Famous Dangling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hero and Leander: The First Sestiad

by Christopher Marlowe
 1 On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
2 In view and opposite two cities stood,
3 Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might;
4 The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
5 At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
6 Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
7 And offer'd as a dower his burning throne,
8 Where she could sit for men to gaze upon.
9 The...Read more of this...

At Broad Ripple

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Oh luxury! Beyond the heat 
And dust of town, with dangling feet 
Astride the rock below the dam, 
In the cool shadows where the calm 
Rests on the stream again, and all 
Is silent save the waterfall,-- 
I bait my hook and cast my line, 
And feel the best of life is mine.

No high ambition can I claim --...Read more of this...

National Trust

by Tony Harrison
 Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.

Not even a good flogging made him holler!

O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar,
say, here at the booming...Read more of this...

The Snakes of September

by Stanley Kunitz
 All summer I heard them 
rustling in the shrubbery, 
outracing me from tier 
to tier in my garden,
a whisper among the viburnums, 
a signal flashed from the hedgerow,
a shadow pulsing 
in the barberry thicket.
Now that the nights are chill 
and the annuals spent,
I should have thought them gone, 
in a torpor of blood 
slipped to the nether world 
before...Read more of this...

Venetian Morning

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Windows pampered like princes always see
what on occasion deigns to trouble us:
the city that, time and again, where a shimmer
of sky strikes a feeling of floodtide,

takes shape without once choosing to be.
Each new morning must first show her the opals
she wore yesterday, and pull rows
of reflections out of the canal
and remind her of the other times:
only then does she...Read more of this...

Come down O Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 5 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; 
And come, for Love is of the valley,...Read more of this...

Sic Vita

by Henry David Thoreau
 I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 
A bunch of violets without their roots, 
And sorrel intermixed, 
Encircled by a wisp of straw 
Once coiled about their shoots, 
The law 
By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay...Read more of this...

handyman

by Rg Gregory
 the two hands of me make inimical gestures
that only long after betray the one tune

though they have the same taste in throats
they go to their crime disgusted with kinship

the right has to act as if crazy for order
the left as a dawdler dangling by water

on sundays they plan suicides for each other
splitting time's atoms or drowning in feathers

between them...Read more of this...

The Poet's Simple Faith

by Victor Hugo
 You say, "Where goest thou?" I cannot tell, 
 And still go on. If but the way be straight, 
 It cannot go amiss! before me lies 
 Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that 
 Suffices me; I break the bounds; I see, 
 And nothing more; believe, and nothing less. 
 My future is not...Read more of this...

Pearls

by Bernadette Geyer
 And so I look back
still thinking of her
with painful heart,
this clench of inner flesh.

 —Kakinomoto Hitomaro
 from Manyoshu



*

Praise the irritant, that genesis,
implanted within the soft
and malleable animal that bore you.

*

Your brethren strung around my neck,
dangling from my earlobes.
The imperfections the jeweler slights, I praise.

*

Artifact of a biological process,
why do we expect
symmetry from a grain of sand?

*

Praise the oblong beauty
of...Read more of this...

An Apple-Gathering

by Christina Rossetti
 I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
With dangling basket all along the grass
As I had come I went the selfsame track:
My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
So empty-handed back.

Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by,
Their heaped-up...Read more of this...

Poem (Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box)

by Delmore Schwartz
 Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box, of white
 roses
And of phlox. And upon a honeysuckle branch 
Three snails hanging with infinite delicacy
-- Clinging like tendril, flake and thread, as self-tormented
And self-delighted as any ballerina,
 just as in the orchard,
Near the apple trees, in the over-grown grasses
Drunken wasps clung to over-ripe pears
Which had fallen: swollen and disfigured.
For now it is...Read more of this...

Primitive

by Sharon Olds
 I have heard about the civilized, 
the marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are 
savages. You come in with a bag, 
hold it out to me in silence. 
I know Moo Shu Pork when I smell it 
and understand the message: I have 
pleased you greatly last night. We sit 
quietly, side by...Read more of this...

Without Looking

by Patricia Goedicke
 Either at my friend's daughter's
sixteen-year-old body dumped
on the morgue slab, T-shirt
stuck fast to one ripped 
breast I identified quick, and then
got out of there

or at the old gentleman
with tubes in the living room, spittle
stained in his wispy 
beard, out of 
the corner of my eye I hardly
notice it, how

could I, drink in hand
at five-thirty, at the least
sign of pain...Read more of this...

On Fayrford Windowes

by William Strode
 I know no paynt of poetry
Can mend such colourd Imag'ry
In sullen inke: yet Fayrford, I
May relish thy fayre memory.


Such is the Ecchoes faynter sound,
Such is the light when sunne is drownd;
So did the fancy looke upon
The worke before it was begunne:
Yet when those shewes are out of sight
My weaker colours may delight.


Those Images so faythfully
Report true feature to the...Read more of this...

Keepe On Your Maske And Hide Your Eye

by William Strode
 Keepe on your maske, and hide your eye,
For with beholding you I dye:
Your fatall beauty, Gorgon-like,
Dead with astonishment will strike;
Your piercing eyes if them I see
Are worse than basilisks to mee.


Shutt from mine eyes those hills of snowe,
Their melting valleys doe not showe;
Their azure paths lead to dispaire,
O vex me not, forbeare, forbeare;
For while I thus in torments dwell
The...Read more of this...

59. Death and Dr. Hornbook

by Robert Burns
 SOME books are lies frae end to end,
And some great lies were never penn’d:
Ev’n ministers they hae been kenn’d,
 In holy rapture,
A rousing whid at times to vend,
 And nail’t wi’ Scripture.


But this that I am gaun to tell,
Which lately on a night befell,
Is just as true’s the Deil’s in hell
 Or Dublin city:
That e’er he nearer comes oursel’
...Read more of this...

First Party At Ken Keseys With Hells Angels

by Allen Ginsberg
 Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier 
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru...Read more of this...

Female Fashions for 1799

by Mary Darby Robinson
 A form, as any taper, fine ;
A head like half-pint bason ;
Where golden cords, and bands entwine,
As rich as fleece of JASON.

A pair of shoulders strong and wide,
Like country clown enlisting ;
Bare arms long dangling by the side,
And shoes of ragged listing !

Cravats like towels, thick and broad,
Long tippets made of bear-skin,
Muffs that a RUSSIAN might applaud,
And rouge to...Read more of this...

The Bombay Train Song

by John Matthew
 He hangs on dangling handholds
As the train sways and careens
Endless nondescript buildings unfold
Their secrets as the tired warrior returns.

The day is over the night falls
Thickly through the barricaded windows
The man’s sleepy head lolls
On his shoulder in a dream disturbed.

The days are a hard white collar brawl
The sleepless night stretches ahead
There’s no space for a fly to crawl
The morning paper...Read more of this...

The Licorice Fields at Pontefract

by John Betjeman
 In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales...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...

549. Epistle to Colonel de Peyster

by Robert Burns
 MY honor’d Colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the Poet’s weal;
Ah! now sma’ heart hae I to speel
 The steep Parnassus,
Surrounded thus by bolus pill,
 And potion glasses.


O what a canty world were it,
Would pain and care and sickness spare it;
And Fortune favour worth and merit
 As they deserve;
And aye rowth o’ roast-beef and claret,
 Syne, wha wad starve?


Dame...Read more of this...

French Quarter Singer

by Jennifer Reeser
 Strumming your polished guitar with long, nail-lightened fingers,
where are you now, leaning forward a peasant-dressed arm –
lark on the near side of midnight, my crescent curb lady,
ear to your sound, dangling each with a silver folk charm?
Sweet was your voice for an evening, amid the brash jazzy –
seamless soprano, your scales a tough, platinum thread.
Angel on brick, tipping jar...Read more of this...

The Sash

by Sharon Olds
 The first ones were attached to my dress
at the waist, one on either side,
right at the point where hands could clasp you and
pick you up, as if you were a hot
squeeze bottle of tree syrup, and the
sashes that emerged like axil buds from the
angles of the waist were used to play horses, that
racing across the cement while someone
held your...Read more of this...

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