Famous Border On Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Border On poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous border on poems. These examples illustrate what a famous border on poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Back to the Border

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Alas! alas! this wasted Night
   With all its Jasmin-scented air,
   Its thousand stars, serenely bright!
   I lie alone, and long for you,
   Long for your Champa-scented hair,
   Your tranquil eyes of twilight hue;

   Long for the close-curved, delicate lips
   —Their sinuous sweetness laid...Read more of this...

The Man from Goondiwindi Q

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I 

This is the sunburnt bushman who 
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q. 

II 

This is the Push from Waterloo 
That spotted the sunburnt bushman who 
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q. 

III 

These are the wealthy uncles -- two, 
Part of the Push from Waterloo 
That spotted the sunburnt bushman who 
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q. 

IV 

This is the...Read more of this...

Coole Park And Ballylee 1931

by William Butler Yeats
 Under my window-ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face
Then darkening through 'dark' Raftery's 'cellar' drop,
Run underground, rise in a rocky place
In Coole demesne, and there to finish up
Spread to a lake and drop into a hole.
What's water but the generated soul?

Upon the border of that lake's a wood
Now all...Read more of this...

Directions

by Billy Collins
 You know the brick path in the back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window, 
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk into the woods you come 
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of...Read more of this...

Lochinvar

by Sir Walter Scott
Oh! young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none.
He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. 

He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone,
He...Read more of this...

Crossing The Border

by Ogden Nash
 Senescence begins
And middle age ends
The day your descendents
Outnumber your friends....Read more of this...

A Border Affair

by Badger Clark
  Spanish is the lovin' tongue,
    Soft as music, light as spray.
  'Twas a girl I learnt it from,
    Livin' down Sonora way.
  I don't look much like a lover,
  Yet I say her love words over
    Often when I'm all alone--
    "Mi amor,...Read more of this...

The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty

by George William Russell
 I WOULD I could weave in
 The colour, the wonder,
 The song I conceive in
 My heart while I ponder,


 And show how it came like
 The magi of old
 Whose chant was a flame like
 The dawn’s voice of gold;


 Whose dreams followed near them
 A murmur of birds,
 And ear still could hear them
 Unchanted in words.


...Read more of this...

Taken from men -- this morning

by Emily Dickinson
 Taken from men -- this morning --
Carried by men today --
Met by the Gods with banners --
Who marshalled her away --

One little maid -- from playmates --
One little mind from school --
There must be guests in Eden --
All the rooms are full --

Far -- as the East from Even --
Dim -- as the border star --
Courtiers quaint, in Kingdoms
Our...Read more of this...

Desesperanto

by Marilyn Hacker
 After Joseph Roth

Parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi.
Montaigne, De L'amitië

The dream's forfeit was a night in jail
and now the slant light is crepuscular.
Papers or not, you are a foreigner
whose name is always difficult to spell.
You pack your one valise. You ring the bell.
Might it not be prudent to disappear
beneath that mauve-blue sky above the square
fronting your cosmopolitan...Read more of this...

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates...Read more of this...

There was an old man on the Border

by Edward Lear
There was an old man on the Border,Who lived in the utmost disorder;He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat,Which vexed all the folks on the Border. ...Read more of this...

A Border Ballad

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, I have n't got long to live, for we all
Die soon, e'en those who live longest;
And the poorest and weakest are taking their chance
Along with the richest and strongest.
So it's heigho for a glass and a song,
And a bright eye over the table,
And a dog for the hunt when the game is flush,
And the pick of a gentleman's stable.
There...Read more of this...

463. Song—The Highland Balou

by Robert Burns
 HEE balou, my sweet wee Donald,
Picture o’ the great Clanronald;
Brawlie kens our wanton Chief
Wha gat my young Highland thief.


Leeze me on thy bonie craigie,
An’ thou live, thou’ll steal a naigie,
Travel the country thro’ and thro’,
And bring hame a Carlisle cow.


Thro’ the Lawlands, o’er the Border,
Weel, my babie, may thou furder!
Herry the louns o’ the laigh Countrie,
Syne to the Highlands...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book VI Canto X

by Edmund Spenser
Calidore sees the Graces daunce,
To Colins melody:
The whiles his Pastorell is led,
[I]nto captiuity.
 

W Ho now does follow the foule Blatant Beast,
Whilest Calidore does follow that faire Mayd,
Vnmyndfull of his vow and high beheast,
Which by the Faery Queene was on him layd,
That he should neuer leaue, nor be delayd
From chacing him, till he had it attchieued?
But now entrapt of loue,...Read more of this...

Saturday At The Border

by Hayden Carruth
 "Form follows function follows form . . . , etc."

   --Dr. J. Anthony Wadlington

Here I am writing my first villanelle
At seventy-two, and feeling old and tired--
"Hey, Pops, why dontcha give us the old death knell?"--

And writing it what's more on the rim of hell
In blazing Arizona when all I desired
Was north and solitude and not a villanelle,

Working...Read more of this...

Bohemia

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Bohemia, o'er thy unatlassed borders 
How many cross, with half-reluctant feet, 
And unformed fears of dangers and disorders, 
To find delights, more wholesome and more sweet 
Than ever yet were known to the "elite."

Herein can dwell no pretence and no seeming; 
No stilted pride thrives in this atmosphere, 
Which stimulates a tendency to dreaming. 
The shores of the ideal...Read more of this...

The Eleusinian Festival

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Wreathe in a garland the corn's golden ear!
With it, the Cyane [31] blue intertwine
Rapture must render each glance bright and clear,
For the great queen is approaching her shrine,--
She who compels lawless passions to cease,
Who to link man with his fellow has come,
And into firm habitations of peace
Changed the rude tents' ever-wandering home.

Shyly in the mountain-cleft
Was the Troglodyte concealed;
And the...Read more of this...

A Code of Morals

by Rudyard Kipling
 Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So...Read more of this...

380. Song—Saw ye Bonie Lesley

by Robert Burns
 O SAW ye bonie Lesley,
 As she gaed o’er the Border?
She’s gane, like Alexander,
 To spread her conquests farther.


To see her is to love her,
 And love but her for ever;
For Nature made her what she is,
 And never made anither!


Thou art a queen, fair Lesley,
 Thy subjects, we before thee;
Thou art divine, fair Lesley,
 The hearts o’ men...Read more of this...

The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief

by Rudyard Kipling
 O woe is me for the merry life
 I led beyond the Bar,
And a treble woe for my winsome wife
 That weeps at Shalimar.

They have taken away my long jezail,
 My shield and sabre fine,
And heaved me into the Central jail
 For lifting of the kine.

The steer may low within the byre,
 The Jat may tend his grain,
But there'll...Read more of this...

Rugby Chapel

by Matthew Arnold
 Coldly, sadly descends
The autumn-evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of wither'd leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent;--hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the school-room windows;--but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the...Read more of this...

Randolph Of Roanoke

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken.

Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning;
Nor let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over him forgetfulness
Of...Read more of this...

There was an old man on the Border

by Edward Lear
 There was an old man on the Border, 
Who lived in the utmost disorder; 
He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat, 
Which vexed all the folks on the Border....Read more of this...

Border Ballad

by Sir Walter Scott
 March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale, 
Why the deil dinna ye march forward in order! 
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale, 
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border. 
Many a banner spread,
Flutters above your head, 
Many a crest that is famous in story. 
Mount and make ready then, 
Sons of the mountain glen, 
Fight for the Queen and our...Read more of this...

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