Famous Hillside Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Deserted Gipsy's Song: Hillside Camp

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   She is glad to receive your turquoise ring,
         Dear and dark-eyed Lover of mine!
   I, to have given you everything:
         Beauty maddens the soul like Wine.

   "She is proud to have held aloof her charms,
  ...Read more of this...

Sonnet On Hearing The Dies Irae Sung In The Sistine Chapel

by Oscar Wilde
 Nay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring,
Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove,
Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love
Than terrors of red flame and thundering.
The hillside vines dear memories of Thee bring:
A bird at evening flying to its nest
Tells me of One who had no place of rest:
I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing.
Come rather...Read more of this...

Repeat That Repeat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound 
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound....Read more of this...

6. The Tarbolton Lasses

by Robert Burns
 IF ye gae up to yon hill-tap,
 Ye’ll there see bonie Peggy;
She kens her father is a laird,
 And she forsooth’s a leddy.


There Sophy tight, a lassie bright,
 Besides a handsome fortune:
Wha canna win her in a night,
 Has little art in courtin’.


Gae down by Faile, and taste the ale,
 And tak a look o’ Mysie;
She’s dour and din,...Read more of this...

The Unsung Heroes

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A song for the unsung heroes who rose in the country's need,
When the life of the land was threatened by the slaver's cruel greed,
For the men who came from the cornfield, who came from the plough and the flail,
Who rallied round when they heard the sound of the mighty man of the rail.
They laid them down in the valleys, they...Read more of this...

At the Cedars

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 You had two girls -- Baptiste -- 
One is Virginie --
Hold hard -- Baptiste!
Listen to me.

The whole drive was jammed
In that bend at the Cedars,
The rapids were dammed
With the logs tight rammed
And crammed; you might know
The Devil had clinched them below.

We worked three days -- not a budge,
'She's as tight as a wedge, on the ledge,'
Says our foreman;
'Mon Dieu!...Read more of this...

Holding On

by Philip Levine
 Green fingers 
holding the hillside, 
mustard whipping in 
the sea winds, one blood-bright 
poppy breathing in 
and out. The odor 
of Spanish earth comes 
up to me, yellowed 
with my own piss. 
 40 miles from Málaga 
half the world away 
from home, I am home and 
nowhere, a man who envies 
grass. 
 Two oxen browse 
yoked together...Read more of this...

The Last Parade

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 With never a sound of trumpet, 
With never a flag displayed, 
The last of the old campaigners 
Lined up for the last parade. 

Weary they were and battered, 
Shoeless, and knocked about; 
From under their ragged forelocks 
Their hungry eyes looked out. 

And they watched as the old commander 
Read out to the cheering men 
The Nation's thanks, and...Read more of this...

On a Hillside

by George William Russell
 A FRIENDLY mountain I know;
As I lie on the green slope there
It sets my heart in a glow
And closes the door on care.


A thought I try to frame—
I was with you long ago;
My soul from your heart out-came;
Mountain, is that not so?


Take me again, dear hills,
Open the door to me
Where the magic murmur thrills
The halls I do not see,


The...Read more of this...

The Old And The New Masters

by Randall Jarrell
 About suffering, about adoration, the old masters 
Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats 
Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes 
As the sufferers watch the sufferer. 
In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene
The flame of one torch is the only light. 
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps 
And covers them with a cloth) are...Read more of this...

Magpiety

by Philip Levine
 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
 that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
 the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
 life survives.
In the still heat the engine
 clicks, although
the...Read more of this...

Khan Zada's Song on the Hillside

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The fires that burn on all the hills
     Light up the landscape grey,
   The arid desert land distills
     The fervours of the day.

   The clear white moon sails through the skies
     And silvers all the night,
   I see the...Read more of this...

Late Light

by Philip Levine
 Rain filled the streets 
once a year, rising almost 
to door and window sills, 
battering walls and roofs 
until it cleaned away the mess 
we'd made. My father told 
me this, he told me it ran 
downtown and spilled into 
the river, which in turn 
emptied finally into the sea. 
He said this only once 
while I sat on...Read more of this...

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

by Vachel Lindsay
 In Springfield, Illinois

IT is portentious, and a thing of state 
That here at midnight, in our little town 
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, 
Near the old court-house, pacing up and down. 

Or by his homestead, or by shadowed yards 
He lingers where his children used to play, 
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones 
He...Read more of this...

The Song And The Sigh

by Henry Lawson
 The creek went down with a broken song, 
'Neath the sheoaks high; 
The waters carried the song along, 
And the oaks a sigh. 

The song and the sigh went winding by, 
Went winding down; 
Circling the foot of the mountain high, 
And the hillside brown. 

They were hushed in the swamp of the Dead Man's Crime, 
Where the curlews...Read more of this...

The peter-bird

by Eugene Field
 Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is...Read more of this...

A Hillside Thaw

by Robert Frost
 To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them...Read more of this...

The Steeple-Jack

by Marianne Moore
 Dürer would have seen a reason for living
 in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
 with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep
 flying back and forth over the town...Read more of this...

Marthys younkit

by Eugene Field
 The mountain brook sung lonesomelike, and loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play;
The wild-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hear
The music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin' to an' fro
Among the rocks an' holler stumps in the...Read more of this...

The Overland Mail

by Rudyard Kipling
 (Foot-Service to the Hills)
In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
 O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day --
 We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
Let the robber retreat -- let the tiger turn tail --
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!

With a jingle...Read more of this...

Tis Eve On The Hillside

by Mihai Eminescu

'Tis eve on the hillside, the bagpipes are distantly wailing, 
Flocks going homewards, and stars o'er the firmament sailing, 
Sound of the bubbling spring sorrow's legend narrating, 
And beneath a tall willow for me, dear one, you are waiting. 

The wandering moon up the heavens her journey is wending, 
Big-eyed you watch through the boughs her gold lantern ascending, ...Read more of this...

Another Song

by Philip Levine
 Words go on travelling from voice 
to voice while the phones are still 
and the wires hum in the cold. Now 
and then dark winter birds settle 
slowly on the crossbars, where huddled 
they caw out their loneliness. Except 
for them the March world is white 
and barely alive. The train to Providence 
moans somewhere near the end 
of...Read more of this...

Australia Today 1916

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 They came from the lower levels 
Deep down in the Brilliant mine; 
From the wastes where the whirlwind revels, 
Whirling the leaves of pine. 
On the western plains, where the Darling flows, 
And the dust storms wheel and shift, 
The teamster loosened his yokes and bows, 
And turned his team adrift. 

On the western stations, far and wide, 
There's...Read more of this...

The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside

by Rabindranath Tagore
 She dwelt on the hillside by edge
of a maize-field, near the spring that
flows in laughing rills through the
solemn shadows of ancient trees. The
women came there to fill their jars,
and travellers would sit there to rest
and talk. She worked and dreamed 
daily to the tune of the bubbling
stream.
One evening the stranger came down
from the cloud-hidden peak; his locks
were tangled like...Read more of this...

The Little Garden

by Amy Lowell
 A little garden on a bleak hillside
Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow
Lies far into the spring. The sun's pale glow
Is scarcely able to melt patches wide
About the single rose bush. All denied
Of nature's tender ministries. But no, --
For wonder-working faith has made it blow
With flowers many hued and starry-eyed.
Here sleeps the sun long, idle summer hours;
Here butterflies and...Read more of this...

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