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Famous Gables Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree --
Another -- on the Roof --
A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves --
And made the Gables laugh --

A few went out to help the Brook
That went to help the Sea --
Myself Conjectured were they Pearls --
What Necklace could be --

The Dust replaced, in Hoisted Roads --
The Birds jocoser sung --
The Sunshine threw his Hat away --
The Bushes -- spangles flung --

The Breezes brought dejected Lutes --
And bathed them in the Glee --
Then Orient s...Read more of this...



by Bishop, Elizabeth
...ater.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches, 
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
grow...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...Ears in the turrets hear
Hands grumble on the door,
Eyes in the gables see
The fingers at the locks.
Shall I unbolt or stay
Alone till the day I die
Unseen by stranger-eyes
In this white house?
Hands, hold you poison or grapes?

Beyond this island bound
By a thin sea of flesh
And a bone coast,
The land lies out of sound
And the hills out of mind.
No birds or flying fish
Disturbs this island's rest.

Ears in t...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ch as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries.
Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables projecting
Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway.
There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset
Lighted the village street and gilded the vanes on the chimneys,
Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles
Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden
Flax for the gossiping looms...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...
I


Oh, splendour of our joy and our delight,
Woven of gold amid the silken air!
See the dear house among its gables light,
And the green garden, and the orchard there!


Here is the bench with apple-trees o'er head
Whence the light spring is shed.
With touch of petals falling slow and soft;
Here branches luminous take flight aloft,
Hovering, like some bounteous presage, high
Against this landscape's clear and tender sky.


Here lie, like kisses from the...Read more of this...



by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...in your ear -
Pray, what was Christ, if you be Christian?
If Christ were only here just now,
Among the city's wynds and gables
Teaching the life he taught us, how
Would he be welcome to your tables?

I go and leave your logic-straws,
Your former-friends with face averted,
Your petty ways and narrow laws,
Your Grundy and your God, deserted.
From your frail ark of lies, I flee
I know not where, like Noah's raven.
Full to the broad, unsounded sea
I swim from your dishone...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...my lady fair!
I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times, 
Sailing across the high seas in its pride,
Over the gables of the tranquil village, 
Some winged ship which is traveling far away,
Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds. 
Lately it slept in port beside the quay.
Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge:
No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives, 
Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters,
Nor importunity of sinister birds....Read more of this...

by Pasternak, Boris
...hese days, and these nights also!
With eavesdrop thrumming its tattoos at noon,
With icicles (cachectic!) hanging on to gables,
And with the chattering of rills that never sleep!

All doors are flung open -- in stable and in cowbarn;
Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow;
And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter--
The pile of manure -- is pungent with ozone....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...ck,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been the oysters.

In obscene array
Garbage cans spill over;
How I wish that they
Smelled as sweet as clover!
Charing women wait;
Cafes drop their shutter...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ent, stands. 

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, 
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: 

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 5 
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; 

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, 
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. 

In the court-yard of the ...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...O the splendour of our joy, woven of gold in the silken air!
Here is our pleasant house and its airy gables, and the garden and the orchard.
Here is the bench beneath the apple-trees, whence the white spring is shed in slow, caressing petals.
Here flights of luminous wood-pigeons, like harbingers, soar in the clear sky of the countryside.
Here, kisses fallen upon earth from the mouth of the frail azure, are two blue ponds, simple and pure, artlessly bord...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...rty.
It's one of the little disappointments
that makes you think about getting away
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
and taking a room on the square
with a landlady whose hands are scored
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
that you are from Alaska, and listen
to what they have to say about Alaska
until you have learned much more about Alaska
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...bitter night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new; 
Faint and more faint the...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...erd of blind bullocks that seek their fellows,
Wild, as in terror, the tempest bellows.
And suddenly, there, o'er the gables black
That the church, in the twilight, around it raises
All scored with lightnings the steeple blazes.


See the old bell-ringer, frenzied with fear.
Mouth gaping, yet speechless, draw hastening near.
And the knell of alarm that with strokes of lead
He rings, heaves forth in a tempest of dread
The frantic despair that throbs in his head.

...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...the builder's eye, 
And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) 
Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes 
When first these gables rose against the sky. 
Relic of a romantic taste gone by, 
This stately monument alone remains, 
Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes 
Blank as the windows of a skull. But I, 
On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred 
In the porch-vines, to this gray oracle 
Have laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard, 
As from the hollow of a st...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between, 
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three
 miles
 off,

The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat
 slack-tow’d
 astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping, 
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by
 itself—the
 spread of purity it lies motionless in, 
The horizon’s edge, the flying ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs