Famous Ledges Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ars Poetica

by Archibald MacLeish
 A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- 

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

 *

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind...Read more of this...

Come down O Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 5 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; 
And come, for Love is of the valley,...Read more of this...

The Princess: A Medley: Come down O Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley,...Read more of this...

Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are...Read more of this...

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M

by Amy Lowell
 They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another.
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.
Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear...Read more of this...

The Mermaid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I

Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?

II

I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,
'Who is it loves me? who loves not me?'
I...Read more of this...

Intention To Escape From Him

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Edna St. Vincent Millay - Intention To Escape From Him 

I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every songbird, not only in
America but wherever they sing.
(Shun meditation, though; invite the controversial:
Is the world flat? Do bats eat cats?) By digging hard I might
deflect...Read more of this...

Lukannon

by Rudyard Kipling
 I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers' song -- 
The beaches of Lukannon -- two million voices strong!


The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,
The song...Read more of this...

The Map

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?

The shadow of...Read more of this...

Come down O Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; 
And come, for Love is of the valley,...Read more of this...

An Edwardian Sunday Broomhill Sheffield

by John Betjeman
 High dormers are rising
So sharp and surprising,
And ponticum edges
The driveways of gravel;
Stone houses from ledges
Look down on ravines.
The vision can travel
From gable to gable,
Italianate mansion
And turretted stable,
A sylvan expansion
So varied and jolly
Where laurel and holly
Commingle their greens.

Serene on a Sunday
The sun glitters hotly
O'er mills that on Monday
With engines will hum.
By tramway excursion
To Dore and to Totley
In search of diversion
The...Read more of this...

Night and Day

by Sidney Lanier
 When the golden day is done, 
Through the closing portal, 
Child and garden, Flower and sun, 
Vanish all things mortal. 

As the blinding shadows fall 
As the rays diminish, 
Under evening's cloak they all 
Roll away and vanish. 

Garden darkened, daisy shut, 
Child in bed, they slumber-- 
Glow-worm in the hallway rut, 
Mice among the lumber. 

In the darkness...Read more of this...

Inland

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats...Read more of this...

Drunk

by D. H. Lawrence
 Too far away, oh love, I know, 
To save me from this haunted road, 
Whose lofty roses break and blow 
On a night-sky bent with a load 

Of lights: each solitary rose, 
Each arc-lamp golden does expose 
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows 
Night blenched with a thousand snows. 

Of hawthorn and of lilac trees, 
White lilac; shows...Read more of this...

The way Hope builds his House

by Emily Dickinson
 The way Hope builds his House
It is not with a sill --
Nor Rafter -- has that Edifice
But only Pinnacle --

Abode in as supreme
This superficies
As if it were of Ledges smit
Or mortised with the Laws --...Read more of this...

Seaweed

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
WHEN descends on the Atlantic 
The gigantic 
Storm-wind of the equinox  
Landward in his wrath he scourges 
The toiling surges 5 
Laden with seaweed from the rocks: 

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges 
Of sunken ledges  
In some far-off bright Azore; 
From Bahama and the dashing 10 
Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador; 

From the tumbling surf that buries 
The...Read more of this...

The Blue Mountains

by Henry Lawson
 Above the ashes straight and tall, 
Through ferns with moisture dripping, 
I climb beneath the sandstone wall, 
My feet on mosses slipping. 

Like ramparts round the valley's edge 
The tinted cliffs are standing, 
With many a broken wall and ledge, 
And many a rocky landing. 

And round about their rugged feet 
Deep ferny dells are hidden 
In shadowed depths,...Read more of this...

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