Famous Cranes Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Cranes of Ibicus

by Emma Lazarus
 Here was a man who watched the river flow 
Past the huge town, one gray November day.
Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play
The boys made merry as they saw him go,
Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream,
The immortal screed he held within his hand.
For he was walking in an April land
With Faust and Helen. Shadowy as a dream
Was...Read more of this...

The Progress of Spring

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain...Read more of this...

Answer

by Peter Huchel
 Between two nights
the brief day.
The farm is there.
And in the thicket, a snare
the hunter set for us.

Noon’s desert.
It still warms the stone.
Chirping in the wind,
buzz of a guitar
down the hillside.

The slow match
of withered foliage
glows against the wall.
Salt-white air.
Fall’s arrowheads,
the crane’s migration.

In bright tree limbs
the tolling hour has faded.
Upon their clockwork
spiders lay
the veils of dead brides....Read more of this...

Shirt

by Robert Pinsky
 The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The...Read more of this...

Renunciation

by Dorothy Parker
 It’s a jade branch on the floor, broken in two, love,
or a stain raised on the lapped grains of a suede glove.

It’s the lace, blown by a strong breeze, of an old gown
with the cranes crying at night, lost in their long sound.

It’s a vase made from the noon light in a closed place,
and it falls, shatters the sharp...Read more of this...

Death Of The Kapowsin Tavern

by Richard Hugo
 I can't ridge it back again from char.
Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
and shattered glass smoked black and strung
about from the explosion I believe
in the reports. The white school up for sale
for years, most homes abandoned to the rocks
of passing boys--the fire, helped by wind
that blew the neon out six years before,
simply ended lots of ending.

A...Read more of this...

Autumn Meditations (6)

by Du Fu
 Qutang gorge mouth bend river bank 10,000 li wind mist join pale autumn Calyx secret wall through imperial energy Lotus little park enter border sorrow Pearl curtain embroider pillar surround yellow crane Brocade hawser ivory mast rise white gull Turn head can regret sing dance place Qin middle from old emperor place The mouth of the...Read more of this...

The Elementary Scene

by Randall Jarrell
 Looking back in my mind I can see 
The white sun like a tin plate 
Over the wooden turning of the weeds; 
The street jerking --a wet swing-- 
To end by the wall the children sang. 

The thin grass by the girls' door, 
Trodden on, straggling, yellow and rotten, 
And the gaunt field with its one tied cow-- 
The...Read more of this...

The Garden Shukkei-en

by Carolyn Forche
 By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
as a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river she most 
remembers, the living
and the dead both crying for help.

A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.

The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
beneath them, as do the...Read more of this...

Letters To Friends

by Barry Tebb
 I


Eddie Linden

Dear Eddie we’ve not met

Except upon the written page 

And at your age the wonder 

Is that you write at all

When so many have gone under 

Or been split asunder by narcissistic humours

Blunder following blunder

Barker and Graham, godfathering my verse

Bearing me cloud-handed to Haworth moor

From my chained metropolitan moorings,

O hyaline March morning with Leeds

At its thrusting best, the...Read more of this...

Salutation

by Ezra Pound
 In one salutation to thee, my God, 
let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet. 

Like a rain-cloud of July 
hung low with its burden of unshed showers 
let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee. 

Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single...Read more of this...

The Cranes Of Ibycus

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Once to the song and chariot-fight,
Where all the tribes of Greece unite
On Corinth's isthmus joyously,
The god-loved Ibycus drew nigh.
On him Apollo had bestowed
The gift of song and strains inspired;
So, with light staff, he took his road
From Rhegium, by the godhead fired.

Acrocorinth, on mountain high,
Now burns upon the wanderer's eye,
And he begins, with pious dread,
Poseidon's grove of firs to tread.
Naught...Read more of this...

Tegners Drapa

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Heard a voice, that cried, 
"Balder the Beautiful 
Is dead, is dead!" 
And through the misty air 
Passed like the mournful cry 
Of sunward sailing cranes.

I saw the pallid corpse 
Of the dead sun 
Borne through the Northern sky. 
Blasts from Niffelheim 
Lifted the sheeted mists 
Around him as he passed.

And the voice forever cried, 
"Balder the Beautiful 
Is...Read more of this...

On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane

by Philip Levine
 Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane's
been drinking and has no idea who
this curious Andalusian is, unable
even to speak the language of poetry.
The young man who brought them
together knows both Spanish and English,
but he has a headache from jumping
back and forth from one language
to another. For a moment's relief
he goes to the window to look
down on the East River, darkening
below as...Read more of this...

The Songs of the Lathes

by Rudyard Kipling
 1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow
The fans and the beltings they roar round me.
The power is shaking the floor round me
Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over.
 It is good for me to be here!

Guns in Flanders--Flanders guns!
(I had a man that worked 'em once!)
Shells...Read more of this...

In Between the Strophes

by Marcin Malek
I'll never be a king of the brave

The vain poet - I lied, forgive me if you care
I went calmly through all the stages of madness
The last it's the tongue on a stranger face

And believe that man can turn in to a bird
To look at people and things
Without the need of rising the gaze

What a disruptive and ugly input
- Acquired...Read more of this...

Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas

by Osip Mandelstam
 Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas.
Half the catalogue of ships is mine:
that flight of cranes, long stretched-out line,
that once rose, out of Hellas.

To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes –
Foam of the gods on the heads of kings –
Where do you sail? What would the things
of Troy, be to you, Achaeans, without Helen?

The sea, or Homer – all moves...Read more of this...

Seaport

by A S J Tessimond
 Green sea-tarnished copper
And sea-tarnished gold
Of cupolas.

Sea-runnelled streets
Channelled by salt air
That wears the white stone.

The sunlight-filled cistern
Of a dry-dock. Square shadows.
Sun-slatted smoke above meticulous stooping of cranes.

Water pressed up by ships' prows
Going, coming.

City dust turned
Back by the sea-wind's
Wall....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Cranes poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace