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Famous Limestone Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Frost, Robert
...en sky
And golden seems the sandy plain.
No habitation meets the eye
Unless in the horizon rim,
Some halfway up the limestone wall,
That spot of black is not a stain
Or shadow, but a cavern hole,
Where someone used to climb and crawl
To rest from his besetting fears.
I see the callus on his soul
The disappearing last of him
And of his race starvation slim,
Oh years ago -- ten thousand years....Read more of this...



by Collins, Billy
...times of trains,
and now I can hardly speak or write English.

I have made important pronouncements
in this remote limestone valley
with its trickle of a river,
stating that it seems hotter
today even than it was yesterday
and that swimming is very good for you,
very beneficial, you might say.
I also posed burning questions
about the hours of the archaeological museum
and the location of the local necropolis.

But now I am alone in the evening light
which has sof...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ntains, or by the river-banks—men around feeling
 the
 melt
 with huge crowbars—lumps of ore, the due combining of ore, limestone, coal—the
 blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at
 last—the
 rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean-shaped T-rail for railroads;

Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and
 factories;
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or win...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...oblong of moon mist.

Out from the window … prairielands.
Moon mist whitens a golf ground.
Whiter yet is a limestone quarry.
The crickets keep on chirring.

Switch engines of the Great Western
Sidetrack box cars, make up trains
For Weehawken, Oskaloosa, Saskatchewan;
The cattle, the coal, the corn, must go
In the night … on the prairielands.

Chuff-chuff go the pulses.
They beat in the cool of the night time.
Chuff-chuff and chuff-chuff…
These...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...uices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they are I never saw.

I have seen three White Horse taverns,
One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania,
One in a timber-hid road of Wisconsin.

I bought cheese and crackers
Between sun showers in a place called White Pigeon
Ne...Read more of this...



by Lee, Laurie
...ranched grass,
and as they go their wandering tongues embrace
the vacant summer mirrored in their eyes.

Led to the limestone shadows of a barn
they snuff their past embalmed in the hay,
while her cool hand, cupped to the udder's fount,
distils the brimming harvest of their day.

Look what a cloudy cream the earth gives out,
fat juice of buttercups and meadow-rye;
the girl dreams milk within her body's field
and hears, far off, her muted children cry....Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...to soft light that rocks 
to and fro, under the domed ceiling, 
across and across from pale 
earthcolored walls of bare limestone. 

Covertly the hands of a great clock 
go round and round! Were they to 
move quickly and at once the whole 
secret would be out and the shuffling 
of all ants be done forever. 

A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing 
out at a high window, moves by the clock: 
disaccordant hands straining out from 
a center: inevitable postures infinite...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...and began to pour water
On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter,
Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in,
And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood
Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them...
When I came back from Joliet
There was a new court house with a dome.
For I was punished like all who destroy
The past for the sake of the future....Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...ere that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods. 

Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing--then blotting from our sight!--
Halt--through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear. 

Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony forest-way.
At last the encircling trees retire;
Look! through the showery twilight grey
What po...Read more of this...

by Amichai, Yehuda
...ils, throw gravel,
Justice or injustice from the quarries of Migdal Tsedek,
Throw soft stones, throw sweet clods,
Throw limestone, throw clay,
Throw sand of the seashore,
Throw dust of the desert, throw rust,
Throw soil, throw wind,
Throw air, throw nothing
Until your hands are weary
And the war is weary
And even peace will be weary and will be....Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...rry oaths they helped me down 
The stony wood path to the town. 

The moonlight shone on Cabbage Walk, 
It made the limestone look like chalk. 
It was too late for any people, 
Twelve struck as we went by the steeple. 
A dog barked, and an owl was calling, 
The squire's brook was still a-falling, 
The carved heads on the church looked down 
On "Russell, Blacksmith of this Town," 
And all the graves of all the ghosts 
Who rise on Christmas Eve in hosts 
To dance an...Read more of this...

by Horace,
...own breed,
       My Tyndaris, while Ustica's dell
     Is vocal with the silvan reed,
       And music thrills the limestone fell.
     Heaven is my guardian; Heaven approves
       A blameless life, by song made sweet;
     Come hither, and the fields and groves
       Their horn shall empty at your feet.
     Here, shelter'd by a friendly tree,
       In Teian measures you shall sing
     Bright Circe and Penelope,
       Love-smitten both by one sharp sting.
...Read more of this...

by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...un-rise was a sullen, sluggish lamp; 
I was dozing in the gateway at Arbuthnot's bound'ry fence, 
I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp. 
We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze, 
And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth; 
To southward lay "Katawa", with the sand peaks all ablaze, 
And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. 
Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, 
And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff; ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...or there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

 Cast a cold eye
 On life, on death.
 Horseman, pass by!...Read more of this...

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