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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...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 made them run.
But if I though to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ably,
guiding them to the place. He went despite his desire
unto the earthen house he alone knew,
a barrow under the hillside, near the welling sea,
the struggle of waves. That place was filled within
with jewels and twisted gold. That horrid watchman,
bold battle-ready, kept hold of golden treasures,
old under the earth—that would be
no easy bargain to obtain for any man. (ll. 2397-2416)
Then the battle-hardened king sat down
on the headland, wishing good health
...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...imals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us
some tree on a hillside which every day we can take
into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street
and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at out faces. Whom would it not remain for-that longed-after
mildly disillusioning presence...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
..., and said they were nuns going into the chapel.
Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle,
Down the hillside hounding, they glided away o'er the meadow.
Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters,
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow
Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings;
Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow!
Thus passed a few swift years, and they n...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ers by,
Reading their beauty with a tranquil eye.
To him the desert was a place prepared
For weary hearts to rest;
The hillside was a temple blest;
The grassy vale a banquet-room
Where he could feed and comfort many a guest.
With him the lily shared
The vital joy that breathes itself in bloom;
And every bird that sang beside the nest
Told of the love that broods o'er every living thing.
He watched the shepherd bring
His flock at sundown to the welcome fold,
The fisherman at ...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...he sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.
I have climbed up to water the horses
and now sit and rest, high on the hillside,
letting the day gather and pass. Below me
cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands,
slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world
men are making plans, wearing themselves out,
spending their lives, in order to kill each other....Read more of this...
by
Berry, Wendell
...quasi al cominciar de l'erta,
una lonza leggera e presta molto,
che di pel macolato era coverta ;
And almost where the hillside starts to rise-
look there!-a leopard, very quick and lithe,
a leopard covered with a spotted hide.
e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto,
anzi 'mpediva tanto il mio cammino,
ch'i' fui per ritornar pi? volte v?lto .
He did not disappear from sight, but stayed;
indeed, he so impeded my ascent
that I had often to turn back again.
Temp'era dal princ...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...che volt'? per paura ;
my friend, who has not been the friend of fortune,
is hindered in his path along that lonely
hillside; he has been turned aside by terror.
e temo che non sia gi? s? smarrito,
ch'io mi sia tardi al soccorso levata,
per quel ch'i' ho di lui nel cielo udito .
From all that I have heard of him in Heaven,
he is, I fear, already so astray
that I have come to help him much too late.
Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata
e con ci? c'ha mestieri a...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...rn off the engine, and stand
in the silence above your life. See
how the grass mirrors fire, how
a wind rides up the hillside
steadily toward you until it surges
into your ears like breath coming
and going, released from its bondage
to blood or speech and denying nothing....Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...rhaps light falling
on distant houses becomes
those houses, hunching them
down at dusk like sheep
browsing on a far hillside,
or at daybreak gilds
the roofs until they groan
under the new weight, or
after rain lifts haloes
of steam from the rinsed,
white aluminum siding,
and those houses and all
they contain live that day
in the sight of heaven.
II
In the blue, winking light
of the International Institute
of Social Revolution
I fell asleep one afternoon
o...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...him when he went by.
He ran around the house, circling the john, with the dog
hot after him. They vanished over the hillside, leaving
streamers of toilet paper behind them, flowing out and en-
tangled through the bushes and vines.
Then along came the doe. She started up the same way,
but not moving as fast. Maybe she had strawberries in her
head.
"Whoa!" I shouted. "Enough is enough! I'm not selling
newspapers!"
The doe stopped in her tracks, twenty-five feet a...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ells, 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...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...n's weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel's ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home, ...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...he moss.
O Farms! protest if any tree emboss
The barren hills.
"Young Trade is dead,
And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern
And folds his arms that find no bread to earn,
And bows his head.
"Spring-germs, spring-germs,
Albeit the towns have left you place to play,
I charge you, sport not. Winter owns to-day,
Stay: feed the worms."
____
Prattville, Alabama, 1868.
V. Life and Song.
"If life were caught by a clarionet,
And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,
Sh...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...se.
'Twas in the fall of nineteen four--leap-year I've heard them say--
When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay.
And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past,
Late in the year he struck it rich, the real pay-streak at last.
The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth,
And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth.
And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired,
He found that he had made a stake as b...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ht seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white sleeping town;
At the church on the hillside—
And then come back down.
Singing: 'There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.'...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...uld find
Anyone else, but out of idleness.
One, and one other, yes, for there were two.
The second round the curving hillside road
Was a girl; and she halted some way off
To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind
At least to pass by and see who he was,
And perhaps hear some word about the weather.
This was some Stark she didn't know. He nodded.
"No fête to-day," he said.
"It looks that way."
She swept the heavens, turning on her heel.
"I only idled down."
"I idle...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...
Be laid to rest.
III
One stifling July day thirty years on we returned to Honley
Where the hamlet snagged on the hillside, fattened now and hollow
And grown grey with money and success: one cottage joined on
To the next, the common land fenced off, the nearby chapel
Turned to a desirable residence, the tombstones garden ornaments,
The heart of Hall Ings Mill crumpled under mechanical hammers
And reeled before our eyes, dust rising to powder the wings
Of passing b...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ile, as heart to heart beats faster,
More and more their feet delay.
Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
On the open hillside justice wrought,
Singing, as he drew his stitches,
Songs his German masters taught.
Singing, with his gray hair floating
Round a rosy ample face,---
Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
Stitch and hammer in his place.
All the pastoral lanes so grassy
Now are Traffic's dusty streets;
From the village, grown a city,
Fast the rural grace retreats...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
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