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Famous Lifting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Moody, William Vaughn
...pale, to Maine and Idaho 
Shouted a burning word. 
Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, 
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, 
East, west, and south, and north, 
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young 
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, 
By the unforgotten names of eager boys 
Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung 
With the old mystic joys 
And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, 
But that the heart of yout...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...d with beechen wreath,
Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth
Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud
Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,
Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd
Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar
The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:
Who stood therein did seem of great renown
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Shewing like Ganymede to...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...nce, and remember'd one dark hour
Here in this wood, when like a wounded life
He crept into the shadow: at last he said
Lifting his honest forehead `Listen, Annie,
How merry they are down yonder in the wood.'
`Tired, Annie?' for she did not speak a word.
`Tired?' but her face had fall'n upon her hands;
At which, as with a kind anger in him,
`The ship was lost' he said `the ship was lost!
No more of that! why should you kill yourself
And make them orphans quite?' And A...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr.
Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.

These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and on shipboard.
Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish,
"We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand-Pre!"
Loud on...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
... Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man ...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...houses' 
 rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with 
 gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet- 
 ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station 
 solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, 
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in 
 dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and 
 picked themselves up out of basements hung 
 over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third 
 Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy- 
 ment offices, 
who walked all night ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...hour." 
 As doves, desirous of their nest at night, 
 Cleave through the dusk with swift and open flight 
 Of level-lifting wings, that love makes light, 
 Will-borne, so downward through the murky air 
 Came those sad spirits, that not deep Hell's despair 
 Could sunder, parting from the faithless band 
 That Dido led, and with one voice, as though 
 One soul controlled them, spake, 

 "O Animate! 
 Who comest through the black malignant air, 
 Benign among us who this e...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t might be crime, 
Himself unheeded watch'd the stranger's course, 
Who reach'd the river, bounded from his horse, 
And lifting thence the burthen which he bore, 
Heaved up the bank, and dash'd it from the shore, [3] 
Then paused, and look'd, and turn'd, and seem'd to watch, 
And still another hurried glance would snatch, 
And follow with his step the stream that flow'd, 
As if even yet too much its surface show'd: 
At once he started, stoop'd, around him strewn 
The winter f...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...s dells,
Roys, and Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here now shall nature crowd her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,
And, lifting man to the blue deep
Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by th...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...s like. A peculiar slant
Of memory that intrudes on the dreaming model
In the silence of the studio as he considers
Lifting the pencil to the self-portrait.
How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand,
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you. Those voices in the dusk
Have told you all and still the tale goes on
In the form of memories d...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...?”

Meserve seemed to heed nothing but the lamp
Or something not far from it on the table.
By straightening out and lifting a forefinger,
He pointed with his hand from where it lay
Like a white crumpled spider on his knee:
“That leaf there in your open book! It moved
Just then, I thought. It’s stood erect like that,
There on the table, ever since I came,
Trying to turn itself backward or forward,
I’ve had my eye on it to make out which;
If forward, then it’s with a fr...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...w, and let her heart 
Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our yougest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
Now bathed in the unfading green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 
Or from the shade of saintly palms, 
Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still? 
With me one little year ago: -- 
The chill weight of the winter snow 
For months upon her grave has lain; 
...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...th frown or smile,
Whether at feast or fight was he,
He heard the noise of a nameless sea
On an undiscovered isle.

Lifting the great green ivy
And the great spear lowering,
One said, "I am Alfred of Wessex,
And I am a conquered king."

And the man of the cave made answer,
And his eyes were stars of scorn,
"And better kings were conquered
Or ever your sires were born.

"What goddess was your mother,
What fay your breed begot,
That you should not die with Uther
And...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...re shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around by lifting winds forgot 
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-f...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...g
Music. Laughing, sobbing,
Feet gliding after sliding feet;
His -- hers --
The ballroom blurs --
She feels the air
Lifting her hair,
And the lapping of water on the stone stair.
He is there! He is there!
Twang harps, and squeal, you thin violins,
That the dancers may dance, and never discover
The old stone stair leading down to the river
With the chestnut-tree branches hanging over
Her and her lover.
Theodore, still her lover!
The evening passed like this, in a h...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...'s begetting,
(Not that I meant to be obtrusive)
She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,
By a single rapid finger's lifting,
And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,
And a little shake of the head, refused me,---
I say, although she never used me,
Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her,
And I ventured to remind her,
I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
---Something to the effect that I was in readiness
Whenever God shou...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...thought I had thought of old, 
And every evil deed I ever did, 
Awoke and cried, "This Quest is not for thee." 
And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself 
Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns, 
And I was thirsty even unto death; 
And I, too, cried, "This Quest is not for thee." 

`And on I rode, and when I thought my thirst 
Would slay me, saw deep lawns, and then a brook, 
With one sharp rapid, where the crisping white 
Played ever back upon the sloping wave, 
And ...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...lame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.

Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,—we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the r...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...his wilted shack
With meekest prayer to the Almighty.
The grove was turning slowly black;
Above the lake a mist was lifting;
Through milky clouds across the sky
The ruddy moon was softly drifting,
When water drew the friar's eye...

He's looking puzzled, full of trouble,
Of fear he cannot quite explain,
He sees the waves begin to bubble
And suddenly grow calm again.
Then -- white as first snow in the highlands,
Light-footed as nocturnal shade,
There comes ...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...his foes;
When ev'n his own familiar friends,
Intent upon their private ends,
Like renegadoes now he feels,
Against him lifting up their heels.
The Dean did by his pen defeat
An infamous destructive cheat;
Taught fools their int'rest how to know,
And gave them arms to ward the blow.
Envy has owned it was his doing,
To save that hapless land from ruin;
While they who at the steerage stood,
And reaped the profit, sought his blood.
To save them from their evil fate,
...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things