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Famous Aisles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bryant, William Cullen
...and dark, 
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, 
These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride 
Report not. No fantastic carvings show 
The boast of our vain race to change the form 
Of thy fair works. But thou art here---thou fill'st 
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music; thou art in the cooler breath 
That from the inmost darkness of the place ...Read more of this...



by Bryant, William Cullen
...nd dark  
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults 35 
These winding aisles of human pomp or pride 
Report not. No fantastic carvings show 
The boast of our vain race to change the form 
Of thy fair works. But thou art here¡ªthou fill'st 
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 40 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music; thou art in the cooler breath 
That from the inmost darkness of the place ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...supermarket, dreaming of 
your enumerations! 
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam- 
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives 
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, 
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the 
watermelons? 

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old 
grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator 
and eyeing the grocery boys. 
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed 
the pork chops? What...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...I cannot view 
 Without regret. 

 For that dire train 
Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before, 
And those grim aisles, must be traversed again 
 To reach that door....Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...- I was telling a tune -- I heard --

Not such a strain -- the Church -- baptizes --
When the last Saint -- goes up the Aisles --
Not such a stanza splits the silence --
When the Redemption strikes her Bells --

Let me not spill -- its smallest cadence --
Humming -- for promise -- when alone --
Humming -- until my faint Rehearsal --
Drop into tune -- around the Throne --...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lov...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ht tiptoe divine,
A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully,
The youth approach'd; oft turning his veil'd eye
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.
And when, more near against the marble cold
He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread
All courts and passages, where silence dead
Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:
And long he travers'd to and fro, to acquaint
Himself with every mystery, and awe;
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet,...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ffling thicket interpos'd to dull
The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,
Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.
He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,
Wan as primroses gather'd at midnight
By chilly finger'd spring. "Unhappy wight!
Endymion!" said Peona, "we are here!
What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?"
Then he embrac'd her, and his lady's hand
Press'd, saying:" Sister, I would have command,
If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate....Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...the fragments together.
As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases,
Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar,
So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the clock clicked.

Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted,
Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges.
Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith,
And by her beating heart Evangeline...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...nded was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swell'd anew,
Like the first note of organ heard within
Cathedral aisles,--ere yet its symphony begin.

It was in this lonely valley she would charm
The lingering noon, where flowers a couch had strown;
Her cheek reclining, and her snowy arm
On hillock by the pine-tree half o'ergrown:
And aye that volume on her lap is thrown,
Which every heart of human mould endears;
With Shakspear's self she speaks and smiles alone,
A...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...mages
Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns,
Chanted by kneeling crowds, the chiding winds
Shriek in the solitary aisles. When he
Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all
The laws that God or man has made, and round
Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth,--
Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Heaven,
And celebrates his shame in open day,
Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st off
The horrible example. Touched by thine,
The extortioner's...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...lievable mess,
 so heaped and scattered
 it seemed the core

of chaos itself--
 but no, the junk was arranged
 in rough aisles,

someone's intimate
 clutter and collection,
 no walls but still

a kind of apartment
 and a fire ribboned out
 of a ruined stove,

and white plates
 were laid out
 on the table beside it.

White china! Something
 was moving, and
 --you understand

it takes longer to tell this
 than to see it, only
 a train window's worth

of actuality--
 I knew ...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...love,
More genuine transport found, as on some tomb
Reclin'd, she watch'd the tapers of the dead;
Or thro' the pillar'd aisles, amid pale shrines
Of imag'd saints, and intermingled graves,
Mus'd a veil'd votaress; than Flavia feels,
As thro' the mazes of the festive ball,
Proud of her conquering charms, and beauty's blaze,
She floats amid the silken sons of dress,
And shines the fairest of th' assembled fair.
When azure noontide cheers the daedal globe,
And the blest rege...Read more of this...

by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...is mad!
Palsied, our cunning hands;
Rotten, our gold;
Our argosies reel and stagger
Over empty seas;
All the long aisles
Of Thy Great Temples, God,
Stink with the entrails
Of our souls.
And Thou art dumb.
Above the thunder of Thy Thunders, Lord,
Lightening Thy Lightnings,
Rings and roars
The dark damnation
Of this hell of war.
Red piles the pulp of hearts and heads
And little children's hands.
Allah!
Elohim!
Very God of God!
Death is here!
Dead are the l...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...through light 
And shadow, while the twangling violin 
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead 
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime 
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. 

Strange was the sight and smacking of the time; 
And long we gazed, but satiated at length 
Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt, 
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire, 
Through one wide chasm of time and frost they gave 
The park, the crowd, the house; but all within 
...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...I LIKE a church; I like a cowl; 
I love a prophet of the soul; 
And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; 
Yet not for all his faith can see 5 
Would I that cowl¨¨d churchman be. 
Why should the vest on him allure  
Which I could not on me endure? 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 
His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 10 
Never from lips of cunning fell 
The thrilling Delphic oracle: 
Out from...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...yer 
To heaven, as if to waft it there. 
Still she smiled; even now she smiles, 
Though slaughter streams along her aisles: 
Minotti lifted his aged eye, 
And made the sign of a cross with a sigh, 
Then seized a torch which blazed thereby; 
And still he stood, while, with steel and flame, 
Inward and onward the Mussulman came. 

XXXI. 

The vaults beneath the mosaic stone 
Contain'd the dead of ages gone: 
Their names were on the graven floor, 
But now illegible w...Read more of this...

by Hecht, Anthony
...harm.
And as for visitors, why, I have you,
All cheerful, brisk and punctual every Sunday,
Like church, even if the aisles smell of phenol.
And you always bring even better gifts than any 
On your book-trolley. Though they mean only good,
Families can become a sort of burden.
I've only got my father, and he won't come,
Poor man, because it would be too much for him.
And for me, too, so it's best the way it is. 
He knows, you see, that I will predecease...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...entered the cool dark

I saw straight couples everywhere,
no single silhouette who might be you.
I walked those two aisles too small
to lose anyone and thought of a book
I read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science,"
in which a man simply walked away,

at a picnic, and was,
in the act of striding forward
to examine a flower, gone.
By the time the previews ended
I was nearly in tears-- then realized
the head of one-half the couple in the first row

was only your lea...Read more of this...

by Hillringhouse, Mark
...the Chinese lettering
or the sound of car alarms and sirens blaring us back.
The city dead in me swaying down these aisles,
like everything else that fell from my life.

I walk down Main Street
trying to regain my balance
behind the men who walk home
from sweaty jobs with clenched fists
and the women who follow them
pulling their children
like dogs in the rain....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things