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Best Famous Sled Poems

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

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Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

Threnody

 The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs,
And he, —the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break, and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him,
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Returned this day the south-wind searches
And finds young pines and budding birches,
But finds not the budding man;
Nature who lost him, cannot remake him;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.

And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,
Oh, whither tend thy feet?
I had the right, few days ago,
Thy steps to watch, thy place to know;
How have I forfeited the right?
Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?
I hearken for thy household cheer,
O eloquent child!
Whose voice, an equal messenger,
Conveyed thy meaning mild.
What though the pains and joys
Whereof it spoke were toys
Fitting his age and ken;—
Yet fairest dames and bearded men,
Who heard the sweet request
So gentle, wise, and grave,
Bended with joy to his behest,
And let the world's affairs go by,
Awhile to share his cordial game,
Or mend his wicker wagon frame,
Still plotting how their hungry ear
That winsome voice again might hear,
For his lips could well pronounce
Words that were persuasions.

Gentlest guardians marked serene
His early hope, his liberal mien,
Took counsel from his guiding eyes
To make this wisdom earthly wise.
Ah! vainly do these eyes recall
The school-march, each day's festival,
When every morn my bosom glowed
To watch the convoy on the road;—
The babe in willow wagon closed,
With rolling eyes and face composed,
With children forward and behind,
Like Cupids studiously inclined,
And he, the Chieftain, paced beside,
The centre of the troop allied,
With sunny face of sweet repose,
To guard the babe from fancied foes,
The little Captain innocent
Took the eye with him as he went,
Each village senior paused to scan
And speak the lovely caravan.

From the window I look out
To mark thy beautiful parade
Stately marching in cap and coat
To some tune by fairies played;
A music heard by thee alone
To works as noble led thee on.
Now love and pride, alas, in vain,
Up and down their glances strain.
The painted sled stands where it stood,
The kennel by the corded wood,
The gathered sticks to stanch the wall
Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall,
The ominous hole he dug in the sand,
And childhood's castles built or planned.
His daily haunts I well discern,
The poultry yard, the shed, the barn,
And every inch of garden ground
Paced by the blessed feet around,
From the road-side to the brook;
Whereinto he loved to look.
Step the meek birds where erst they ranged,
The wintry garden lies unchanged,
The brook into the stream runs on,
But the deep-eyed Boy is gone.

On that shaded day,
Dark with more clouds than tempests are,
When thou didst yield thy innocent breath
In bird-like heavings unto death,
Night came, and Nature had not thee,—
I said, we are mates in misery.
The morrow dawned with needless glow,
Each snow-bird chirped, each fowl must crow,
Each tramper started,— but the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden,—they were bound and still,
There's not a sparrow or a wren,
There's not a blade of autumn grain,
Which the four seasons do not tend,
And tides of life and increase lend,
And every chick of every bird,
And weed and rock-moss is preferred.
O ostriches' forgetfulness!
O loss of larger in the less!
Was there no star that could be sent,
No watcher in the firmament,
No angel from the countless host,
That loiters round the crystal coast,
Could stoop to heal that only child,
Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,
And keep the blossom of the earth,
Which all her harvests were not worth?
Not mine, I never called thee mine,
But nature's heir,— if I repine,
And, seeing rashly torn and moved,
Not what I made, but what I loved.
Grow early old with grief that then
Must to the wastes of nature go,—
'Tis because a general hope
Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope
For flattering planets seemed to say,
This child should ills of ages stay,—
By wondrous tongue and guided pen
Bring the flown muses back to men. —
Perchance, not he, but nature ailed,
The world, and not the infant failed,
It was not ripe yet, to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own,
And pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.
Awhile his beauty their beauty tried,
They could not feed him, and he died,
And wandered backward as in scorn
To wait an Æon to be born.
Ill day which made this beauty waste;
Plight broken, this high face defaced!
Some went and came about the dead,
And some in books of solace read,
Some to their friends the tidings say,
Some went to write, some went to pray,
One tarried here, there hurried one,
But their heart abode with none.
Covetous death bereaved us all
To aggrandize one funeral.
The eager Fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me.
For this losing is true dying,
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This is slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.

O child of Paradise!
Boy who made dear his father's home
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come;
I am too much bereft;
The world dishonored thou hast left;
O truths and natures costly lie;
O trusted, broken prophecy!
O richest fortune sourly crossed;
Born for the future, to the future lost!

The deep Heart answered, Weepest thou?
Worthier cause for passion wild,
If I had not taken the child.
And deemest thou as those who pore
With aged eyes short way before?
Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost?
Taught he not thee, — the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man?
To be alone wilt thou begin,
When worlds of lovers hem thee in?
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen nature's carnival,
The pure shall see, by their own will,
Which overflowing love shall fill,—
'Tis not within the force of Fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou?
I gave thee sight, where is it now?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table
As far as the incommunicable;
Taught thee each private sign to raise
Lit by the supersolar blaze.
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of nature's heart,—
And though no muse can these impart,
Throb thine with nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.

I came to thee as to a friend,
Dearest, to thee I did not send
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the sky,
Lovely locks a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder;
That thou might'st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art;
And, as the great all-loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might'st break thy daily bread
With Prophet, Saviour, and head;
That thou might'st cherish for thine own
The riches of sweet Mary's Son,
Boy-Rabbi, Israel's Paragon:
And thoughtest thou such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest?
Would rushing life forget its laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause?
High omens ask diviner guess,
Not to be conned to tediousness.
And know, my higher gifts unbind
The zone that girds the incarnate mind,
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous whirling pool,
When frail Nature can no more,—
Then the spirit strikes the hour,
My servant Death with solving rite
Pours finite into infinite.
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go?
Nail the star struggling to its track
On the half-climbed Zodiack?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,—
Wilt thou transfix and make it none,
Its onward stream too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?

Wilt thou uncalled interrogate
Talker! the unreplying fate?
Nor see the Genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom.
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built, to last a season,
Masterpiece of love benign!
Fairer than expansive reason
Whose omen 'tis, and sign.
Wilt thou not ope this heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show,
Verdict which accumulates
From lengthened scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of heart that inly burned;
Saying, what is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, 
Heart's love will meet thee again. 
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye
Up to His style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold
Built He heaven stark and cold,
No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass and scented weeds,
Or like a traveller's fleeting tent,
Or bow above the tempest pent,
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness,
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow;
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.


Written by Robert Louis Stevenson | Create an image from this poem

Winter-Time

 Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, 
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head; 
Blinks but an hour or two; and then, 
A blood-red orange, sets again. 

Before the stars have left the skies, 
At morning in the dark I rise; 
And shivering in my nakedness, 
By the cold candle, bathe and dress. 

Close by the jolly fire I sit 
To warm my frozen bones a bit; 
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore 
The colder countries round the door. 

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap 
Me in my comforter and cap; 
The cold wind burns my face, and blows 
Its frosty pepper up my nose. 

Black are my steps on silver sod; 
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad; 
And tree and house, and hill and lake, 
Are frosted like a wedding cake.
Written by Joaquin Miller | Create an image from this poem

The Yukon

 THE moon resumed all heaven now, 
She shepherded the stars below 
Along her wide, white steeps of snow, 
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how. 

She bared her full white breast, she dared 
The sun e'er show his face again. 
She seemed to know no change, she kept 
Carousal constantly, nor slept, 
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared 
The fearful meaning, the mad pain, 
The weary eyes, the poor dazed brain, 
That came at last to feel, to see 
The dread, dead touch of lunacy. 

How loud the silence! Oh, how loud! 
How more than beautiful the shroud 
Of dead Light in the moon-mad north 
When great torch-tipping stars stand forth 
Above the black, slow-moving pall 
As at some fearful funeral! 

The moon blares as mad trumpets blare 
To marshaled warriors long and loud; 
The cobalt blue knows not a cloud, 
But oh, beware that moon, beware 
Her ghostly, graveyard, moon-mad stare! 

Beware white silence more than white! 
Beware the five-horned starry rune; 
Beware the groaning gorge below; 
Beware the wide, white world of snow, 
Where trees hang white as hooded nun-- 
No thing not white, not one, not one! 
But most beware that mad white moon. 

All day, all day, all night, all night 
Nay, nay, not yet or night or day. 
Just whiteness, whiteness, ghastly white, 
Made doubly white by that mad moon 
And strange stars jangled out of tune! 

At last, he saw, or seemed to see, 
Above, beyond, another world. 
Far up the ice-hung path there curled 
A red-veined cloud, a canopy 
That topt the fearful ice-built peak 
That seemed to prop the very porch 
Of God's house; then, as if a torch 
Burned fierce, there flushed a fiery streak, 
A flush, a blush, on heaven's cheek! 

The dogs sat down, men sat the sled 
And watched the flush, the blush of red. 
The little wooly dogs, they knew, 
Yet scarcely knew what they were about. 
They thrust their noses up and out, 
They drank the Light, what else to do? 
Their little feet, so worn, so true, 
Could scarcely keep quiet for delight. 
They knew, they knew, how much they knew 
The mighty breaking up of night! 
Their bright eyes sparkled with such joy 
That they at last should see loved Light! 
The tandem sudden broke all rule; 
Swung back, each leaping like a boy 
Let loose from some dark, ugly school-- 
Leaped up and tried to lick his hand-- 
Stood up as happy children stand. 

How tenderly God's finger set 
His crimson flower on that height 
Above the battered walls of night! 
A little space it flourished yet, 
And then His angel, His first-born, 
Burst through, as on that primal morn!
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

Manitoba Childe Roland

 LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf
song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not
understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing happens—and he goes on and
on—and it’s all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on—and nothing happens—and he comes on a horse’s skull, dry bones of a 
dead horse—and you know more than ever it’s all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows—he fixes a proud neck and forehead toward 
the empty sky and the empty land—and blows one last wonder-cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks off its results willy-nilly and 
inevitable as the snick of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimeter projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts of Manitoba and Minnesota—in the 
sled derby run from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg—the lead dog is eaten by four team 
mates—and the man goes on and on—running while the other racers ride—running while the 
other racers sleep—

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle of travel hour after hour—fighting 
the dogs who dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep—pushing on—running and walking 
five hundred miles to the end of the race—almost a winner—one toe frozen, feet blistered 
and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the Northwest meet him in the finishing miles and 
yell cheers—I know why judges of the race call him a winner and give him a special prize 
even though he is a loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding heart amid the blizzards of five 
hundred miles that one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland—and I told the six-year-old girl 
all about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles and whistling a wolf song under the 
eaves, her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not 
understand.
Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

The Burial Of The Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
  Memory and desire, stirring
  Dull roots with spring rain.
  Winter kept us warm, covering
  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
  A little life with dried tubers.
  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
  With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
  And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,                            10
  And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
  Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
  And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
  My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
  And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
  Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
  In the mountains, there you feel free.
  I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,                                  20
  You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
  A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
  And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
  And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
  There is shadow under this red rock,
  (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
  And I will show you something different from either
  Your shadow at morning striding behind you
  Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
  I will show you fear in a handful of dust.                              30
       Frisch weht der Wind
       Der Heimat zu
       Mein Irisch Kind,
       Wo weilest du?
  "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
  "They called me the hyacinth girl."
  —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
  Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
  Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,                                    40
  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
  Od' und leer das Meer.

  Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
  Had a bad cold, nevertheless
  Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
  With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
  Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
  (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
  Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
  The lady of situations.                                                 50
  Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
  And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
  Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
  Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
  The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
  I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
  Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
  Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
  One must be so careful these days.

  Unreal City,                                                            60
  Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
  A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
  I had not thought death had undone so many.
  Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
  And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
  Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
  To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
  With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
  There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
  "You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!                            70
  "That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
  "Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
  "Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

  Line 42 Od'] Oed'— Editor.

  "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
  "Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
  "You! hypocrite lecteur!— mon semblable,— mon frere!"


Written by Eugene Field | Create an image from this poem

A Valentine

 Go, Cupid, and my sweetheart tell
I love her well.
Yes, though she tramples on my heart
And rends that bleeding thing apart;
And though she rolls a scornful eye
On doting me when I go by;
And though she scouts at everything
As tribute unto her I bring -
Apple, banana, caramel -
Haste, Cupid, to my love and tell,
In spite of all, I love her well!

And further say I have a sled
Cushioned in blue and painted red!
The groceryman has promised I
Can "hitch" whenever he goes by -
Go, tell her that, and, furthermore,
Apprise my sweetheart that a score
Of other little girls implore
The boon of riding on that sled
Painted and hitched, as aforesaid; -
And tell her, Cupid, only she
Shall ride upon that sled with me!
Tell her this all, and further tell
I love her well.
Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

The Snow-Storm

 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

The Snow-Storm

 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 
Come see the north wind's masonry. 
Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 
For number or proportion. Mockingly, 
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; 
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn; 
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall, 
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate 
A tapering turret overtops the work. 
And when his hours are numbered, and the world 
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, 
The frolic architecture of the snow.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

My Husky Team

 I met an ancient man who mushed
With Peary to the Pole.
Said I, "In all that land so hushed
What most inspired your soul?"
He looked at me with bleary eye,
He scratched a hoary head:
"You know that Sourdoughs jest cain't lie
So here's the dope," he said.

"That hike was like a devil's dream,
Just blizzards, gales and fogs,
But I was leadin' wi' my team
O' seven husky dogs.
Day after day I steered my sleigh,
Yet spry o' heart was I,
And every night the Northern Light
Danced ballys in the sky.

"Them dogs o' mine seemed to divine
Their mighty destiny.
They howled with joy, and like a boy
I jined them in their glee.
While like a spark from out the dark
Fame spurred us to our goal,
On, on we sped, the winnin' sled
To gain the Pole, the POLE.

"I saw it clear, I raised a cheer,
I knowed the prize was won:
The huskies too, like wind they flew -
Them critters sure could run.
The light was dim, the site was grim,
But sunshine swept my soul,
To see - each husky lift a limb
And...irrigate the Pole."

Book: Reflection on the Important Things