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Best Famous Lichens Poems

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

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Written by Denise Levertov | Create an image from this poem

Celebration

 Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green – 
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes – 
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.


Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

Song For The Rainy Season

 Hidden, oh hidden 
in the high fog 
the house we live in, 
beneath the magnetic rock, 
rain-, rainbow-ridden, 
where blood-black 
bromelias, lichens, 
owls, and the lint 
of the waterfalls cling, 
familiar, unbidden. 

In a dim age 
of water 
the brook sings loud 
from a rib cage 
of giant fern; vapor 
climbs up the thick growth 
effortlessly, turns back, 
holding them both, 
house and rock, 
in a private cloud. 

At night, on the roof, 
blind drops crawl 
and the ordinary brown 
owl gives us proof 
he can count: 
five times--always five-- 
he stamps and takes off 
after the fat frogs that, 
shrilling for love, 
clamber and mount. 

House, open house 
to the white dew 
and the milk-white sunrise 
kind to the eyes, 
to membership 
of silver fish, mouse, 
bookworms, 
big moths; with a wall 
for the mildew's 
ignorant map; 

darkened and tarnished 
by the warm touch 
of the warm breath, 
maculate, cherished; 
rejoice! For a later 
era will differ. 
(O difference that kills 
or intimidates, much 
of all our small shadowy 
life!) Without water 

the great rock will stare 
unmagnetized, bare, 
no longer wearing 
rainbows or rain, 
the forgiving air 
and the high fog gone; 
the owls will move on 
and the several 
waterfalls shrivel 
in the steady sun.
Written by Marianne Moore | Create an image from this poem

The Steeple-Jack

 Dürer would have seen a reason for living
 in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
 with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep
 flying back and forth over the town clock,
or sailing around the lighthouse without moving their wings --
rising steadily with a slight
 quiver of the body -- or flock
mewing where

a sea the purple of the peacock's neck is
 paled to greenish azure as Dürer changed
the pine green of the Tyrol to peacock blue and guinea
gray. You can see a twenty-five-
 pound lobster; and fish nets arranged
to dry. The

whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt
 marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the
star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so
much confusion. Disguised by what
 might seem the opposite, the sea-
side flowers and

trees are favored by the fog so that you have
 the tropics first hand: the trumpet-vine,
fox-glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that has
spots and stripes; morning-glories, gourds,
 or moon-vines trained on fishing-twine
at the back door;

cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort,
 striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies --
yellow and crab-claw ragged sailors with green bracts -- toad-plant, 
petunias, ferns; pink lilies, blue
 ones, tigers; poppies; black sweet-peas.
The climate

is not right for the banyan, frangipani, or
 jack-fruit trees; or for exotic serpent
life. Ring lizard and snake-skin for the foot, if you see fit;
but here they've cats, not cobras, to
 keep down the rats. The diffident
little newt

with white pin-dots on black horizontal spaced-
 out bands lives here; yet there is nothing that
ambition can buy or take away. The college student
named Ambrose sits on the hillside
 with his not-native books and hat
and sees boats

at sea progress white and rigid as if in
 a groove. Liking an elegance of which
the sourch is not bravado, he knows by heart the antique
sugar-bowl shaped summer-house of
 interlacing slats, and the pitch
of the church

spire, not true, from which a man in scarlet lets
 down a rope as a spider spins a thread;
he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a
sign says C. J. Poole, Steeple Jack,
 in black and white; and one in red
and white says

Danger. The church portico has four fluted
 columns, each a single piece of stone, made
modester by white-wash. Theis would be a fit haven for
waifs, children, animals, prisoners,
 and presidents who have repaid
sin-driven

senators by not thinking about them. The
 place has a school-house, a post-office in a
store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted schooner on
the stocks. The hero, the student, 
 the steeple-jack, each in his way,
is at home.

It could not be dangerous to be living
 in a town like this, of simple people,
who have a steeple-jack placing danger signs by the church
while he is gilding the solid-
 pointed star, which on a steeple
stands for hope.
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Grey Evening

 When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours? 
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, 
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields 
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields. 

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,
As farther off the scythe of night is swung, 
And little stars come rolling from their husk. 

And all the earth is gone into a dust 
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold, 
Covered with aged lichens, past with must,
And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

And so I sit and scan the book of grey, 
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,
All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding 
With wounds of sunset and the dying day.
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Memories

 Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.


Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

Leaves Compared With Flowers

 A tree's leaves may be ever so good,
So may its bar, so may its wood;
But unless you put the right thing to its root
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

Earths Immortalities

 FAME.

See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute grey lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!

LOVE.

So, the year's done with
(_Love me for ever!_)
All March begun with,
April's endeavour;
May-wreaths that bound me
June needs must sever;
Now snows fall round me,
Quenching June's fever---
(_Love me for ever!_)
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

World Below the Brine The

 THE world below the brine; 
Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, 
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the thick tangle, the openings,
 and
 the pink turf, 
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold—the play of light
 through
 the water, 
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment
 of
 the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom, 
The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, 
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray; 
Passions there—wars, pursuits, tribes—sight in those ocean-depths—breathing
 that
 thick-breathing air, as so many do; 
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who
 walk
 this sphere;
The change onward from ours, to that of beings who walk other spheres.
Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

The Shampoo

 The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Lukannon

 I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers' song -- 
The beaches of Lukannon -- two million voices strong!


The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,
The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame -- 
The beaches of Lukannon -- before the sealers came!
I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!);
They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.
And through the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach
We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.


The beaches of Lukannon -- the winter-wheat so tall -- 
The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!
The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!
The beaches of Lukannon -- the home where we were born!


I meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.
Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;
Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,
And still we sing Lukannon -- before the sealers came.


Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska go!
And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys! the story of our woe;
Ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore,
The beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!


At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death!"


Eye to eye and head to head,
 (Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
 (At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist -- 
 (Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
 (Woe betide thee, Nag!)

Book: Reflection on the Important Things