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Famous Thickening Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...thy cruel heart!


Go live, poor wand’rer of the wood and field!
 The bitter little that of life remains:
 No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee a home, or food, or pastime yield.


Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
 No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
 The sheltering rushes whistling o’er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.


Perhaps a mother’s anguish adds its woe;
 The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side;
 ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...r> Then he left. 
Now she shakes her head, shakes 
him away and will not rise. 
There is fog at the window 
and thickening the high branches 
of the sycamores. She thinks 
of her own kitchen, the dishwasher 
yawning open, the dripping carton 
left on the counter. Her boys 
have gone off steaming like sheep. 
Were they here last night? 
Where do they live? she wonders, 
with whom? Are they home? 
In her yard the young plum tree, 
barely taller than she, dro...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...Earth, earth,
riding your merry-go-round
toward extinction,
right to the roots,
thickening the oceans like gravy,
festering in your caves,
you are becoming a latrine.
Your trees are twisted chairs.
Your flowers moan at their mirrors,
and cry for a sun that doesn't wear a mask.

Your clouds wear white,
trying to become nuns
and say novenas to the sky.
The sky is yellow with its jaundice,
and its veins spill into the river...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...;
Quoth the foremost, 'Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!'

But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud:
'Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly,

Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud: 'God save us,
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus?'

'Nay, I do not need thy sw...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...erless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew eas...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf



...The clock is frozen in the tower,
The thickening fog with sooty smell
Has blanketed the motor power
Which turns the London streets to hell;
And footsteps with their lonely sound
Intensify the silence round.

I haven't hope. I haven't faith.
I live two lives and sometimes three.
The lives I live make life a death
For those who have to live with me.
Knowing the virtues that I l...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...d's 
airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses, 
our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering 
like fog over warm water, thickening to rain. 

Sometimes we go to it heartily, digging, 
burrowing, grunting, tossing up covers 
like loose earth, nosing into the other's 
flesh with hot nozzles and wallowing there. 

Sometimes we are kids making out, silly 
in the quilt, tickling the xylophone spine, 
blowing wet jokes, loud as a whole 
slumber party bouncing till the bed b...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge
...eech, by a convention,

and there is nothing at all
but inner silence, nothing
to relieve on principle
now this intense thickening....Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald
...- Oh! then I know I'm waiting, lover-wife,
For the great time when love is at a close,
And all its fruit's to watch the thickening nose
And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye,
That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die!
Day after day you'll sit with him and note
The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat;
As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat,
And love, love, love to habit!
And after that,
When all that's fine in man is at an end,
And you, that loved youn...Read more of this...
by Brooke, Rupert
...of action like Murder, Love, or Sin.
But these might be nouns, depending
On how you use them –
Already the plot is thickening.

Except when the mood is imperative; that is to say
A command is given like Pray, Repent, or Forgive
(Dear me, these lessons get gloomier every day)
Except, as I was saying, when the mood is gloomy –
I mean imperative
We need nouns, or else of course
Pronouns; words like Maid,
Man, Wedding or Divorce.

A sentence must make sense. Some...Read more of this...
by Scannell, Vernon
...
All hardened into black without a bound. 

Fill up a swart stone chalice to the brim 
With fresh-squeezed yet fast-thickening poppy-juice: 
See how the sluggish jelly, late a-swim, 
Turns marble to the touch of who would loose 
The solid smooth, grown jet from rim to rim, 
By turning round the bowl! So night can fuse 
Earth with her all-comprising sky. No less, 
Light, the least spark, shows air and emptiness. 

And thus it proved when--diving into space, 
Stript...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...anger.
Dripping sleep and languor from his heavy haunches,
He turns from deep disdain and launches
Himself upon the thickening air,
And, with weird cries of sickening despair,
Flies at Leviathan.
None can surmise the struggle that ensues—
The eyes lose sight of it and words refuse
To tell the story in its gory might.
Night passes after night,
And still the fight continues, still the sparks
Fly from the iron sinews,... till the marks
Of fire and belching thunder f...Read more of this...
by Untermeyer, Louis
...While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening 
 to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
 mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots 
 to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and deca-
 dence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not bl...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson
...ess over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A chill no coat, however stout, 
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 
A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 
Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
The win...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...sprinkling clear water 
over
the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells 
of tulips and narcissus.
The thickening branches make a pink `grisaille' 
against the blue sky.
Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each 
other and sheer away just in time.
Whoop! And a man's hat careers down the street in front 
of the white dust,
leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead 
of the wind,
jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...birth. 
 E'en there, amid the darkness of that night, 
 When all seems closing round in empty air, 
 Is seen through thickening gloom one trembling light! 
 'Tis Love's sweet memory that lingers there! 
 
 Author of "Critical Essays." 


 




...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...The spot is flaked with mist, that fills,
Thickening into rolls more dank,
The thresholds and the window-sills,
And smokes on every bank.


The river stagnates, pestilent
With carrion by the current sent
This way and that—and yonder lies
The moon, just like a woman dead,
That they have smothered overhead,
Deep in the skies.


In a few boats alone there gleam
Lamps that light up and mag...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile
...ine. 

She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours, 
But in the tearful splendour of her smiles 
I see the slowl-thickening chestnut towers 
Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles. 
Now past her feet the swallow circling flies, 
A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand; 
Her light makes rainbows in my closing eyes, 
I hear a charm of song thro' all the land. 
Come, Spring! She comes, and Earth is glad 
To roll her North below thy deepening dome, 
But ere thy...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ws will come
With cold, selective emphases, with massings
And arbitrary contrasts, rendering things
Deceptively simple, thickening the twigs
To frosty veins, bestowing epaulets
And decorations on every birch and aspen.
And the eye, self-satisfied, will be misled,
Thinking the puzzle solved, supposing at last
It can look forth and comprehend the world.
That's when you have to really watch yourself.
So I hope that you won't think me plain ungrateful
For not selectin...Read more of this...
by Hecht, Anthony
...e my arm, like this, 
In a basin of water, I never miss 
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day 
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. 
Hence the only prime 
And real love-rhyme 
That I know by heart, 
And that leaves no smart, 
Is the purl of a little valley fall 
About three spans wide and two spans tall 
Over a table of solid rock, 
And into a scoop of the self-same block; 
The purl of a runlet that never ceases 
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; 
Wi...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

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