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Famous Boulder Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...your rear--
 That's where surprises begin.
For the rustle that isn't a rat,
 For the splash that isn't a trout,
For the boulder that may be a hat
(Chorus) All Patrols look out!


For the innocent knee-high grass,
 For the ditch that never tells,
Look out! Look out ere you pass--
 And look out for everything else
A sign mis-read as you run
 May turn retreat to a rout--
For all things under the sun
(Chorus) All Patrols look out!


Look out where your temper goes
 At the end of ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...flock of them know 
Of where all the berries and other things grow, 
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top 
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop. 
I met them one day and each had a flower 
Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower; 
Some strange kind--they told me it hadn't a name." 
"I've told you how once not long after we came, 
I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth 
By going to him of all people on earth 
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had 
Fo...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...Alp meets heaven in snow!

X.

On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By boulder-stones where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.

XI.

Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,
And thorny balls, each three in one,
The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,

XII.

That crimson the creeper's leaf across
...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.


 Kral Majales
 June 25, 1986
 Boulder, Colorado...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...The drop seeps whole
from boulder-lichen
or ledge moss and drops,

joining, to trickle,
run, fall, dash,
sprawl in held deeps,

to rush shallows, spill
thin through heights,
but then, edging,

to eddy aside, nothing
of all but nothing's
curl of motion spent....Read more of this...
by Ammons, A R



...sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea, 
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine....Read more of this...
by Kenyon, Jane
...n baby! 
Them angels gonna be cut down like wheat. 
Them songs gonna be sliced with a razor. 
Them kitchens gonna get a boulder in the belly. 
Them phones gonna be torn out at the root. 
There's power in the Lord, baby, 
and he's gonna turn off the moon. 
He's gonna nail you up in a closet 
and there'll be no more Atlantic, 
no more dreams, no more seeds. 
One noon as you walk out to the mailbox 
He'll snatch you up -- 
a wopman beside the road like a red mitten. 

There's a ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...pelessness, he stays alive in every shady place, starving along the
Mediterranean: angry to see the glittering sea-pale boulder alive
with lizards green as Judas leaves. Winter is hanging on. He still
believes. He tries to catch a lizard by the shoulder. One olive tree
below Grottaglie welcomes the winter into noontime shade, and
talks as softly as Pythagoras. Be still, be patient, I can hear him say,
cradling in his arms the wounded head, letting the sunlight touch
the savag...Read more of this...
by Wright, James
...angeade bubbled over in waxen cups
Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond
 Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going
 out of their nostrils,
Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths
 & noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the
 tent flapped happily open spacious & didn't fall down.


 June 18, 1978


II -- Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
 over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
 --...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...ully following their example,
nature re-enters herself;
contemplating its own sap, the flower
becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens...

It's the return of all desire that enters
toward all life embracing itself from afar...
Where does it fall? Under the dwindling
surface, does it hope to renew a center?...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...my own hands
For only slaves, is a far sweeter toil than to cut
Passions in verse for a sick people.
I'd liefer bed one boulder in the house-wall than be the time's
Archilochus: we name not Homer: who now
Can even imagine the fabulous dawn when bay-leaves (to a blind
Beggar) were not bitter in the teeth?...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson
...kes
came echoing through the rocky cove
where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay
and a heron rose off a boulder where he'd been invisible,
drifted a little, stood again -- a hieroglyph
or just longevity reflecting on itself
between the sky clouding over and the lightly ruffled water.

This was the morning after your dream of dying, of being held
and told it didn't matter. A butterfly went jinking over
the wave-silky stones, and where I turned
to go up the road...Read more of this...
by Grennan, Eamon
...My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association,
For this modest boulder,
And its little tablet of bronze.
Twice I tried to join your honored body,
And was rejected,
And when my little brochure
On the intelligence of plants
Began to attract attention
You almost voted me in.
After that I grew beyond the need of you
And your recognition.
Yet I do not reject your memorial stone,
Seeing that I should, in so doing,
Deprive you...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee
...c industries projected sudden
 with Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength
around the world same time this text is set in Boulder,
 Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains
twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in 
 United States of North America, Western Hemi-
 sphere
of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around
 our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy
the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen 
 hundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...t or two.
In all the North there's only one; of him I've heard them speak:
His name is Jock MacPherson, and he lives on Boulder Creek;
An old-time hard-rock miner, and a wild and wastrel loon,
Who spends his nights in glory, playing pibrochs to the moon.
I'll seek him out; beyond a doubt on next Saint Andrew's night
We'll proudly hear the pipes to cheer and charm our appetite.

Oh lads were neat and lassies sweet who graced Saint Andrew's Ball;
But there was none so full of f...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...n to Bumpville
It's over the hilltop and down through the bog
You ride on your way to Bumpville;
It's rattletybang over boulder and stump,
There are rivers to ford, there are fences to jump,
And the corduroy road it goes bumpytybump,
Mile after mile to bumpville!

Perhaps you'll observe it's no easy thing
Making the journey to Bumpville,
So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring
An end to this ride to Bumpville;
For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint,
The c...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...ne.

Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still --
Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill --
Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low:
"Yea, they are like -- and it may be -- But how does the Picture-man know?"

"Ung -- hath he slept with the Aurochs -- watched where the Mastodon roam?
Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head -- followed the Sabre-tooth home?
Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...e rapids, there was the menace of doom.

The river springs like a racer, sweeps through a gash in the rock;
Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and rears at the shock;
Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury and pain;
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again.

Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears;
Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn with our fears;
Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky like...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...urtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.
My shoes turn up like a jester's.
Clumps of my hair, as I write this,
curl up individually like toes.
I am shoveling the children out,
scoop after scoop.
Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.
Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a f...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...l as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things