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Famous Aerial Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings are abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those aerial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary.—R. B. [back]
Note 2. Certain little, romantic, rocky, green hills, in the neighbourhood of the ancient seat of the Earls of Cassilis.—R.B. [back]
Note 3. A noted cavern near Colean house, called the Cove of Colean; which, as well as Cassilis Downan...Read more of this...



by Burns, Robert
...hus poorly low;
I come to give thee such reward,
 As we bestow!


“Know, the great genius of this land
Has many a light aerial band,
Who, all beneath his high command,
 Harmoniously,
As arts or arms they understand,
 Their labours ply.


“They Scotia’s race among them share:
Some fire the soldier on to dare;
Some rouse the patriot up to bare
 Corruption’s heart:
Some teach the bard—a darling care—
 The tuneful art.


“’Mong swelling floods of reeking gore,
They, arden...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...lence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more before my dying eyes

Bathed in the sacred dew of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread—
The world which was ere I was born,
The world which lasts when I am dead.

Which never was the friend of one,
Nor promised love it could not give,
But lit for all its generous sun,
And lived itself, and made us live.

There let me gaze, till I become
In soul with what I gaze on wed!
To feel the universe my home;
To have befor...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...us unrest)

And then each pigeon spread its milky van,
The bright car soared into the dawning sky,
And like a cloud the aerial caravan
Passed over the AEgean silently,
Till the faint air was troubled with the song
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.

But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where the wide stair of orbed marble dips
Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul
Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
And passed into ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...cends or enters.


BEFORE the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care,
Confined and pestered in this pinfold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true servants
Amongst the enthr...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...ne
With dangerous speed: and so he did not mourn
Because he knew not whither he was going.
So happy was he, not the aerial blowing
Of trumpets at clear parley from the east
Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast.
They stung the feather'd horse: with fierce alarm
He flapp'd towards the sound. Alas, no charm
Could lift Endymion's head, or he had view'd
A skyey mask, a pinion'd multitude,--
And silvery was its passing: voices sweet
Warbling the while as i...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal m...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...l the brain,
Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain:
Goliath's fall no smaller terror yields
Than riving thunders in aerial fields:
The soul still ling'red in its lov'd abode,
Till conq'ring David o'er the giant strode:
Goliath's sword then laid its master dead,
And from the body hew'd the ghastly head;
The blood in gushing torrents drench'd the plains,
The soul found passage through the spouting veins.
And now aloud th' illustrious victor said,
"Where are your boastin...Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...arately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same....Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...nds: and far between
The rolling clouds new shores and peaks are seen,
In shimmering robes of green and gold,
And faint aerial hue
That silent fades into the silent blue.
Thou, from thy mountain-hold,
All day, in tranquil wisdom, looking down
On distant scenes of human toil and strife,
All night, with eyes aware of loftier life,
Uplooking to the sky, where stars are sown,
Dost watch the everlasting fields grow white
Unto the harvest of the sons of light,
And welcome to th...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...ine, 
 but it's not mine. 
None of the things that I can see 
 belong to me. 
The neighbors got a radio with an aerial; 
 we got a little portable. 
They got a lot of closet space; 
 we got a suitcase. 

I say, "Le Roy, just how much are we owing?
Something I can't comprehend,
the more we got the more we spend...."
He only answers, "Let's get going."
Le Roy, you're earning too much money now.

I sit and look at our backyard
 and find it...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...s when the setting sun has given
     Ten thousand hues to summer even,
     And from their tissue fancy frames
     Aerial knights and fairy dames.
     Still by Fitz-James her footing staid;
     A few faint steps she forward made,
     Then slow her drooping head she raised,
     And fearful round the presence gazed;
     For him she sought who owned this state,
     The dreaded Prince whose will was fate!—
     She gazed on many a princely port
     Might well ...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...as men do now,
And talk'd of deaths and flames and darts,
And breaking necks and losing hearts;
And chose from all th' aerial kind,
Not then to tribes, like Jews, confined
The story tells, a lovely Thrush
Had smit him from a neigh'bring bush,
Where oft the young coquette would play,
And carol sweet her siren lay:
She thrill'd each feather'd heart with love,
And reign'd the Toast of all the grove.


He felt the pain, but did not dare
Disclose his passion to the fair;
For ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...welcome the procession of the flowers, 
With their gay banners, and the birds that sing 
Their song of songs from their aerial towers. 
I soften with my sunshine and my showers 
The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide 
Into the hearts of men; and with the Hours 
Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride. 

May 

Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim 
My coming, and the swarming of the bees. 
These are my heralds, and behold! my name 
Is written in ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...eaming like a love-adept 
In the sound his breathing kept; 
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses  
But feeds on the aerial kisses 5 
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. 
He will watch from dawn to gloom 
The lake-reflected sun illume 
The blue bees in the ivy-bloom  
Nor heed nor see what things they be¡ª 10 
But from these create he can 
Forms more real than living man  
Nurslings of Immortality! ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...is Breast.
He summons strait his Denizens of Air;
The lucid Squadrons round the Sails repair:
Soft o'er the Shrouds Aerial Whispers breathe,
That seem'd but Zephyrs to the Train beneath.
Some to the Sun their Insect-Wings unfold,
Waft on the Breeze, or sink in Clouds of Gold. 
Transparent Forms, too fine for mortal Sight,
Their fluid Bodies half dissolv'd in Light.
Loose to the Wind their airy Garments flew,
Thin glitt'ring Textures of the filmy Dew;
Dipt in t...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...o blow,
With boisterous Sweep, I raise my Voice to you.
Where are your Stores, ye viewless Beings! say? 
Where your aerial Magazines reserv'd,
Against the Day of Tempest perilous?
In what untravel'd Country of the Air,
Hush'd in still Silence, sleep you, when 'tis calm?

LATE, in the louring Sky, red, fiery, Streaks 
Begin to flush about; the reeling Clouds
Stagger with dizzy Aim, as doubting yet
Which Master to obey: while rising, slow,
Sad, in the Leaden-colour'd East, ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 

Like a glow-worm golden 
In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: 

Like a rose embower'd 
In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflower'd, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wing¨¨d thieves.

Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awaken'd flowers¡ª 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clea...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...er
 preparing his
 crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests, 
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds, and the storms;) 
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and
 women,

The many-moving sea-tides,—and I saw the ships how they sail’d, 
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went ...Read more of this...

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