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Best Famous Shored Poems

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

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Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

What The Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
  After the frosty silence in the gardens
  After the agony in stony places
  The shouting and the crying
  Prison and palace and reverberation
  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  He who was living is now dead
  We who were living are now dying
  With a little patience                                                  330

  Here is no water but only rock
  Rock and no water and the sandy road
  The road winding above among the mountains
  Which are mountains of rock without water
  If there were water we should stop and drink
  Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
  Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
  If there were only water amongst the rock
  Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
  Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit                              340
  There is not even silence in the mountains
  But dry sterile thunder without rain
  There is not even solitude in the mountains
  But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
  From doors of mudcracked houses
                                                           If there were water
  And no rock
  If there were rock
  And also water
  And water                                                               350
  A spring
  A pool among the rock
  If there were the sound of water only
  Not the cicada
  And dry grass singing
  But sound of water over a rock
  Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
  Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
  But there is no water

  Who is the third who walks always beside you?                          360
  When I count, there are only you and I together
  But when I look ahead up the white road
  There is always another one walking beside you
  Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
  I do not know whether a man or a woman
  —But who is that on the other side of you?

  What is that sound high in the air
  Murmur of maternal lamentation
  Who are those hooded hordes swarming
  Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth                         370
  Ringed by the flat horizon only
  What is the city over the mountains
  Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
  Falling towers
  Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
  Vienna London
  Unreal

  A woman drew her long black hair out tight
  And fiddled whisper music on those strings
  And bats with baby faces in the violet light                            380
  Whistled, and beat their wings
  And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
  And upside down in air were towers
  Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
  And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

  In this decayed hole among the mountains
  In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
  Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
  There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
  It has no windows, and the door swings,                                 390
  Dry bones can harm no one.
  Only a cock stood on the rooftree
  Co co rico co co rico
  In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
  Bringing rain

  Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
  Waited for rain, while the black clouds
  Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
  The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
  Then spoke the thunder                                                  400
  DA
  Datta: what have we given?
  My friend, blood shaking my heart
  The awful daring of a moment's surrender
  Which an age of prudence can never retract
  By this, and this only, we have existed
  Which is not to be found in our obituaries
  Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
  Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
  In our empty rooms                                                     410
  DA
  Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
  Turn in the door once and turn once only
  We think of the key, each in his prison
  Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
  Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
  Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
  DA
  Damyata: The boat responded
  Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar                            420
  The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
  Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
  To controlling hands

                                       I sat upon the shore
  Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
  Shall I at least set my lands in order?
  London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
  Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
  Quando fiam ceu chelidon— O swallow swallow
  Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie                                 430
  These fragments I have shored against my ruins
  Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
  Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
                             Shantih    shantih    shantih

  Line 416 aetherial] aethereal
  Line 429 ceu] uti— Editor


Written by Robinson Jeffers | Create an image from this poem

Meditation On Saviors

 I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
 and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
 little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
 nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of contempt, that
 easily lock the world out of doors.

Here on the rock it is great and beautiful, here on the foam-wet
 granite sea-fang it is easy to praise
Life and water and the shining stones: but whose cattle are the
 herds of the people that one should love them?

If they were yours, then you might take a cattle-breeder's
 delight in the herds of the future. Not yours.
Where the power ends let love, before it sours to jealousy.
 Leave the joys of government to Caesar.

Who is born when the world wanes, when the brave soul of the
 world falls on decay in the flesh increasing
Comes one with a great level mind, sufficient vision, sufficient
 blindness, and clemency for love.

This is the breath of rottenness I smelt; from the world
 waiting, stalled between storms, decaying a little,
Bitterly afraid to be hurt, but knowing it cannot draw the
 savior Caesar but out of the blood-bath.

The apes of Christ lift up their hands to praise love: but
 wisdom without love is the present savior,
Power without hatred, mind like a many-bladed machine subduing
 the world with deep indifference.

The apes of Christ itch for a sickness they have never known;
 words and the little envies will hardly
Measure against that blinding fire behind the tragic eyes they
 have never dared to confront.

II
Point Lobos lies over the hollowed water like a humped whale
 swimming to shoal; Point Lobos
Was wounded with that fire; the hills at Point Sur endured it;
 the palace at Thebes; the hill Calvary.

Out of incestuous love power and then ruin. A man forcing the
 imaginations of men,
Possessing with love and power the people: a man defiling his
 own household with impious desire.

King Oedipus reeling blinded from the palace doorway, red tears
 pouring from the torn pits
Under the forehead; and the young Jew writhing on the domed hill
 in the earthquake, against the eclipse

Frightfully uplifted for having turned inward to love the
 people: -that root was so sweet O dreadful agonist? -
I saw the same pierced feet, that walked in the same crime to
 its expiation; I heard the same cry.

A bad mountain to build your world on. Am I another keeper of
 the people, that on my own shore,
On the gray rock, by the grooved mass of the ocean, the
 sicknesses I left behind me concern me?

Here where the surf has come incredible ways out of the splendid
 west, over the deeps
Light nor life sounds forever; here where enormous sundowns
 flower and burn through color to quietness;

Then the ecstasy of the stars is present? As for the people, I
 have found my rock, let them find theirs.
Let them lie down at Caesar's feet and be saved; and he in his
 time reap their daggers of gratitude.

III
Yet I am the one made pledges against the refuge contempt, that
 easily locks the world out of doors.
This people as much as the sea-granite is part of the God from
 whom I desire not to be fugitive.

I see them: they are always crying. The shored Pacific makes
 perpetual music, and the stone mountains
Their music of silence, the stars blow long pipings of light:
 the people are always crying in their hearts.

One need not pity; certainly one must not love. But who has seen
 peace, if he should tell them where peace
Lives in the world...they would be powerless to understand; and
 he is not willing to be reinvolved.

IV
How should one caught in the stone of his own person dare tell
 the people anything but relative to that?
But if a man could hold in his mind all the conditions at once,
 of man and woman, of civilized

And barbarous, of sick and well, of happy and under torture, of
 living and dead, of human and not
Human, and dimly all the human future: -what should persuade him
 to speak? And what could his words change?

The mountain ahead of the world is not forming but fixed. But
 the man's words would be fixed also,
Part of that mountain, under equal compulsion; under the same
 present compulsion in the iron consistency.

And nobody sees good or evil but out of a brain a hundred
 centuries quieted, some desert
Prophet's, a man humped like a camel, gone mad between the mud-
 walled village and the mountain sepulchres.

V
Broad wagons before sunrise bring food into the city from the
 open farms, and the people are fed.
They import and they consume reality. Before sunrise a hawk in
 the desert made them their thoughts.

VI
Here is an anxious people, rank with suppressed
 bloodthirstiness. Among the mild and unwarlike
Gautama needed but live greatly and be heard, Confucius needed
 but live greatly and be heard:

This people has not outgrown blood-sacrifice, one must writhe on
 the high cross to catch at their memories;
The price is known. I have quieted love; for love of the people
 I would not do it. For power I would do it.

--But that stands against reason: what is power to a dead man,
 dead under torture? --What is power to a man
Living, after the flesh is content? Reason is never a root,
 neither of act nor desire.

For power living I would never do it; they'are not delightful to
 touch, one wants to be separate. For power
After the nerves are put away underground, to lighten the
 abstract unborn children toward peace...

A man might have paid anguish indeed. Except he had found the
 standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
 that quiets the desire even of praising it.

VII
Yet look: are they not pitiable? No: if they lived forever they
 would be pitiable:
But a huge gift reserved quite overwhelms them at the end; they
 are able then to be still and not cry.

And having touched a little of the beauty and seen a little of
 the beauty of things, magically grow
Across the funeral fire or the hidden stench of burial
 themselves into the beauty they admired,

Themselves into the God, themselves into the sacred steep
 unconsciousness they used to mimic
Asleep between lamp's death and dawn, while the last drunkard
 stumbled homeward down the dark street.

They are not to be pitied but very fortunate; they need no
 savior, salvation comes and takes them by force,
It gathers them into the great kingdoms of dust and stone, the
 blown storms, the stream's-end ocean.

With this advantage over their granite grave-marks, of having
 realized the petulant human consciousness
Before, and then the greatness, the peace: drunk from both
 pitchers: these to be pitied? These not fortunate

But while he lives let each man make his health in his mind, to
 love the coast opposite humanity
And so be freed of love, laying it like bread on the waters; it
 is worst turned inward, it is best shot farthest.

Love, the mad wine of good and evil, the saint's and murderer's,
 the mote in the eye that makes its object
Shine the sun black; the trap in which it is better to catch the
 inhuman God than the hunter's own image.
Written by George Herbert | Create an image from this poem

The World

Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

The Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,
Began to make balconies, terraces,
Till she had weakened all by alteration;
But reverend laws, and many a proclomation
Reform?d all at length with menaces.

Then entered Sin, and with that sycamore
Whose leaves first sheltered man from drought and dew,
Working and winding slily evermore,
The inward walls and summers cleft and tore;
But Grace shored these, and cut that as it grew.

Then Sin combined with death in a firm band,
To raze the building to the very floor;
Which they effected,--none could them withstand;
But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand,
And built a braver palace than before.
Written by Czeslaw Milosz | Create an image from this poem

Father Explains

 "There where that ray touches the plain
And the shadows escape as if they really ran,
Warsaw stands, open from all sides,
A city not very old but quite famous.

"Farther, where strings of rain hang from a little cloud,
Under the hills with an acacia grove
Is Prague. Above it, a marvelous castle
Shored against a slope in accordance with old rules.

"What divides this land with white foam
Is the Alps. The black means fir forests.
Beyond them, bathing in the yellow sun
Italy lies, like a deep-blue dish.

"Among the many fine cities that are there
You will recogni2e Rome, Christendom's capital,
By those round roofs on the church
Called the Basilica of Saint Peter.

"And there, to the north, beyond a bay,
Where a level bluish mist moves in waves,
Paris tries to keep pace with its tower
And reins in its herd of bridges.

"Also other cities accompany Paris,
They are adorned with glass, arrayed in iron,
But for today that would be too much,
I'll tell the rest another time
Written by Erin Moure | Create an image from this poem

The Cold

 There was a cold
In which

A line of water across the chest risen
(dream)

Impetuate, or
Impetuates

Orthograph you cherish, a hand her
Of doubt importance

Her imbroglio the winnowing of ever
Does establish

An imbroglio, ever
she does repeatedly declare

to no cold end
Admonish wit, at wit's end, where "wit" is

***

The cold of which
her azul gaze impart a stuttered pool

Memoria address me here (green)

Echolalic fear
Her arm or name in French says "smooth"

A wine-dark seam inside the head, this name
The "my" head I admit, or consonantal glimmer

Insoluble
Or wet fields the vines or eucalyptus wood

Lift from, here

***

Whose cartilage did grief still bear?
Whose silent wound?
Who submitted?
Who fortuitously was grave?
A trepidation honest
Whose declaration met silence?
Whose demurred?
Whose wall shored up became
houses?
Whose "will"?

Whose sympathetic concatenation? Whose picture
withstood "ordeal"?
Who caressed "that tiger"?
Whose laugh at an airport called forth? Whose ground
shifted?


Written by Victor Hugo | Create an image from this poem

No Assassination

 ("Laissons le glaive à Rome.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xvi., October, 1852.} 


 Pray Rome put up her poniard! 
 And Sparta sheathe the sword; 
 Be none too prompt to punish, 
 And cast indignant word! 
 Bear back your spectral Brutus 
 From robber Bonaparte; 
 Time rarely will refute us 
 Who doom the hateful heart. 
 
 Ye shall be o'ercontented, 
 My banished mates from home, 
 But be no rashness vented 
 Ere time for joy shall come. 
 No crime can outspeed Justice, 
 Who, resting, seems delayed— 
 Full faith accord the angel 
 Who points the patient blade. 
 
 The traitor still may nestle 
 In balmy bed of state, 
 But mark the Warder, watching 
 His guardsman at his gate. 
 He wears the crown, a monarch— 
 Of knaves and stony hearts; 
 But though they're blessed by Senates, 
 None can escape the darts! 
 
 Though shored by spear and crozier, 
 All know the arrant cheat, 
 And shun the square of pavement 
 Uncertain at his feet! 
 Yea, spare the wretch, each brooding 
 And secret-leaguers' chief, 
 And make no pistol-target 
 Of stars upon the thief. 
 
 The knell of God strikes seldom 
 But in the aptest hour; 
 And when the life is sweetest, 
 The worm will feel His power! 


 




Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

On the World you colored

 On the World you colored
Morning painted rose --
Idle his Vermillion
Aimlessly crept the Glows
Over Realms of Orchards
I the Day before
Conquered with the Robin --
Misery, how fair
Till your wrinkled Finger
Shored the sun away
Midnight's awful Pattern
In the Goods of Day --

Book: Reflection on the Important Things