His head bald, that shone as any glass, . . .
[And] stemed as a furnace of a leed [caldron]. Chaucer.

After they are shot up thirty feet in length, they spread a very large top, having no bough nor twig in the trunk or the stem. Sir W. Raleigh.

The lowering spring, with lavish rain,
Beats down the slender stem and breaded grain. Dryden.

While I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent. Herbert.

This is a stem
Of that victorious stock. Shak.

Wolsey sat at the stem more than twenty years. Fuller.

From stem to stern (Naut.), from one end of the ship to the other, or through the whole length. -- Stem leaf (Bot.), a leaf growing from the stem of a plant, as contrasted with a basal or radical leaf.

[They] stem the flood with their erected breasts. Denham.

Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age. Pope.

Stemming nightly toward the pole. Milton.