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Famous Gully Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...Guid faith,
Ye’re maybe come to stap my breath;
 But tent me, billie;
I red ye weel, tak care o’ skaith
 See, there’s a gully!”


“Gudeman,” quo’ he, “put up your whittle,
I’m no designed to try its mettle;
But if I did, I wad be kittle
 To be mislear’d;
I wad na mind it, no that spittle
 Out-owre my beard.”


“Weel, weel!” says I, “a bargain be’t;
Come, gie’s your hand, an’ sae we’re gree’t;
We’ll ease our shanks an tak a seat—
 Come, gie’s your news;
This while ye hae been ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...tain

again the grumbling drumroll
a giant peak
staggering with ice
suddenly sags
and booming like a cry
sprawls into a gully
tumbles blind with spray
lurches bounces
dizzily jazzing downwards
in the outraged night
now it roars and crashes
through the squawking snow
lunges smashes
into crest and crag
devours ridges
pitches over cliffs
bursts tremendously through gaps
now booms and rebooms
thunders and rethunders
as in its rapid shapes
it plunges wildly down 
rifts instantly a...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg
...r his pains. 

So, off to scour the mountain-side 
With eager eyes aglow, 
To strongholds where the wild mobs hide 
The gully-rakers go. 

A rush of horses through the trees, 
A red shirt making play; 
A sound of stockwhips on the breeze, 
They vanish far away! 

Ah, me! before our day is done 
We long with bitter pain 
To ride once more on Brumby's Run 
And yard his mob again....Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ls us round the vale?

"There, look, there he's playing, jolly!
Huffing, puffing in my course;
There, you see, into the gully
Pushing the hysteric horse;
Now in front of me his figure
Looms up as a ***** mile-mark --
Coming closer, growing bigger,
Sparking, melting in the dark."

Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
We can't whirl so any longer!
Suddenly, the bell has ceas...Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander
...of golden strife,
Now from the Roaring Fifties comes a scene from Lalor's life:
All gleaming white amid the shafts o'er gully, hill and flat
Again I see the tents that form the camp at Ballarat.
I hear the shovels and the picks, and all the air is rife
With the rattle of the cradles and the sounds of digger-life;
The clatter of the windlass-boles, as spinning round they go,
And then the signal to his mate, the digger's cry, "Below!"
From many a busy pointing-forge the sound o...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry



...se thief, Andy Regan, that was hunted like a dog 
By the troopers of the upper Murray side, 
They had searched in every gully -- they had looked in every log, 
But never sight or track of him they spied, 
Till the priest at Kiley's Crossing heard a knocking very late 
And a whisper "Father Riley -- come across!" 
So his Rev'rence in pyjamas trotted softly to the gate 
And admitted Andy Regan -- and a horse! 
"Now, it's listen, Father Riley, to the words I've got to say, 
For ...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...elf,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.

A single green sprouting thing
would restore me. . . .

Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the tongue of the burgundy lily....Read more of this...
by Kenyon, Jane
...her flanks and her knees. 
Bucking and racing and screaming she ran to the back of the run, 
Killed herself there in a gully; by God, but they paid for their fun! 
Paid for it dear, for the black-boys found tracks, and the bucket, and all, 
And I swore that I'd live to get even with Gilbert, O'Meally and Hall. 

Day after day then I chased them -- 'course they had friends on the sly, 
Friends who were willing to sell them to those who were willing to buy. 
Early one morning ...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...my useless heart! 
 Would God that thou wert dead-- 
A clod insensible to joys and ills-- 
A stone remote in some bleak gully of the hills!...Read more of this...
by Brown, Thomas Edward
...but we knew 
Happy days on that selection 
Underneath old Bukaroo. 

Then the light of day commencing 
Found us at the gully's head, 
Splitting timber for the fencing, 
Stripping bark to roof the shed. 
Hands and hearts the labour strengthened; 
Weariness we never knew, 
Even when the shadows lengthened 
Round the base of Bukaroo. 

There for days below the paddock 
How the wilderness would yield 
To the spade, and pick, and mattock, 
While we toiled to win the field. 
Bronz...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...e -- 
As hard as a flint and as fiery 
Was Pardon, the son of Reprieve. 

We ran him at many a meeting 
At crossing and gully and town, 
And nothing could give him a beating -- 
At least when our money was down. 
For weight wouldn't stop him, nor distance, 
Nor odds, though the others were fast; 
He'd race with a dogged persistence, 
And wear them all down at the last. 

At the Turon the Yattendon filly 
Led by lengths at the mile-and-a-half, 
And we all began to look silly, ...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ir travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me....Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ot decide away hill water
Leave home eventually plan far travel spread
Self say pass through old not lost
Who know peak gully now arrive change
Now only mark entrance hill deep
Blue stream how many times reach cloud forest
Spring come all over be peach blossom water
Not know immortal source what place search 


A fisher's boat chased the water into the coveted hills,
Both banks were covered in peach blossom at the ancient river crossing.
He knew not how far he sailed, gazing ...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang
...olorado men are we, 
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, 
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers! 

9
 From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d; 
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O
 pioneers!


10
 O resistless, restless race! 
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with ten...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...e riding as only a bushman can ride. 
He sprang from his horse, to the shanty he sped -- 
`The troopers are down in the gully!' he said. 

Quite close to the homestead the troopers were seen. 
`Clear out and ride hard for the ranges, Jack Dean! 
Be quick!' said May Carney -- her hand on her heart -- 
`We'll bluff them awhile, and 'twill give you a start.' 
He lingered a moment -- to kiss her, of course -- 
Then ran to the trees where he'd hobbled his horse. 

She ran to the g...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...rom above him
Goes rolling o'er the plain;
And down on thirsty pastures
In torrents falls the rain.
And every creek and gully
Sends forth its little flood,
Till the river runs a banker,
All stained with yellow mud. 

Now Harry speaks to Rover,
The best dog on the plains,
And to his hardy horses,
And strokes their shaggy manes;
‘We've breasted bigger rivers
When floods were at their height
Nor shall this gutter stop us
From getting home to-night!' 

The thunder growls a warnin...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...p, 
Through seasons dry and wet. 
They call the homestead Albion House, 
And then, along with that, 
There's Welshman's Gully, Scotchman's Hill, 
And Paddymelon Flat: 
And all these places are renowned 
For making jumbacks fat. 

And the out-paddocks -- holy frost! 
There wouldn't be no sense 
For me to try and tell you half -- 
They really are immense; 
A man might ride for days and weeks 
And never strike a fence. 

But still for years they never had 
Been known a sheep to ...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ould be heard a mile away. 
But he kept his legs and galloped; he was used to rugged courses, 
And he lumbered down the gully till the ridge began to quake: 
And he ploughed along the siding, raising earth till other horses 
An' their riders, too, were blinded by the dust-cloud in his wake. 

From the ruck he'd struggled slowly – they were much surprised to find him 
Close abeam of the Holy Terror as along the flat they tore – 
Even higher still and denser rose the cloud of d...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...th calico and sacks – 
There was little need for windows in the school. 

Then we rode to school and back by the rugged gully-track, 
On the old grey horse that carried three or four; 
And he looked so very wise that he lit the master's eyes 
Every time he put his head in at the door. 

He had run with Cobb and Co. – "that grey leader, let him go!" 
There were men "as knowed the brand upon his hide", 
And "as knowed it on the course". Funeral service: "Good old horse!" 
When ...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...be bothered with where the lorries roar

But when you look behind a random stream gurgles by an overgrown track

With a gully of pebbles and an overhanging rock,

The door still hangs on that rusty latch; your thumb might still

Make it yield, not in the sturm und drang of adolescence but in

The quieter intimacies of shared grief.



The hills have not moved nor the clouds altered the stance of their lazy azure

Nor has the watery Pennine sun gone in before the swallows gath...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry