10 Best Famous Tosses Poems

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

• All Famous Tosses Poems

 UP with the sun, the breeze arose,
Across the talking corn she goes,
And smooth she rustles far and wide
Through all the voiceful countryside.

Through all the land her tale she tells;
She spins, she tosses, she compels
The kites, the clouds, the windmill sails
And all the trees in all the dales.

God calls us, and the day prepares
With nimble, gay and gracious airs:
And from Penzance to Maidenhead
The roads last night He watered.

God calls us from inglorious ease,
Forth and to travel with the breeze
While, swift and singing, smooth and strong
She gallops by the fields along.

 'Tis strange that in a land so strong 
So strong and bold in mighty youth, 
We have no poet's voice of truth 
To sing for us a wondrous song. 
Our chiefest singer yet has sung 
In wild, sweet notes a passing strain, 
All carelessly and sadly flung 
To that dull world he thought so vain. 

"I care for nothing, good nor bad, 
My hopes are gone, my pleasures fled, 
I am but sifting sand," he said: 
What wonder Gordon's songs were sad! 

And yet, not always sad and hard; 
In cheerful mood and light of heart 
He told the tale of Britomarte, 
And wrote the Rhyme of Joyous Garde. 

And some have said that Nature's face 
To us is always sad; but these 
Have never felt the smiling grace 
Of waving grass and forest trees 
On sunlit plains as wide as seas. 

"A land where dull Despair is king 
O'er scentless flowers and songless bird!" 
But we have heard the bell-birds ring 
Their silver bells at eventide, 
Like fairies on the mountain side, 
The sweetest note man ever heard. 

The wild thrush lifts a note of mirth; 
The bronzewing pigeons call and coo 
Beside their nests the long day through; 
The magpie warbles clear and strong 
A joyous, glad, thanksgiving song, 
For all God's mercies upon earth. 

And many voices such as these 
Are joyful sounds for those to tell, 
Who know the Bush and love it well, 
With all its hidden mysteries. 

We cannot love the restless sea, 
That rolls and tosses to and fro 
Like some fierce creature in its glee; 
For human weal or human woe 
It has no touch of sympathy. 

For us the bush is never sad: 
Its myriad voices whisper low, 
In tones the bushmen only know, 
Its sympathy and welcome glad. 
For us the roving breezes bring 
From many a blossum-tufted tree -- 
Where wild bees murmur dreamily -- 
The honey-laden breath of Spring. 

* * * * 

We have our tales of other days, 
Good tales the northern wanderers tell 
When bushmen meet and camp-fires blaze, 
And round the ring of dancing light 
The great, dark bush with arms of night 
Folds every hearer in its spell. 

We have our songs -- not songs of strife 
And hot blood spilt on sea and land; 
But lilts that link achievement grand 
To honest toil and valiant life. 

Lift ye your faces to the sky 
Ye barrier mountains in the west 
Who lie so peacefully at rest 
Enshrouded in a haze of blue; 
'Tis hard to feel that years went by 
Before the pioneers broke through 
Your rocky heights and walls of stone, 
And made your secrets all their own. 

For years the fertile Western plains 
Were hid behind your sullen walls, 
Your cliffs and crags and waterfalls 
All weatherworn with tropic rains. 

Between the mountains and the sea 
Like Israelites with staff in hand, 
The people waited restlessly: 
They looked towards the mountains old 
And saw the sunsets come and go 
With gorgeous golden afterglow, 
That made the West a fairyland, 
And marvelled what that West might be 
Of which such wondrous tales were told. 

For tales were told of inland seas 
Like sullen oceans, salt and dead, 
And sandy deserts, white and wan, 
Where never trod the foot of man, 
Nor bird went winging overhead, 
Nor ever stirred a gracious breeze 
To wake the silence with its breath -- 
A land of loneliness and death. 

At length the hardy pioneers 
By rock and crag found out the way, 
And woke with voices of today 
A silence kept for years and tears. 

Upon the Western slope they stood 
And saw -- a wide expanse of plain 
As far as eye could stretch or see 
Go rolling westward endlessly. 
The native grasses, tall as grain, 
Bowed, waved and rippled in the breeze; 
From boughs of blossom-laden trees 
The parrots answered back again. 
They saw the land that it was good, 
A land of fatness all untrod, 
And gave their silent thanks to God. 

The way is won! The way is won! 
And straightway from the barren coast 
There came a westward-marching host, 
That aye and ever onward prest 
With eager faces to the West, 
Along the pathway of the sun. 

The mountains saw them marching by: 
They faced the all-consuming drought, 
They would not rest in settled land: 
But, taking each his life in hand, 
Their faces ever westward bent 
Beyond the farthest settlement, 
Responding to the challenge cry 
of "better country farther out". 

And lo, a miracle! the land 
But yesterday was all unknown, 
The wild man's boomerang was thrown 
Where now great busy cities stand. 
It was not much, you say, that these 
Should win their way where none withstood; 
In sooth there was not much of blood -- 
No war was fought between the seas. 

It was not much! but we who know 
The strange capricious land they trod -- 
At times a stricken, parching sod, 
At times with raging floods beset -- 
Through which they found their lonely way 
Are quite content that you should say 
It was not much, while we can feel 
That nothing in the ages old, 
In song or story written yet 
On Grecian urn or Roman arch, 
Though it should ring with clash of steel, 
Could braver histories unfold 
Than this bush story, yet untold -- 
The story of their westward march. 

* * * * 

But times are changed, and changes rung 
From old to new -- the olden days, 
The old bush life and all its ways, 
Are passing from us all unsung. 
The freedom, and the hopeful sense 
Of toil that brought due recompense, 
Of room for all, has passed away, 
And lies forgotten with the dead. 
Within our streets men cry for bread 
In cities built but yesterday. 
About us stretches wealth of land, 
A boundless wealth of virgin soil 
As yet unfruitful and untilled! 
Our willing workmen, strong and skilled, 
Within our cities idle stand, 
And cry aloud for leave to toil. 

The stunted children come and go 
In squalid lanes and alleys black: 
We follow but the beaten track 
Of other nations, and we grow 
In wealth for some -- for many, woe. 

And it may be that we who live 
In this new land apart, beyond 
The hard old world grown fierce and fond 
And bound by precedent and bond, 
May read the riddle right, and give 
New hope to those who dimly see 
That all things yet shall be for good, 
And teach the world at length to be 
One vast united brotherhood. 

* * * * 

So may it be! and he who sings 
In accents hopeful, clear, and strong, 
The glories which that future brings 
Shall sing, indeed, a wondrous song.

I am the Empire in the last of its decline, 
That sees the tall, fair-haired Barbarians pass,--the while 
Composing indolent acrostics, in a style 
Of gold, with languid sunshine dancing in each line.

The solitary soul is heart-sick with a vile 
Ennui. Down yon, they say, War's torches bloody shine. 
Alas, to be so faint of will, one must resign 
The chance of brave adventure in the splendid file,-

Of death, perchance! Alas, so lagging in desire! 
Ah, all is drunk! Bathyllus, has done laughing, pray? 
Ah, all is drunk,--all eaten! Nothing more to say!

Alone, a vapid verse one tosses in the fire; 
Alone, a somewhat thievish slave neglecting one; 
Alone, a vague disgust of all beneath the sun!

 The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.

A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning 
breeze,
The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

And all the woods are alive with the murmur and 
sound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some 
tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow 
there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.

 Bath
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is 
a smell of tulips and narcissus
in the air.
The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and 
bores through the water
in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It 
cleaves the water
into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.
Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of 
the water and dance, dance,
and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir 
of my finger
sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes 
of light
in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white 
water,
the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is 
almost
too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright 
day.
I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.
The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps 
by the window, and there is
a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

Breakfast Table
In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table 
is decked and white.
It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells,
and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over 
its side,
draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver 
coffee-pot,
hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl -- 
and my eyes
begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like 
darts.
Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the 
sun to bask.
A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, 
scream,
flutter, call: "Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!" Coffee 
steam rises in a stream,
clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the 
sunlight,
revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin 
spiral
up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the 
coffee steam.
The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.

Walk
Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer 
away without touching.
On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass 
marbles,
with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet
clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red 
striped agates.
The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into 
the gutters
under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus 
in the air,
but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the 
street,
and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing skirts. The 
dust and the wind
flirt at her ankles and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap, 
tap,
the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind rustles among the 
flowers
on her hat.
A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of 
the way. It is green and gay
with new paint, and rumbles contentedly, sprinkling clear water 
over
the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells 
of tulips and narcissus.
The thickening branches make a pink `grisaille' 
against the blue sky.
Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each 
other and sheer away just in time.
Whoop! And a man's hat careers down the street in front 
of the white dust,
leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead 
of the wind,
jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green.
A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, 
sharp-beaked, irresistible,
shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and 
sunshine
tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky 
is quiet and high,
and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air.

Midday and Afternoon
Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and 
recoil of traffic. The stock-still
brick facade of an old church, against which the waves of people
lurch and withdraw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies 
of light
in the windows of chemists' shops, with their blue, gold, purple 
jars,
darting colours far into the crowd. Loud bangs and tremors,
murmurings out of high windows, whirring of machine belts,
blurring of horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder 
of brakes
on an electric car, and the jar of a church-bell knocking against
the metal blue of the sky. I am a piece of the town, 
a bit of blown dust,
thrust along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement 
under me,
reeling with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, lagging, 
dragging,
plodding doggedly, or springing up and advancing on firm elastic 
insteps.
A boy is selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the press.
They are fresh like the air, and pungent as tulips and narcissus.
The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues 
of gold blind the shop-windows,
putting out their contents in a flood of flame.

Night and Sleep
The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Electric 
signs gleam out
along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow, 
and grow,
and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades 
scream
in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab, 
snap, that means
a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is 
the sidelong
sliver of a watchmaker's sign with its length on another street.
A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall 
building,
but the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours?
I leave the city with speed. Wheels 
whirl to take me back to my trees
and my quietness. The breeze which blows with me is fresh-washed 
and clean,
it has come but recently from the high sky. There are 
no flowers
in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus.
My room is tranquil and friendly. Out 
of the window I can see
the distant city, a band of twinkling gems, little flower-heads 
with no stems.
I cannot see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restaurants 
and shops
I passed, now the signs blur and all together make the city,
glowing on a night of fine weather, like a garden stirring and blowing
for the Spring.
The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is 
a whiff of flowers in the air.
Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour 
your blue and purple dreams
into my ears. The breeze whispers at the shutters and 
mutters
***** tales of old days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping 
their horses
down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, you are the 
colour of the sky
when it is fresh-washed and fair . . . I smell the stars . . . they 
are like
tulips and narcissus . . . I smell them in the air.

 This one is entering her teens,
Ripe for sentimental scenes,
Has picked a gangling unripe male,
Sees herself in bridal veil,
Presses lips and tosses head,
Declares she's not too young to wed,
Informs you pertly you forget
Romeo and Juliet.
Do not argue, do not shout;
Remind her how that one turned out.

 Are they clinging to their crosses,
F. E. Smith,
Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,
Are they, Smith?
Do they, fasting, trembling, bleeding,
Wait the news from this our city?
Groaning "That's the Second Reading!"
Hissing "There is still Committee!"
If the voice of Cecil falters,
If McKenna's point has pith,
Do they tremble for their altars?
Do they, Smith?

Russian peasants round their pope
Huddled, Smith,
Hear about it all, I hope,
Don't they, Smith?
In the mountain hamlets clothing
Peaks beyond Caucasian pales,
Where Establishment means nothing
And they never heard of Wales,
Do they read it all in Hansard --
With a crib to read it with --
"Welsh Tithes: Dr. Clifford answered."
Really, Smith?

In the lands where Christians were,
F. E. Smith,
In the little lands laid bare,
Smith, O Smith!
Where the Turkish bands are busy
And the Tory name is blessed
Since they hailed the Cross of Dizzy
On the banners from the West!
Men don't think it half so hard if
Islam burns their kin and kith,
Since a curate lives in Cardiff
Saved by Smith.

It would greatly, I must own,
Soothe me, Smith!
If you left this theme alone,
Holy Smith!
For your legal cause or civil
You fight well and get your fee;
For your God or dream or devil
You will answer, not to me.
Talk about the pews and steeples
And the cash that goes therewith!
But the souls of Christian peoples...
Chuck it, Smith!

 Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the 
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping 
and trickling
over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit 
of a gargoyle,
and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square.
Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about 
in the sky?
Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, 
again! After it, only water
rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle.
Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about 
from the firelight.
The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies
leap in the bohemian glasses on the `etagere'. Her hands 
are restless,
but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will 
it never cease
to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration 
shatters a glass
on the `etagere'. It lies there, formless and glowing,
with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing 
red,
blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A 
door creaks.
The old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken 
glass." "Alas!
Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred 
years ago
my father brought it --" Boom! The room shakes, 
the servitor quakes.
Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he 
is shut
within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his 
table, his ink,
his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls 
are pierced with
beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain 
tosses itself
up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin 
he can see
copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp 
in a cedar-tree
grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent,
shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom!
The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain 
rears up
in long broken spears of dishevelled water and flattens into the 
earth. Boom!
And there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding 
rain.
Again, Boom! -- Boom! -- Boom! He stuffs his fingers 
into his ears.
He sees corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It 
is night,
and they are shelling the city! Boom! Boom!

A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What 
has made
the bed shake? "Mother, where are you? I am 
awake." "Hush, my Darling,
I am here." "But, Mother, something so ***** happened, 
the room shook."
Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is 
the matter?" Boom! "Where is Father?
I am so afraid." Boom! The child sobs and 
shrieks. The house
trembles and creaks. Boom!

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All 
his trials
oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing, 
lonely, urgent,
goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory,
that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, 
and the jig of drunken brutes.
Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of 
slime.
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, 
he can see
the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead 
of the roof,
and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire,
behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved 
tracings,
squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the 
gargoyles, coils round
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It 
leaps into the night
and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning 
stain on the white,
wet night.

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to 
it begin to scorch.
Boom! The bohemian glass on the `etagere' is no longer 
there.
Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains.
The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk 
and counts.
Boom! -- Boom! -- Boom!

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet 
of silver.
But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The 
city burns.
Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the flames.
Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing 
its gold on the sky,
the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and 
chuckles
along the floors.

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame 
creep along
the ceiling beams.

The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at
the burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with 
people.
They seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout 
and call,
and over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the 
city.
Boom! And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom, 
again!
The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and 
mutters. Boom!

 From my window I can see, 
Where the sandhills dip, 
One far glimpse of open sea. 
Just a slender slip 
Curving like a crescent moon— 
Yet a greater prize 
Than the harbour garden-fair 
Spread beneath my eyes. 

Just below me swings the bay, 
Sings a sunny tune, 
But my heart is far away 
Out beyond the dune; 
Clearer far the sea-gulls’ cry 
And the breakers’ roar, 
Than the little waves beneath 
Lapping on the shore. 

For that strip of sapphire sea 
Set against the sky 
Far horizons means to me— 
And the ships go by 
Framed between the empty sky 
And the yellow sands, 
While my freed thoughts follow them 
Out to other lands. 

All its changes who can tell? 
I have seen it shine 
Like a jewel polished well, 
Hard and clear and fine; 
Then soft lilac—and again 
On another day 
Glimpsed it through a veil of rain, 
Shifting, drifting grey. 

When the livid waters flee, 
Flinching from the storm, 
From my window I can see, 
Standing safe and warm, 
How the white foam tosses high 
On the naked shore, 
And the breakers’ thunder grows 
To a battle-roar… 

Far and far I look—Ten miles? 
No, for yesterday 
Sure I saw the Blessed Isles 
Twenty worlds away. 
My blue moon of open sea, 
Is it little worth? 
At the least it gives to me 
Keys of all the earth

 IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region, 
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen: 
There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them; 
He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him; 
He will go, fearless, without any whip, where the young bullock chafes up and down the
 yard;
The bullock’s head tosses restless high in the air, with raging eyes; 
Yet, see you! how soon his rage subsides—how soon this Tamer tames him: 
See you! on the farms hereabout, a hundred oxen, young and old—and he is the man who
 has
 tamed them; 
They all know him—all are affectionate to him; 
See you! some are such beautiful animals—so lofty looking!
Some are buff color’d—some mottled—one has a white line running along his
 back—some are brindled, 
Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)—See you! the bright hides; 
See, the two with stars on their foreheads—See, the round bodies and broad backs; 
See, how straight and square they stand on their legs—See, what fine, sagacious eyes;

See, how they watch their Tamer—they wish him near them—how they turn to look
 after
 him!
What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them: 
—Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics, poems
 depart—all
 else departs;) 
I confess I envy only his fascination—my silent, illiterate friend, 
Whom a hundred oxen love, there in his life on farms, 
In the northern county far, in the placid, pastoral region.