10 Best Famous Uphill Poems

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

• All Famous Uphill Poems

Written by Christina Rossetti | Uphill DOES the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn. Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you waiting at that door. Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

Written by Amy Lowell | Roads I know a country laced with roads, They join the hills and they span the brooks, They weave like a shuttle between broad fields, And slide discreetly through hidden nooks. They are canopied like a Persian dome And carpeted with orient dyes. They are myriad-voiced, and musical, And scented with happiest memories. O Winding roads that I know so well, Every twist and turn, every hollow and hill! They are set in my heart to a pulsing tune Gay as a honey-bee humming in June. 'T is the rhythmic beat of a horse's feet And the pattering paws of a sheep-dog *****; 'T is the creaking trees, and the singing breeze, And the rustle of leaves in the road-side ditch. A cow in a meadow shakes her bell And the notes cut sharp through the autumn air, Each chattering brook bears a fleet of leaves Their cargo the rainbow, and just now where The sun splashed bright on the road ahead A startled rabbit quivered and fled. O Uphill roads and roads that dip down! You curl your sun-spattered length along, And your march is beaten into a song By the softly ringing hoofs of a horse And the panting breath of the dogs I love. The pageant of Autumn follows its course And the blue sky of Autumn laughs above. And the song and the country become as one, I see it as music, I hear it as light; Prismatic and shimmering, trembling to tone, The land of desire, my soul's delight. And always it beats in my listening ears With the gentle thud of a horse's stride, With the swift-falling steps of many dogs, Following, following at my side. O Roads that journey to fairyland! Radiant highways whose vistas gleam, Leading me on, under crimson leaves, To the opaline gates of the Castles of Dream.

Written by Adrienne Rich | Shattered Head A life hauls itself uphill through hoar-mist steaming the sun's tongue licking leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid When? When? cry the soothseekers but time is a bloodshot eye seeing its last of beauty its own foreclosure a bloodshot mind finding itself unspeakable What is the last thought? Now I will let you know? or, Now I know? (porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid) Shattered head on the breast of a wooded hill Laid down there endlessly so tendrils soaked into matted compose became a root torqued over the faint springhead groin whence illegible matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt volumes of sporic changes hair long blown into far follicles blasted into a chosen place Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched) revenge on the mouth packed with its inarticulate confessions revenge on the eyes green-gray and restless revenge on the big and searching lips the tender tongue revenge on the sensual, on the nose the carrier of history revenge on the life devoured in another incineration You can walk by such a place, the earth is made of them where the stretched tissue of a field or woods is humid with beloved matter the soothseekers have withdrawn you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus when that place utters its worn sigh let us have peace And the shattered head answers back And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved Who did this to us?

Written by Henry Lawson | Black Bonnet A day of seeming innocence, A glorious sun and sky, And, just above my picket fence, Black Bonnet passing by. In knitted gloves and quaint old dress, Without a spot or smirch, Her worn face lit with peacefulness, Old Granny goes to church. Her hair is richly white, like milk, That long ago was fair -- And glossy still the old black silk She keeps for "chapel wear"; Her bonnet, of a bygone style, That long has passed away, She must have kept a weary while Just as it is to-day. The parasol of days gone by -- Old days that seemed the best -- The hymn and prayer books carried high Against her warm, thin breast; As she had clasped -- come smiles come tears, Come hardship, aye, and worse -- On market days, through faded years, The slender household purse. Although the road is rough and steep, She takes it with a will, For, since she hushed her first to sleep Her way has been uphill. Instinctively I bare my head (A sinful one, alas!) Whene'er I see, by church bells led, Brave Old Black Bonnet pass. For she has known the cold and heat And dangers of the Track: Has fought bush-fires to save the wheat And little home Out Back. By barren creeks the Bushman loves, By stockyard, hut, and pen, The withered hands in those old gloves Have done the work of men. ..... They called it "Service" long ago When Granny yet was young, And in the chapel, sweet and low, As girls her daughters sung. And when in church she bends her head (But not as others do) She sees her loved ones, and her dead And hears their voices too. Fair as the Saxons in her youth, Not forward, and not shy; And strong in healthy life and truth As after years went by: She often laughed with sinners vain, Yet passed from faith to sight -- God gave her beauty back again The more her hair grew white. She came out in the Early Days, (Green seas, and blue -- and grey) -- The village fair, and English ways, Seemed worlds and worlds away. She fought the haunting loneliness Where brooding gum trees stood; And won through sickness and distress As Englishwomen could. ..... By verdant swath and ivied wall The congregation's seen -- White nothings where the shadows fall, Black blots against the green. The dull, suburban people meet And buzz in little groups, While down the white steps to the street A quaint old figure stoops. And then along my picket fence Where staring wallflowers grow -- World-wise Old Age, and Common-sense! -- Black Bonnet, nodding slow. But not alone; for on each side A little dot attends In snowy frock and sash of pride, And these are Granny's friends. To them her mind is clear and bright, Her old ideas are new; They know her "real talk" is right, Her "fairy talk" is true. And they converse as grown-ups may, When all the news is told; The one so wisely young to-day, The two so wisely old. At home, with dinner waiting there, She smooths her hair and face, And puts her bonnet by with care And dons a cap of lace. The table minds its p's and q's Lest one perchance be hit By some rare dart which is a part Of her old-fashioned wit. ..... Her son and son's wife are asleep, She puts her apron on -- The quiet house is hers to keep, With all the youngsters gone. There's scarce a sound of dish on dish Or cup slipped into cup, When left alone, as is her wish, Black Bonnet "washes up."

Written by Marilyn Hacker | Rune of the Finland Woman For Sára Karig "You are so wise," the reindeer said, "you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand."—H. C. Andersen, "The Snow Queen" She could bind the world's winds in a single strand. She could find the world's words in a singing wind. She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand. She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind. She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind. She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand. She could bind the wolf's wounds in a swaddling band. She could bind a banned book in a silken skin. She could spend a world war on invaded land. She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread. She could feed a road gang on invented food. She could find the spare parts of the severed dead. She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand. She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung. She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned. She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue. She could plait a child's hair with a fishbone comb. She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind. She could mend an engine with a sewing pin. She could warm the dark feet of a dying man. She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well. She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine. She could drink a queen's share of important wine. She could think a few things she would never tell. She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind. She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen. She could wander uphill with a drunken friend. She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.

Written by John Betjeman | The Hon. Sec The flag that hung half-mast today Seemed animate with being As if it knew for who it flew And will no more be seeing. He loved each corner of the links- The stream at the eleventh, The grey-green bents, the pale sea-pinks, The prospect from the seventh; To the ninth tee the uphill climb, A grass and sandy stairway, And at the top the scent of thyme And long extent of fairway. He knew how on a summer day The sea's deep blue grew deeper, How evening shadows over Bray Made that round hill look steeper. He knew the ocean mists that rose And seemed for ever staying, When moaned the foghorn from Trevose And nobody was playing; The flip of cards on winter eves, The whisky and the scoring, As trees outside were stripped of leaves And heavy seas were roaring. He died when early April light Showed red his garden sally And under pale green spears glowed white His lillies of the valley; The garden where he used to stand And where the robin waited To fly and perch upon his hand And feed till it was sated. The Times would never have the space For Ned's discreet achievements; The public prints are not the place For intimate bereavements. A gentle guest, a willing host, Affection deeply planted - It's strange that those we miss the most Are those we take for granted.

Written by Donald Hall | Name of Horses All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range. In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields, dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats. All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning; and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres, gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack, and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn, three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning. Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns. Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass. When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze, one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning, led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond, and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin, and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear, and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave, shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you, where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument. For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses, roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs, yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers: O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.

Written by Larry Levis | Those Graves In Rome There are places where the eye can starve, But not here. Here, for example, is The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery Where Keats & Joseph Severn join hands Forever under a little shawl of grass And where Keats's name isn't even on His gravestone, because it is on Severn's, And Joseph Severn's infant son is buried Two modest, grassy steps behind them both. But you'd have to know the story--how bedridden Keats wanted the inscription to be Simple, & unbearable: "Here lies one Whose name is writ in water." On a warm day, I stood here with my two oldest friends. I thought, then, that the three of us would be Indissoluble at the end, & also that We would all die, of course. And not die. And maybe we should have joined hands at that Moment. We didn't. All we did was follow A lame man in a rumpled suit who climbed A slight incline of graves blurring into The passing marble of other graves to visit The vacant home of whatever is not left Of Shelley & Trelawney. That walk uphill must Be hard if you can't walk. At the top, the man Wheezed for breath; sweat beaded his face, And his wife wore a look of concern so Habitual it seemed more like the way Our bodies, someday, will have to wear stone. Later that night, the three of us strolled, Our arms around each other, through the Via Del Corso & toward the Piazza di Espagna As each street grew quieter until Finally we heard nothing at the end Except the occasional scrape of our own steps, And so said good-bye. Among such friends, Who never allowed anything, still alive, To die, I'd almost forgotten that what Most people leave behind them disappears. Three days later, staying alone in a cheap Hotel in Naples, I noticed a child's smeared Fingerprint on a bannister. It Had been indifferently preserved beneath A patina of varnish applied, I guessed, after The last war. It seemed I could almost hear His shout, years later, on that street. But this Is speculation, & no doubt the simplest fact Could shame me. Perhaps the child was from Calabria, & went back to it with A mother who failed to find work, & perhaps The child died there, twenty years ago, Of malaria. It was so common then-- The children crying to the doctors for quinine. And to the tourists, who looked like doctors, for quinine. It was so common you did not expect an aria, And not much on a gravestone, either--although His name is on it, & weathered stone still wears His name--not the way a girl might wear The too large, faded blue workshirt of A lover as she walks thoughtfully through The Via Fratelli to buy bread, shrimp, And wine for the evening meal with candles & The laughter of her friends, & later the sweet Enkindling of desire; but something else, something Cut simply in stone by hand & meant to last Because of the way a name, any name, Is empty. And not empty. And almost enough.

Written by Jane Kenyon | Otherwise I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.

Written by Delmore Schwartz | In The Naked Bed In Platos Cave In the naked bed, in Plato's cave, Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall, Carpenters hammered under the shaded window, Wind troubled the window curtains all night long, A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding, Their freights covered, as usual. The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram Slid slowly forth. Hearing the milkman's clop, his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink, I rose from bed, lit a cigarette, And walked to the window. The stony street Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand, The street-lamp's vigil and the horse's patience. The winter sky's pure capital Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes. Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves' waterfalls, Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer. A car coughed, starting. Morning softly Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair From underseas, kindled the looking-glass, Distinguished the dresser and the white wall. The bird called tentatively, whistled, called, Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so, O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning Again and again, while history is unforgiven.