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Famous Hedged Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shapiro, Karl
...In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And one sweet statue of a child stood by.

A gutter of poetry flowed outside the yard,
Making me think I was ...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...scandal of the elder earth.

How shall he clear himself, how reach
 Your bar or weighed defence prefer --
A brother hedged with alien speech
 And lacking all interpreter?

Which knowledge vexes him a space;
 But, while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
 Home, to the instant need of things.

Enslaved, illogical, elate,
 He greets the embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
 Or match with Destiny for beers.

Lo, imperturbab...Read more of this...

by Graves, Robert
...This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink blood when t...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...e he didn't shoot her dead. 

There's a divinity that hedges a king,
And so it does seem,
And my opinion is, it has hedged
Our most gracious Queen. 

Maclean must be a madman,
Which is obvious to be seen,
Or else he wouldn't have tried to shoot
Our most beloved Queen. 

Victoria is a good Queen,
Which all her subjects know,
And for that God has protected her
From all her deadly foes. 

She is noble and generous,
Her subjects must confess;
There hasn't been her...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...hoard your gold; 
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, 
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot. 
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge, 
I live alone, I look to die alone: 
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge, 
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back, 
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown 
On sometime summer's unreturning track....Read more of this...



by Gregory, Rg
...in prim rejoicing
hunches around at eastertide
spry uncle with (brightly voicing)
maids and suchlike masquerading

when hedged in (deprived of pique)
its softer nature greenly oozing
it’s host to children’s fingers
(their tasty bread and cheesing)
first name means strength in greek
one of nature’s best harbingers

many names to match its guises
whitethorn quickthorn ske **** hag
rich too in its folklore listings
much belies its tetchy tag
its wry wood (tangled twistings)
pleu...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...and true,
For the earnest sun looks through,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.

Now the hedged meads renew
Rustic odour, smiling hue,
And the clean air shines and tinkles as the world goes wheeling through;
And my heart springs up anew,
Bright and confident and true,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew....Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...ll behind;
Fired on them at your will, and shut
The town, as though you'd starve them out;
And with parade preposterous hedged,
Affect to hold them there besieged:
Though Gage, whom proclamations call
Your Gov'rnor and Vice-Admiral,
Whose power gubernatorial still
Extends as far as Bunker's hill,
Whose admiralty reaches, clever,
Near half a mile up Mistic river,
Whose naval force yet keeps the seas,
Can run away whene'er he'd please.
Nay, stern with rage grim Putnam boili...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...yard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhor...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...neath the boughs, and found 
A circle smooth of mossy ground 
Beneath a poplar-tree. 20 

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, 
Bedropt with roses waxen-white, 
Well satisfied with dew and light, 
And careless to be seen. 

Long years ago, it might befall, 25 
When all the garden flowers were trim, 
The grave old gardener prided him 
On these the most of all. 

Some Lady, stately overmuch, 
Here moving with a silken noise, 30 
Has blush'd beside the...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ed, crowned and throned, he wove his spell,
 Where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled,
With unconsidered miracle,
 Hedged in a backward-gazing world;
Then taught his chosen bard to say:
"Our King was with us -- yesterday!"...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 And pierce the mass, thick, black as hearse's plume, 
 To where lays on a horrifying bed 
 What was King Ninus, now hedged round with dread, 
 'Twould see by what is shadow of the light, 
 A line of feath'ry dust, bones marble-white. 
 A shudder overtakes the pois'nous snakes 
 When they glide near that powder, laid in flakes. 
 Death comes at times to him—Life comes no more! 
 And sets a jug and loaf upon the floor. 
 He then with bony foot the corpse o'ert...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...n that tide-hoisted screen
Love's image till my heartbone breaks
By a dramatic sea.

Who kills my history?
The year-hedged row is lame with flint,
Blunt scythe and water blade.
'Who could snap off the shapeless print
From your to-morrow-treading shade
With oracle for eye?'
Time kills me terribly.
'Time shall not murder you,' He said,
'Nor the green nought be hurt;
Who could hack out your unsucked heart,
O green and unborn and undead?'
I saw time murder me....Read more of this...

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