Famous Girders Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Skyscraper

by Carl Sandburg
 BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul...Read more of this...

Prayers of Steel

by Carl Sandburg
 LAY me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be...Read more of this...

Hunted

by Paul Eluard
 A few grains of dust more or less 
On ancient shoulders 
Locks of weakness on weary foreheads 
This theatre of honey and faded roses 
Where incalcuable flies 
Reply to the black signs that misery makes to them 
Despairing girders of a bridge 
Thrown across space 
Thrown across every street and every house 
Heavy wandering madnesses 
That we shall end...Read more of this...

Bridge-Guard in the Karroo

by Rudyard Kipling
 1901 ". . . and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge." District Orders-Lines of Communication, South African War.
Sudden the desert changes,
 The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
 Stand up like the thrones of Kings --

Ramparts of slaughter and peril --
 Blazing, amazing, aglow --
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
 And the wine-dark flats...Read more of this...

The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.
The greatest wonder of the day,
And a great beautification to the River Tay,
Most beautiful to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. 

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
That...Read more of this...

The Tay Bridge Disaster

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seemed to frown,
And the Demon...Read more of this...

Directions/misdirections

by Barry Tebb
 I sit inside the train of tears

The station mellow in shade

Unoriginal phrases air-brush the canvas.



Puzzling minds I wonder

If all are like my own

Closed to stillness.



From girders hang the acrobats of gone

Pearl grey Whistlers. We sat on

A train like this once, you and I,

Face to face but travelling

In opposite directions-

Or was it you alone I watched depart,

Stood on the platform...Read more of this...

An Address to the New Tay Bridge

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful new railway bridge of the Silvery Tay,
With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array,
And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye
Strong enough all windy storms to defy.
And as I gaze upon thee my heart feels gay,
Because thou are the greatest railway bridge of the present day,
And can be seen for miles away
From North,...Read more of this...

For the Union Dead

by Robert Lowell
 "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam." 

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I...Read more of this...

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