Famous Edges Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Birthday Present

...What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?

Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My g...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia


Aubade

...I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love no...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Beowulf (Modern English)

...not shun the worldly custom,
when Hunlafing placed upon his lap,
the battle-bright blade, the best of swords,
whose edges were well-known among the Jutes.
Likewise bold-souled Finn soon succumbed
to baleful sword-blows within his very own home,
after Guthlaf and Oslaf signified their sorrows,
their grim onslaught after their sea-voyage,
reproaching their woeful apportionment.
Nor could such a wavering spirit be kept inside the breast. (ll. 1137b-51a)

Then was the...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...d will happen;
from sword-clash dread of your Danish clan
he vaunts him safe, from the Victor-Scyldings.
He forces pledges, favors none
of the land of Danes, but lustily murders,
fights and feasts, nor feud he dreads
from Spear-Dane men. But speedily now
shall I prove him the prowess and pride of the Geats,
shall bid him battle. Blithe to mead
go he that listeth, when light of dawn
this morrow morning o’er men of earth,
ether-robed sun from the south shall beam!”
...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Dover Beach

...t now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of st...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew


Elegy For My Father

...s
flying under the wide, carved gold ring, and the pages
flying so his thought could fly. His breath slows,
lending its edges out to the night.

Here is his open mouth. Silence is here
like one more new question that he will not answer. 
A leaf is his temple. The dark is the prayer.
He has given his body; his hand lies above
the sheets in a symbol of wholeness, a curve
of thumb and forefinger, ringed with wide gold, 
and the instant that empties his breath is a flame 
faced w...Read more of this...
by Finch, Annie

Endymion: Book I

...ossoming limes,
Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells,
Made delicate from all white-flower bells;
And once, above the edges of our nest,
An arch face peep'd,--an Oread as I guess'd.

 "Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me
In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,
Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,
And stare them from me? But no, like a spark
That needs must die, although its little beam
Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream
Fell into nothing--into stupid slee...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...g ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes,
Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel.
Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle,
Down the hillside hounding, they glided away o'er the meadow.
Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters,
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow
Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings;
Lucky was he who found that stone in the ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

More and More

...More and more frequently the edges
of me dissolve and I become
a wish to assimilate the world, including
you, if possible through the skin
like a cool plant's tricks with oxygen
and live by a harmless green burning.

I would not consume
you or ever
finish, you would still be there
surrounding me, complete
as the air.

Unfortunately I don't have leaves.
Instead I have eyes
and teeth and ...Read more of this...
by Atwood, Margaret

Pickthorn Manor

...with blue,
And flashing where the round clouds, blown away, Let drop the 
yellow sunshine to gleam through
And tip the edges of the waves with shifts And spots of whitest 
fire, hard like gems
Cut from the midnight moon they were, and sharp As 
wind through leafless stems.
The Lady Eunice walked between the drifts
Of blooming cherry-trees, and watched the rifts
Of clouds drawn through the river's azure warp.

II
Her little feet tapped softly down the path. Her 
soul was list...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...ainly the leisure to
Indulge stately pastimes doesn't,
Any more. Today has no margins, the event arrives
Flush with its edges, is of the same substance,
Indistinguishable. "Play" is something else;
It exists, in a society specifically
Organized as a demonstration of itself.
There is no other way, and those assholes
Who would confuse everything with their mirror games
Which seem to multiply stakes and possibilities, or
At least confuse issues by means of an investing
Aura that...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Song of Myself

...er, it shall be the spread of my own body,
 or any part of it. 

Translucent mould of me, it shall be you! 
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you. 

Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you! 
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strippings of my life. 

Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be you! 
My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.

Root of wash’d sweet flag! timorous pond-snip...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of the Open Road

...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 stones of interminable pavements...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

...a chair, among them tossed
The boarding-pike of a privateer.
Against the chimney leaned a *****
Two-handed weapon, with edges dull
As though from hacking on a skull.
The rusted blood corroded it still.
My host took up a paper spill
From a heap which lay in an earthen bowl,
And lighted it at a burning coal.
At either end of the table, tall
Wax candles were placed, each in a small,
And slim, and burnished candlestick
Of pewter. The old man lit each wick,
And the room leapt more...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Flight Of The Duchess

...eached too, whatever the change meant,
Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak's arrangement:
For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,
Gold coins were glittering on the edges,
Like the band-roll strung with tomans
Which proves the veil a Persian woman's.
And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly
Come out as after the rain he paces,
Two unmistakeable eye-points duly
Live and aware looked out of their places.
So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry
Of the lady's chamber standin...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Ghost

...to for the world.' 

And he said: `If you'd be happy, you must clip your fancy's wings, 
Stretch your conscience at the edges to the size of earthly things; 
Never fight another's battle, for a friend can never know 
When he'll gladly fly for succour to the bosom of the foe. 
At the power of truth and friendship let your lip in scorn be curled -- 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, remember, is the motto of the world. 

`Where Society is mighty, always truckle to her rule; 
Never se...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...p-plates done with pale pink rosebuds,
And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy?
See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges!
They're works of art—minutely seen and felt,
Each petal done devoutly. Is it failure
To spend your blood like this?

Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal—
My brain unfolding! There you'll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Princess (part 2)

...he Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, 
Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst; 
And here and there on lattice edges lay 
Or book or lute; but hastily we past, 
And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat, 
With two tame leopards couched beside her throne, 
All beauty compassed in a female form, 
The Princess; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, 
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head, 
And...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Shadow

...ingers of one hand.
The chin rose to a mouth he guessed,
But could not see, the lips were pressed
Loosely together, the edges close,
And the proud and delicate line of the nose
Melted into a brow, and there
Broke into undulant waves of hair.
The lady was edged with the stamp of race.
A singular vision in such a place.

He moved the candle to the tall
Chiffonier; the Shadow stayed on the wall.
He threw his cloak upon a chair,
And still the lady's face was there.
From every cor...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Star-Apple Kingdom

...nial families, curled at the edge 
not from age of from fire or the chemicals, no, not at all, 
but because, off at its edges, innocently excluded 
stood the groom, the cattle boy, the housemaid, the gardeners, 
the tenants, the good ******* down in the village, 
their mouth in the locked jaw of a silent scream. 
A scream which would open the doors to swing wildly 
all night, that was bringing in heavier clouds, 
more black smoke than cloud, frightening the cattle 
in whose b...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

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