Famous Hallway Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Hallway poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hallway poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hallway poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...In the upstairs hallway, complacent sunlight
stings the walls with gold and translucent almond
over Turkish runners betraying patterns
faded with travel.
At their raveled edges, my daughter slumbers
in the room from which this lost sun arranges
through a window high on an eastern sill of
drapes and black lacquer.
Past the pillowcase where her blonde head swivels
in a drea...Read more of this...
by
Reeser, Jennifer
...ay whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...its tail in the sea.
I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death,
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris's darkened garret,
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz.
In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the ehcoes play.
There is a death for piano
that paints little boys blue.
There are beggars on the roof.
There are fresh garlands of tears.
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.
Because I love yo...Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
...beautician and her lover,
a shower-head salesman, of this room?
He is so seldom in town.
I felt by their glance in the hallway
that my room, no. 17, means
something (don't ask me to explain this) special
to them. Maybe they fell fiercely
into each other here for the first time,
maybe there was a passion preternatural. I'm glad
this room, so ugly, has known some love
at $19.00 double occupancy--
though not tonight, for a dollar fifty less....Read more of this...
by
Lux, Thomas
...days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...'s cloak they all
Roll away and vanish.
Garden darkened, daisy shut,
Child in bed, they slumber--
Glow-worm in the hallway rut,
Mice among the lumber.
In the darkness houses shine,
Parents move the candles;
Till on all the night divine
Turns the bedroom handles.
Till at last the day begins
In the east a-breaking,
In the hedges and the whins
Sleeping birds a-waking.
In the darkness shapes of things,
Houses, trees and hedges,
Clearer grow; and sparrow's wing...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...ng
is listening to the radio
The children from upstairs
screaming their lungs out
and there are people stumbling in the hallway
as they go about
But from the young couple next door
usually fighting, not a sound
Did they finally reconcile
or at long last break up
like they were bound
Suddenly the people in the hallway scream and run
I hear the panic in their voices
and hurry out of bed
As I look through the peephole
I see the guy from next door
his shirt, bloodshed red
and i...Read more of this...
by
Sterenborg, Fenny
...hair,
Meet and mingle together.
There's a question asked, there's a swift caress,
She has flown like a bird from the hallway,
But over the banisters drops a "yes,"
That shall brighten the world for him alway....Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...ts tail in the sea.
I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris's dark garret,
in our bed that was once the moon's bed,
and in that dance the turtle dreamed of.
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz
In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the echoes play.
There is a death for piano
that paints the little boys blue.
There are beggars on the roof.
There are fresh g...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...lory,
Perfessor Vere de Blaw discoursed his music repertory
Upon the Steenway gran' piannyfort, the wich wuz sot
In the hallway near the kitchen (a warm but quiet spot),
An' when De Blaw's environments induced the proper pride,--
Wich gen'rally wuz whiskey straight, with seltzer on the side,--
He throwed his soulful bein' into opry airs 'nd things
Wich bounded to the ceilin' like he'd mesmerized the strings.
Oh, you that live in cities where the gran' piannies grow,
An' prim...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...u didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.
A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dyi...Read more of this...
by
Berman, David
...jaws.
I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.
In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in some hallway where love's never been.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
in a cry filled with footsteps and sand—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take its broken waist in your hand.
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
with its very own breath
of brandy and death,
dragging its tail in the sea.
There's a concert hall in Vienna
wh...Read more of this...
by
Cohen, Leonard
..., who cares, splintering up
the hip that was merely made of crystal,
the post of it and also the cup.
I exploded in the hallway like a pistol.
So I fell apart. So I came all undone.
Yes. I was like a box of dog bones.
But now they've wrapped me in like a nun.
Burst like firecrackers! Held like stones!
What a feat sailing queerly like Icarus
until the tempest undid me and I broke.
The ambulance drivers made such a fuss.
But when I cried, "Wait for my courage!" they smoked
a...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...eshold
drums beating through the walls
children playing their truck dramas
under the collapsible coatrack
in the narrow hallway outside my room
The TV lounge next door is wide open
it is midnight in Idaho
and the throb easy subtle spin
of the electric slide boogie
step-stepping
around the corner of the parlor
past the sweet clink
of dining room glasses
and the edged aroma of slightly overdone
dutch-apple pie
all laced together
with the rich dark laughter
of Gloria
and her hi...Read more of this...
by
Lorde, Audre
...eyond which lies the dark. Some few we know—
Or think we know. . . Once, on a sun-bright morning,
I walked in a certain hallway, trying to find
A certain door: I found one, tried it, opened,
And there in a spacious chamber, brightly lighted,
A hundred men played music, loudly, swiftly,
While one tall woman sent her voice above them
In powerful sweetness. . . .Closing then the door
I heard it die behind me, fade to whisper,—
And walked in a quiet hallway as before.
Just such a...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...ep in his neighbours' best bed in spurs and oilskins,
but not having thrown up:
sprawl is never Calum, who, in the loud hallway of our house
reinvented the Festoon. Rather
it's Beatrice Miles going twelve hundred ditto in a taxi,
No Lewd Advances, no Hitting Animals, no Speeding,
on the proceeds of her two-bob-a-sonnet Shakespeare readings.
An image of my country. And would thatit were more so.
No, sprawl is full gloss murals on a council-house wall.
Sprawl leans on things....Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...wich,
Either caviar or cucumber,
When the sun had not yet risen
And the moon had not yet sank;
As I tiptoed through the hallway
The big dog lay in slumber,
And the little dog slept by the big dog,
And her head was on his flank....Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
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