Famous Hills Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Jueju, No. 1 of 2 (In Late Sun, the River and Hills are Beautiful)

by Du Fu
 Late sun river hill beautiful Spring wind flower grass fragrant Mud thaw fly swallow Sand warm sleep mandarin duck In late sun, the river and hills are beautiful, The spring breeze bears the fragrance of flowers and grass. The mud has thawed, and swallows fly around, On the warm sand, mandarin ducks are sleeping....Read more of this...

Our Hills

by Sidney Lanier
 Dear Mother-Earth
Of Titan birth,
Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I
Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry
To drink my mother's-milk so near the sky.

O ye hill-stains,
Red, for all rains!
The blood that made you has all bled for us,
The hearts that paid you are all dead for us,
The trees that shade you groan with lead, for us!

And O,...Read more of this...

An altered look about the hills

by Emily Dickinson
 An altered look about the hills --
A Tyrian light the village fills --
A wider sunrise in the morn --
A deeper twilight on the lawn --
A print of a vermillion foot --
A purple finger on the slope --
A flippant fly upon the pane --
A spider at his trade again --
An added strut in Chanticleer --
A flower expected everywhere --
An axe...Read more of this...

Over The Hills

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Over the hills and the valleys of dreaming
Slowly I take my way.
Life is the night with its dream-visions teeming,
Death is the waking at day.
Down thro' the dales and the bowers of loving,
Singing, I roam afar.
Daytime or night-time, I constantly roving,—
Dearest one, thou art my star.
...Read more of this...

On the Hills

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Through the pungent hours of the afternoon,
On the autumn slopes we have lightly wandered 
Where the sunshine lay in a golden swoon
And the lingering year all its sweetness squandered. 
Oh, it was blithesome to roam at will 
Over the crest of each westering hill, 
Over those dreamy, enchanted lands 
Where the trees held to us their friendly hands! 

Winds...Read more of this...

Written among the Euganean Hills North Italy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
MANY a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of Misery, 
Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Never thus could voyage on 
Day and night, and night and day, 5 
Drifting on his dreary way, 
With the solid darkness black 
Closing round his vessel's track; 
Whilst above, the sunless sky 
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10 
And...Read more of this...

Alter! When the Hills do --

by Emily Dickinson
 Alter! When the Hills do --
Falter! When the Sun
Question if His Glory
Be the Perfect One --

Surfeit! When the Daffodil
Doth of the Dew --
Even as Herself -- Sir --
I will -- of You --...Read more of this...

Between Two Hills

by Carl Sandburg
 Between two hills
The old town stands.
The houses loom
And the roofs and trees
And the dusk and the dark,
The damp and the dew
 Are there.

The prayers are said
And the people rest
For sleep is there
And the touch of dreams
 Is over all....Read more of this...

All the Hills and Vales Along

by Charles Sorley
 All the hills and vales along
 Earth is bursting into song,
 And the singers are the chaps
 Who are going to die perhaps.
 O sing, marching men,
 Till the valleys ring again.
 Give your gladness to earth's keeping,
 So be glad, when you are sleeping.
 Cast away regret and rue,
 Think what you are marching to.
 Little live, great...Read more of this...

The Hills in Purple syllables

by Emily Dickinson
 The Hills in Purple syllables
The Day's Adventures tell
To little Groups of Continents
Just going Home from School....Read more of this...

The Heavenly Hills of Holland

by Henry Van Dyke
 The heavenly hills of Holland,--
How wondrously they rise 
Above the smooth green pastures
Into the azure skies!
With blue and purple hollows,
With peaks of dazzling snow, 
Along the far horizon
The clouds are marching slow. 

No mortal foot has trodden
The summits of that range, 
Nor walked those mystic valleys
Whose colors ever change; 
Yet we possess their beauty,
And visit them in dreams, 
While...Read more of this...

To the Hills!

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The tremulous morning is breaking
     Against the white waste of the sky,
   And hundreds of birds are awaking
     In tamarisk bushes hard by.
   I, waiting alone in the station,
     Can hear in the distance, grey-blue,
   The sound of that...Read more of this...

The Dark Hills

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Dark hills at evening in the west, 
Where sunset hovers like a sound 
Of golden horns that sang to rest 
Old bones of warriors under ground, 
Far now from all the bannered ways 
Where flash the legions of the sun, 
You fade--as if the last of days 
Were fading, and all wars were done....Read more of this...

Fire On The Hills

by Robinson Jeffers
 The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of...Read more of this...

My Faith is larger than the Hills --

by Emily Dickinson
 My Faith is larger than the Hills --
So when the Hills decay --
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way --

'Tis first He steps upon the Vane --
And then -- upon the Hill --
And then abroad the World He go
To do His Golden Will --

And if His Yellow feet should miss --
The Bird would not...Read more of this...

As Through the Wild Green Hills of Wyre

by A E Housman
 As through the wild green hills of Wyre 
The train ran, changing sky and shire, 
And far behind, a fading crest, 
Low in the forsaken west 
Sank the high-reared head of Clee, 
My hand lay empty on my knee. 
Aching on my knee it lay: 
That morning half a shire away 
So many an honest fellow's fist 
Had well-nigh...Read more of this...

The Town Between the Hills

by Katherine Mansfield
 The further the little girl leaped and ran,
The further she longed to be;
The white, white fields of jonquil flowers
Danced up as high as her knee
And flashed and sparkled before her eyes
Until she could hardly see.
So into the wood went she.

It was quiet in the wood,
It was solemn and grave;
A sound like a wave
Sighed in the tree-tops
And then sighed no...Read more of this...

The hills of home

by Omer Tarin
Of my own salt, these hills are made
I am made of them
grey stone
red dust
black wash--
from the jagged edge I look down
the land stares up at me
it is as me, stark and thorny,
it prickles as I do, 
it is of my own salt.






(c) Omer Tarin, 'A Sad Piper' 1994...Read more of this...

Sunrise on the Hills

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I stood upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch
Was glorious with the sun's returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me; bathed in light,
They gathered mid-way round the wooded height,
And, in their fading glory, shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown.
As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance.
Through the gray mist...Read more of this...

Beyond the Sunset are the Hills of God

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Gleaming folds of read and gold linger in the western sky;
Fleecy clouds of purest tint, mingle with the purple dye.
Faintly to the dreamy mind comes the sound of earthly life;
Far beyond the shining banks, cometh rest from worldly strife.
Through the sunset's misty veil, now we look with longing eyes,
To behold more beauteous sight than the evening's glor'ous skies.
Slowly now the...Read more of this...

The Hills erect their Purple Heads

by Emily Dickinson
 The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
Yet Man has not of all the Throng
A Curiosity....Read more of this...

In The Hills

by Wang Wei
 White rocks jutting from Ching stream
The weather's cold, red leaves few
No rain at all on the paths in the hills
Clothes are wet with the blue air....Read more of this...

Road and Hills

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 I shall go away 
To the brown hills, the quiet ones, 
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, 
Sun-fired and drowsy! 

My horse snuffs delicately 
At the strange wind; 
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. 
The road winds, straightens, 
Slashes a marsh, 
Shoulders out a bridge, 
Then -- 
Again the hills. 
Unchanged, innumerable, 
Bowing huge,...Read more of this...

The Sea And the Hills

by Rudyard Kipling
 1902
Who hath desired the Sea? -- the sight of salt wind-hounded --
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber win hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing --
Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing --
His Sea in no showing the same his Sea and...Read more of this...

The Bonnie Sidlaw Hills

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Bonnie Clara, will you go to the bonnie Sidlaw hills
And pu' the blooming heather, and drink from their rills?
There the cranberries among the heather grow,
Believe me, dear Clara, as black as the crow. 

Chorus --

Then, bonnie Clara, will you go
And wander with me to and fro?
And with joy our hearts will o'erflow
When we go to the bonnie Sidlaws O....Read more of this...

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