Famous Bridges Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bridges poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bridges poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bridges poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...er shins.
Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ings;
And but for which each heart must still remain,
Hard as the rock on Scandanavia's shore,
Cold as the ice which bridges up her streams,
Fierce as the storm which tempests all her waves.
Thus in its dawn did sacred truth prevail,
In either hemisphere from north to south,
From east to west through the long tract of day.
From Shinar's plain to Thule's utmost isle,
From Persia's bay to Scandanavia's shores.
Cheer'd by its ray now ev'ry valley smiles,
And ev'ry l...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
-of the peoples' hearts, crossing it
to new America.
I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope,
acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage
in steerage, strange and estranged
Hence I must descry and describe the kingdom of emotion.
For I am a poet of the kindergarten (in the ci...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...[A satire on his own Sorrows of Werther.]
ON bridges small and bridges great
Stands Nepomucks in ev'ry state,
Of bronze, wood, painted, or of stone,
Some small as dolls, some giants grown;
Each passer must worship before Nepomuck,
Who to die on a bridge chanced to have the ill luck,
When once a man with head and ears
A saint in people's eyes appears,
Or has been sentenced piteously
Beneath the hangman'...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...ld women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred
Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds
so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for thi...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...ognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanth...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of fatig...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...boast in vain?'
'Nay, noble damsel, but that I, the son
Of old King Lot and good Queen Bellicent,
And victor of the bridges and the ford,
And knight of Arthur, here lie thrown by whom
I know not, all through mere unhappiness--
Device and sorcery and unhappiness--
Out, sword; we are thrown!' And Lancelot answered, 'Prince,
O Gareth--through the mere unhappiness
Of one who came to help thee, not to harm,
Lancelot, and all as glad to find thee whole,
As on the day wh...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Pityocampa who eateth his house in the pine.
Let Ibzam rejoice with the Brandling -- the Lord further the building of bridges and making rivers navigable.
Let Gilead rejoice with Gentle -- the Lord make me a fisher of men.
Let Zelophehad rejoice with Ascalabotes who casteth not his coat till a new one is prepared for him.
Let Mahlah rejoice with Pellos who is a tall bird and stately.
Let Tirzah rejoice with Tylus which is the Cheeslip and food for the chicken.
Let...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.
Bridges leap over the train with increasing frequency.
At each stop an additional story grows
onto the roofs. Finally houses with squares
and dots of windows rise up. No matter how far
you throw back your head, there are no tops.
Time and again, the telegraph poles are made
of wood. Maybe it only seems that way.
In the narrow canyons between the buildings...Read more of this...
by
Dillard, Annie
..., watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire.. . .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.
Falltime an...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...f Dante; - to this day,
Here in his place of resting, far away
From Arno's yellow waters, rushing down
Through the wide bridges of that fairy town,
Where the tall tower of Giotto seems to rise
A marble lily under sapphire skies!
Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain
Of meaner lives, - the exile's galling chain,
How steep the stairs within kings' houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man's nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful fo...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...reat flakes and slivers,
The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes;
The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea;
—The city fireman—the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack’d square,
The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of
the
arms
forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic, b...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...shed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog ...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...of the wind at a window-pane
On an Autumn night of sobbing rain.
Then it would run like a steady stream
Under pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam,
Or lap the air like the lapping tide
Where a marble staircase lifts its wide
Green-spotted steps to a garden gate,
And a waning moon is sinking straight
Down to a black and ominous sea,
While a nightingale sings in a lemon tree.
I walked as though some opiate
Had stung and dulled my brain, a state
Acute and slumbrous. It grew la...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.
Me whom...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...no one shall make them afraid
If we're to live up to our own time
Then victory won't lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we've made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it's the past we step into
and how we repair it
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succ...Read more of this...
by
Gorman, Amanda
...the tree!
But we will make it faggots for the hearth,
And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor,
And boats and bridges for the use of men.
'Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they struck;
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain:
The glittering axe was broken in their arms,
Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade.
'Our enemies have fallen, but this shall grow
A night of Summer from the heat, a bre...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ee you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never have to lose it again
Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
There moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower o...Read more of this...
by
Cohen, Leonard
...catcher, to catch birds,
Has laid nets on the rivershore.
x x x
How can you look at Nieva,
How can on the bridges you rise?
With a reason I'm sad since the time
You appeared before my eyes.
Sharp are black angels' wings,
The last judgment is coming soon,
And raspberry fires, like roses,
In the white snow bloom.
x x x
I do not count mortal days
Under the roof of a chilled empty building,
I'm reading the Apostles' words,
Words of Psalm-singer ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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