Famous Cities Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Cities poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cities poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cities poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...elf, hanging on its neck with incomparable love,
Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,
Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,
Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes—Columbia, Niagara, Hudson,
spending
themselves lovingly in him,
If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north
or
south,
Spanning between them, ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...he North cannot detect
The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol—
The lips that never lie—
Whose hissing Corals part—and shut—
And Cities—ooze away—
613
They shut me up in Prose—
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet—
Because they liked me "still"—
Still! Could themselves have peeped—
And seen my Brain—go round—
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason—in the Pound—
Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Abolish his Captivity—
And laugh—No mor...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...us together through labor,
All these hands made America.
Labor! Out of labor came villages
And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...nd hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes ...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at,i had no male
freinds,
I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.
peace an happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
an...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, act...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...;
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form:
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush
To battle in the clouds; before each van
Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears,
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of heaven the welkin burns.
Others, with vast Typhoean rage, more fell,
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whir...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...oung man as I pass! O I am sick after the friendship of him who, I fear, is
indifferent
to me.
O the streets of cities!
The flitting faces—the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot tell how welcome
they
are to me.
6
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast!
O to continue and be employ’d there all my life!
O the briny and damp smell—the shore—the salt weeds exposed at low water,
The work of fishermen—the work of the eel-...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland—I mark the long winters, and
the
isolation.
I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random a part of them;
I am a real Parisian;
I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople;
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne;
I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick;
I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart,
Turin,
Florence;...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...ting is today, where
I saw it with Pierre in the summer of 1959; New York
Where I am now, which is a logarithm
Of other cities. Our landscape
Is alive with filiations, shuttlings;
Business is carried on by look, gesture,
Hearsay. It is another life to the city,
The backing of the looking glass of the
Unidentified but precisely sketched studio. It wants
To siphon off the life of the studio, deflate
Its mapped space to enactments, island it.
That operation has b...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...nd again on the beach of the Western Sea;
As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago—whatever streets I have roam’d;
Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
I sing the Equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues—Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice;
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do no...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city;
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the
globe.)
I am a free companion—I bivouac by invading watchfires.
I turn the bridegroom out of bed, and stay with the bride myself;
I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs;
They fetch my man’s body up, dripping and drown’d.
I understand ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...by the roadsides!
I think you are latent with unseen existences—you are so dear to me.
You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray ...Read more of this...
by
Cook, Eliza
...of a bride ;
Your lips may be fresh and your cheeks may be fair--
Let a few years pass over, and I shall be there.
Cities of splendour, where palace and gate,
Where the marble of strength and the purple of state ;
Where the mart and arena, the olive and vine,
Once flourished in glory ; oh ! are ye not mine ?
Go look for famed Carthage, and I shall be found
In the desolate ruin and weed-covered mound ;
And the slime of my trailing discovers my home,
'Mid the pillars of Ty...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...the crests went down.
As the tall white devil of the Plague
Moves out of Asian skies,
With his foot on a waste of cities
And his head in a cloud of flies;
Or purple and peacock skies grow dark
With a moving locust-tower;
Or tawny sand-winds tall and dry,
Like hell's red banners beat and fly,
When death comes out of Araby,
Was Eldred in his hour.
But while he moved like a massacre
He murmured as in sleep,
And his words were all of low hedges
And little fields and s...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...iarch roam, [37]
Or only known on land the Tartar's home! [38]
My tent on shore, my galley on the sea,
Are more than cities and Serais to me:
Borne by my steed, or wafted by my sail,
Across the desert, or before the gale,
Bound where thou wilt, my barb! or glide, my prow!
But be the star that guides the wanderer, Thou!
Thou, my Zuleika! share and bless my bark;
The Dove of peace and promise to mine ark!
Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the ra...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...in turn require
The name and state of Ellen's sire.
Well showed the elder lady's mien
That courts and cities she had seen;
Ellen, though more her looks displayed
The simple grace of sylvan maid,
In speech and gesture, form and face,
Showed she was come of gentle race.
'T were strange in ruder rank to find
Such looks, such manners, and such mind.
Each hint the Knight of Snowdoun gave,
Dame Margaret heard with si...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...th Gods or
Geniuses calling them by the names and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations,
and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city &
country. placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of &
enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the
mental deities from their objects: thus began Pries...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...tmost Axume until he spreads,
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
His waters on the plain,--and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid:--
By MÏris and the Mareotid lakes,
Strewn with faint blooms like bridal-chamber floors,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms;--within the brazen doors
Of the Great Labyrinth slept b...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...t Anna Akhmatova
Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html
* I *
We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.
Unification
I'll leave your quiet yard and your ...Read more of this...
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