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Famous Hillsides Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...s and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
 The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
 To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap -- alas! as we are dear....Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...king winter ghosts
who are electric like the locusts at Patmos.

They are gathering sage in improvised slings
along the hillsides,
they are the lightning strikes scattering wild cats
from the bone yard:
here, since the war, fertilizer trucks
have idled much like the island itself.

We blame the wild cats who have eaten
all the jeweled yellow snakes of the island.

When sufficiently distant, the outhouses have a sweetness
like frankincense.

A darker congregation, we think the...Read more of this...
by Dubie, Norman
...of lyrics and small fame
Among his fellows then,
Spreads through the world like autumn--who knows when?--
Till all the hillsides flame.

Grand Pré and Margaree
Hear it upbruited from the unresting sea;
And the small Gaspereau,
Whose yellow leaves repeat it, seems to know
A new felicity.

Even the shadows tall,
Walking at sundown through the plain, recall
A mound the grasses keep,
Where once a mortal came and found long sleep
By the Aurelian Wall....Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss
...où l'herbe se balance.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xi., July, 1853.} 


 O paths whereon wild grasses wave! 
 O valleys! hillsides! forests hoar! 
 Why are ye silent as the grave? 
 For One, who came, and comes no more! 
 
 Why is thy window closed of late? 
 And why thy garden in its sear? 
 O house! where doth thy master wait? 
 I only know he is not here. 
 
 Good dog! thou watchest; yet no hand 
 Will feed thee. In the house is none. 
 Whom weepest thou? child! ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...high up amongst the hills,
And when they saw the British, with fear their blood thrills;
The savages were camped on the hillsides in war array,
And occupying a strong position which before the British lay. 

And viewed from the front their position was impregnable,
But Lord Roberts was a general of great skill;
Therefore to surprise the enemy he thought it was right,
To march upon the enemy in the dead of night. 

Then the men were mustered without delay,
And each man of them...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz



...n all of you. 

But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest. 

And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore. 

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?" 

For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen you...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil
...t honey-bees
Stealing the nectar: and bee-masters know
This for the first sign of the honey-flow.

Then in the dark hillsides the Cherry-trees
Gleam white with loads of blossom where the gleams
Of piled snow lately hung, and richer streams
The honey. Now, if chilly April days
Delay the Apple-blossom, and the May's
First week come in with sudden summer weather,
The Apple and the Hawthorn bloom together,
And all day long the plundering hordes go round
And every over...Read more of this...
by Armstrong, Martin
...t name it in the street
For shops would stare at me --
That one so shy -- so ignorant
Should have the face to die.

The hillsides must not know it --
Where I have rambled so --
Nor tell the loving forests
The day that I shall go --

Nor lisp it at the table --
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the Riddle
One will walk today --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...nd at last to be seen;
Toothed rocks down the side of the firth on the east guard a weary wide lea,
And black slope the hillsides above, striped adown with their desolate green:
And a peak rises up on the west from the meeting of cloud and of sea,
Foursquare from base unto point like the building of Gods that have been,
The last of that waste of the mountains all cloud-wreathed and snow-flecked and grey,
And bright with the dawn that began just now at the ending of day.

Ah! ...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,

certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed

like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.

To some of us, the dejected landscape c...Read more of this...
by Levertov, Denise
...In the footsteps of the walking air
Sky's prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe
And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying.

Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss
And a single drop of dark blood covers the earth.

Now is the China of the spirit at walking
In my reaches.
A sable organ sounds in my gathered will
And love's inscrutable skeleton sings.

My seeing moves under a vegetable shroud
And dead forests sta...Read more of this...
by Patchen, Kenneth
...old men sat

watching a white schooner stuck in the branches
and playing draughts with the moving frigate birds

those hillsides like broken pots

those ferns that stamped their skeletons on the skin

and those roads that begin reciting their names at vespers

mention them and they will stop
those crabs that were willing to let an epoch pass
those herons like spinsters that doubted their reflections
inquiring, inquiring

those nettles that waited
those Sundays, those Sundays...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...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
...n. Thus: 
311 The natives of the rain are rainy men. 
312 Although they paint effulgent, azure lakes, 
313 And April hillsides wooded white and pink, 
314 Their azure has a cloudy edge, their white 
315 And pink, the water bright that dogwood bears. 
316 And in their music showering sounds intone. 
317 On what strange froth does the gross Indian dote, 
318 What Eden sapling gum, what honeyed gore, 
319 What pulpy dram distilled of innocence, 
320 That streaking gold...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...water is sobbing for something.
The west wind is dead, the waves
Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons
Whole hillsides burst aglow
With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,
And every pool was rimmed
With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.
Now tall and slender suddenly
The stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks,
The pencilled ones on the hill;
This deerweed shivers with gold, the white globe-tulips
Blow out their silky bubbles,
But in the next gl...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson
...aded those pressing behind;
We cursed the slow current that bore us; we prayed to the God of the wind.

Spring! and the hillsides flourished, vivid in jewelled green;
Spring! and our hearts' blood nourished envy and hatred and spleen.
Little cared we for the Spring-birth; much cared we to get on--
Stake in the Great White Channel, stake ere the best be gone.

The greed of the gold possessed us; pity and love were forgot;
Covetous visions obsessed us; brother with brother foug...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...nd,
Who gave them strength through the whole day's length, to fight for their native land,
They are lying dead on the hillsides, they are lying dead on the plain,
And we have not fire to smite the lyre and sing them one brief strain.
Give, Thou, some seer the power to sing them in their might,
The men who feared the master's whip, but did not fear the fight;
That he may tell of their virtues as minstrels did of old,
Till the pride of face and the hate of race grow obso...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things