
ladies,
the critics,
the university
suck-toads. 
they all will soon have
their time to
celebrate. 
"terribly overrated..." 
"gross..." 
"an aberration..." 
my hands sink into the
keyboard
of my
Macintosh,
it's the same old
con
that sc...Read more of this...



by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...igh!

This is how I came,—I put
Here my knee, there my foot,
Up and up, from shoot to shoot—
And the blessed bean-stalk thinning
Like the mischief all the time,
Till it took me rocking, spinning,
In a dizzy, sunny circle,
Making angles with the root,
Far and out above the cackle
Of the city I was born in,
Till the little dirty city
In the light so sheer and sunny
Shone as dazzling bright and pretty
As the money that you find
In a dream of finding money—
What a wind! What a mo...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...The grey gulls drift across the bay 
Softly and still as flakes of snow 
Against the thinning fog. All day 
I sat and watched them come and go; 
And now at last the sun was set, 
Filling the waves with colored fire 
Till each seemed like a jewelled spire 
Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon 
From peak and cliff and minaret 
The city's lights began to wink, 
Each like a friendly word. The moon 
Began to broaden out her shield, ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...owing brightness round in pools.
With Oriental splendour, red and gold, the dust
Covering its flames like smoke and thinning as a gust
Of brighter sunshine makes the colours leap and range,
The strange old music-stand seems to strike out and change;
To stroke and tear the darkness with sharp golden claws;
To dart a forked, vermilion tongue from open jaws;
To puff out bitter smoke which chokes the sun; and fade
Back to a still, faint outline obliterate in shade.
Creepi...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...r art?
As through a glass that magnifies my loss
I see the lines of your spectrum shifting red,
The universe expanding, thinning out,
Our worlds flying, oh flying, fast apart.

From hooded powers and from abstract flight
I summon you, your person and your pride.
Fall to me now from outer space,
Still fastened desperately to my side;
Through gulfs of streaming air
Bring me the mornings of the milky ways
Down to my threshold in your drowsy eyes;
And by the virtue of you...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom 
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals 
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots 
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky 
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew 
Their desolation in the truce of dawn, 
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace. 

Ye...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...ably, 
 Speaking as scarce I knew, 
"My loved one, I must wed with thee 
 If what thou say'st be true!" 

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: 
 "Though, since troth-plight began, 
I've ever stood as bride to groom, 
 I wed no mortal man!" 

Thereat she vanished by the Cross 
 That, entering Kingsbere town, 
The two long lanes form, near the fosse 
 Below the faneless Down. 

- When I arrived and met my bride, 
 Her look was pinched and thin, 
As if her soul had shrunk an...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...nd whose eyes are empty of visible tears." 

All these words I heard, and I saw them emerging with a stream of ever thinning blood from that wounded heart. 

More was said, but my misted eyes and crying should prevented further sight or hearing....Read more of this...

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