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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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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...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 and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city;
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.
I stand in the window and...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy



...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...
by Betjeman, John
...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 the winter leaves, 
Memory by memory the mind--

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

 *

A...Read more of this...
by MacLeish, Archibald
...dance thee down 
To find him in the valley; let the wild 
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 20 
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 
That like a broken purpose waste in air: 
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales 
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 25 
Arise to thee; the children call, and I 
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, 
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; 
My...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rrent dance thee down 
To find him in the valley; let the wild 
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 
That like a broken purpose waste in air: 
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales 
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 
Arise to thee; the children call, and I 
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, 
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; 
Myriads of ri...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...e nightly road above 
And returns again below. 

The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees 
 Has poised on each of its ledges 
An erect small girl looking down at me; 
White-night-gowned little chits I see, 
 And they peep at me over the edges 
Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call 
 Them down to my arms; 
"But, child, you're too small for me, too small 
 Your little charms." 

White little sheaves of night-gowned maids, 
 Some other will thresh you out! 
An...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.
...d
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 at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death ...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...through which there trickles one clear
narrow stream, following a course henceforth nefast—

Dig, dig; and if I come to ledges, blast.
...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...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 of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame -- 
The beaches of Lukannon...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...king. 

In the darkness shapes of things, 
Houses, trees and hedges, 
Clearer grow; and sparrow's wings 
Beat on window ledges. 

These shall wake the yawning maid; 
She the door shall open-- 
Finding dew on garden glade 
And the morning broken. 

There my garden grows again 
Green and rosy painted, 
As at eve behind the pane 
From my eyes it fainted. 

Just as it was shut away, 
Toy-like, in the even, 
Here I see it glow with day 
Under glowing heaven. 

Every path and every...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...e 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 Orkneyan skerries  
Answering the hoarse Hebrides; 15 
And from wrecks of ships and drifting 
Spars uplifting 
On the desolate rainy seas;¡ª 

Ever drifting drifting drifting 
On the shifting...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...of snow-white silence, 
The rocks aflame with ice, the rose-blue sky . . . 
Ghost-like, a cloud descends from twinkling ledges, 
To nod before the dwindling sun and die.

'Something there is,' says Senlin, 'in that mountain, 
Something forgotten now, that once I knew . . .' 
We walk before a sun-tipped peak in silence, 
Our shadows descend before us, long and blue....Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...her, it shall be the spread of my own body,
 or any part of it. 

Translucent mould of me, it shall be you! 
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you. 

Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you! 
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strippings of my life. 

Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be you! 
My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.

Root of wash’d sweet flag! timorous pond-sni...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...lowed day comes o'er the place, 
And softens ragged edges; 
The rising moon's great placid face 
Looks gravely o'er the ledges....Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...e, chilled 
200 And lank, rising and slumping from a sea 
201 Of hardy foam, receding flatly, spread 
202 In endless ledges, glittering, submerged 
203 And cold in a boreal mistiness of the moon. 
204 The spring came there in clinking pannicles 
205 Of half-dissolving frost, the summer came, 
206 If ever, whisked and wet, not ripening, 
207 Before the winter's vacancy returned. 
208 The myrtle, if the myrtle ever bloomed, 
209 Was like a glacial pink upon the air. 
...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...nd 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 Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth
...t the sea.
But if any came near I would call and shriek,
And adown the steep like a wave I would leap
 From the diamond-ledges that jut from the dells;
For I would not be kiss'd by all who would list
Of the bold merry mermen under the sea.
They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me,
In the purple twilights under the sea;
But the king of them all would carry me,
Woo me, and win me, and marry me,
In the branching jaspers under the sea.
Then all the dry-pied things that be
In...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rrent dance thee down 
To find him in the valley; let the wild 
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 
That like a broken purpose waste in air: 
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales 
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 
Arise to thee; the children call, and I 
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, 
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; 
Myriads of ri...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets h...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...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...Read more of this...
by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things