10 Best Famous Airily Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Airily poems. This is a select list of the best famous Airily poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Airily poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of airily poems.

• All Famous Airily Poems

 I dance in circles holding
the moth of the marriage,
thin, sticky, fluttering
its skirts, its webs.
The moth oozing a tear,
or is it a drop of urine?
The moth, grinning like a pear,
or is it teeth
clamping the iron maiden shut?

The moth,
who is my mother,
who is my father,
who was my lover,
floats airily out of my hands
and I dance slower,
pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring,
pulling off the elopement wedding ring,
and holding them, clicking them
in thumb and forefinger,
the indent of twenty-five years,
like a tiny rip of a tiny earthquake.
Underneath the soil lies the violence,
the shift, the crack of continents,
the anger,
and above only a cut,
a half-inch space to stick a pencil in.

The finger is scared
but it keeps its long numb place.
And I keep dancing,
a sort of waltz,
clicking the two rings,
all of a life at its last cough,
as I swim through the air of the kitchen,
and the same radio plays its songs
and I make a small path through them
with my bare finger and my funny feet,
doing the undoing dance,
on April 14th, 1973,
letting my history rip itself off me
and stepping into
something unknown
and transparent,
but all ten fingers stretched outward,
flesh extended as metal
waiting for a magnet.

 The band was playing a waltz-quadrille,
I felt as light as a wind-blown feather,
As we floated away, at the caller’s will,
Through the intricate, mazy dance together.
Like mimic armies our lines were meeting,
Slowly advancing, and then retreating,
All decked in their bright array;
And back and forth to the music’s rhyme
We moved together, and all the time
I knew you were going away.

The fold of your strong arm sent a thrill
From heart to brain as we gently glided
Like leaves on the wave of that waltz-quadrille;
Parted, met, and again divided –
You drifting one way, and I another,
Then suddenly turning and facing each other,
Then off in the blithe chasse.
Then airily back to our places swaying,
While every beat of the music seemed saying
That you were going away.

I said to my heart, ‘Let us take our fill
Of mirth, and music, and love, and laughter;
For it all must end with this waltz-quadrille,
And life will never be the same life after.
Oh that the caller might go on calling!
Oh that the music might go on falling
Like a shower of silver spray,
While we whirled on to the vast Forever,
Where no hearts break, and no ties sever,
And no one goes away!

A clamour, a crash, and the band was still,
‘Twas the end of the dream, and the end of the measure:
The last low notes of that waltz-quadrille
Seemed like a dirge o’er the death of Pleasure.
You said good-night, and the spell was over –
Too warm for a friend, and too cold for a lover –
There was nothing else to say;
But the lights looked dim, and the dancers weary,
And the music was sad and the hall was dreary,
After you went away.

 Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,
He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,
And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew
At morn in brake or bosky avenue.
Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say.
Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song
Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again.
Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain:
How may the death of that dull insect be
The life of yon trim Shakespeare on the tree?

 Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay 
Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam, 
I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay 
Most idly floating in the noontide beam. 
Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway 
Of ocean's giant pulsing, and the Dream, 
Buoyed like the young moon on a level stream 
Of greenish vapour at decline of day, 
Swam airily, watching the distant flocks 
Of sea-gulls, whilst a foot in careless sweep 
Touched the clear-trembling cool with tiny shocks, 
Faint-circling; till at last he dropt asleep, 
Lull'd by the hush-song of the glittering deep, 
Lap-lapping drowsily the heated rocks.

 The leaves are falling one and one,
 Each like a life to me,
As over-soonly in the sun
 They spiral goldenly:
So airily and warily
 They falter free.

The leaves are falling two and two,
 Beneath a baleful sky;
So silently the sward they strew,
 Reluctantly they die . . .
Rich crimson leaves,--and no one grieves
 There doom but I.

The leaves are falling three and three
 Beneath the mothlike moon;
They flutter downward silverly
 In muted rigadoon;
And russet dry remote they lie
 From feathered tune.

The leaves are lying numberless,
 Disconsolately dead;
Where lucent was their sylvan dress
 And lightsome was their tread,
They rot below the bitter snow,
 Uncomforted.

A leaf's a life, and one by one
 They drift each darkling day;
Rare friends who lusted in the sun
 Are frailing fast away . . . 
How sadly soon will mourn the moon
 My dark decay!