Famous Mainland Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ash Wednesday

...found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)


Cape Breton

...ird islands," Ciboux and Hertford, 
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand 
with their backs to the mainland 
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff's brown grass-frayed edge, 
while the few sheep pastured there go "Baaa, baaa." 
(Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede 
and fall over into the sea or onto the rocks.) 
The silken water is weaving and weaving, 
disappearing under the mist equally in all directions, 
lifted and penetrated now and ...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

...hem bears
The quickening word, the influence magical.
The Islands have received it, marble-tall;
The long shores of the mainland. Something fills
The warm Euboean combes, the sacred hills
Of Aulis and of Argos. Still they move
Touching the City walls, the Temple grove,
Till, far upon the horizon-glint, a gleam
Of light, of trembling light, revealed they seem
Turned to a cloud, but to a cloud that shines,
And everywhere as they pass, the Vines! The Vines!
The Vines, the conque...Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire

Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon

...Here in the midnight, where the dark mainland and island
Shadows mingle in shadow deeper, profounder,
Sing we the hymns of the churches, while the dead water
Whispers before us.

Thunder is travelling slow on the path of the lightning;
One after one the stars and the beaming planets
Look serene in the lake from the edge of the storm-cloud,
Then have they vanished.

While our canoe, that floats ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Duncan Campbell

Starlight

...
     My room is poor and bare:
   But all the silver sea is ours,
     And all the scented air

   Blown from the mainland, where there grows
     Th' "Intriguer of the Night,"
   The flower that you have named Tube rose,
     Sweet scented, slim, and white.

   The flower that, when the air is still
     And no land breezes blow,
   From its pale petals can distil
     A phosphorescent glow.

   I see your ship at anchor ride;
     Her "captive lightning" sh...Read more of this...
by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory


Sudden Things

...and in the tennis courts. I worried how, after the storm, we would put the animals back in their cages, and get to the mainland....Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

The Lady of the Lake

...To greet thee in the lonely isle.'
     IV.

     As died the sounds upon the tide,
     The shallop reached the mainland side,
     And ere his onward way he took,
     The stranger cast a lingering look,
     Where easily his eye might reach
     The Harper on the islet beach,
     Reclined against a blighted tree,
     As wasted, gray, and worn as he.
     To minstrel meditation given,
     His reverend brow was raised to heaven,
     As from the rising sun...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

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