All 4 Uses

poise
in
A Soldier of the Great War
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She stood in her cousins room, in tortured ecstasy, poised like one of the three little pigs in prayer, drinking-in the moonlight with her gloomy cow eyes.†
Chpt 1
She had been about to leave the room, and her hands were poised on the aprons bow, but her brother's excitement made her refrain from pulling it apart.†
Chpt 2 *
By the end of this, the River Guard had taken position, with fifty of them poised to eliminate the sentries and eighty more ready to rush the camp if anyone managed to sound an alert.†
Chpt 5
And at once he saw that the little boy was special, that with such a husky father and delicate mother, he, continually translating between divergent qualities, was poised to become wise, even if, at only nine, he looked like a Turkish wrestler.†
Chpt 9

Definitions:

(1) (poise)
calm, confident, and in control—especially in movement, behavior, or when ready to act
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Much more rarely, poise is a technical word referencing a unit of dynamic viscosity.