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Famous Narrows Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Berryman, John
...easing
menace, the panes shake
where Lie-by-the-fire is waiting for his cream.

A tiger by a torrent in rain, wind,
narrows fiend's eyes for grief
in an old ink-on-silk,
reminding me of Delphi, and,
friend Quo, once was safe
imagination as sweet milk.

Let all the flowers wither like a party.
And now you have abandoned
own your young & old, the oldest, people
to a solitudinem of mournful communes,
mournful communes.
Status, Status, come home....Read more of this...



by Dyke, Henry Van
...s might have built 
Their fortress; and by rolling hills adorned 
With forests rich in timber for great ships; 
Through narrows where the mountains shut us in 
With frowning cliffs that seemed to bar the stream;
And then through open reaches where the banks 
Sloped to the water gently, with their fields 
Of corn and lentils smiling in the sun.
Ten days we voyaged through that placid land, 
Until we came to shoals, and sent a boat 
Upstream to find, -- what I already knew,...Read more of this...

by O'Hara, Frank
...ce while the pain endures:
departures absences.

And you are still on the dock 
the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows 
At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George
Who is mopping the stage up 
While two girls cry in the last row.

I think they got laid last night.
But who didn't? it was a spring night.
Probably George did too.

And now the ship has gone
beyond come sheets windows streets telephones and noises:
to where I cannot go 
not...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...Make bright the arrows
Gather the shields:
Conquest narrows
The peaceful fields. 

Stock well the quiver
With arrows bright:
The bowman feared
Need never fight. 

Make bright the arrows,
O peaceful and wise!
Gather the shields
Against surprise....Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides
We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain
Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the
 year; I noticed most an old shepherd,
Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed
 girl 
Who cherished what seemed a doll, wrapping it against the sea-win...Read more of this...



by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...vain excess,
Teach us by such soul-haunting things
Beauty in loneliness.

The minds of men grow numb, their vision narrows,
The clogs of Empire and the dust of ages,
The lust of power that fogs the fairest pages,
Of the romance that eager life would write,
These war on Beauty with their spears and arrows.
But still is Beauty and of constant power;
Even in the whirl of Time's most sordid hour,
Banished from the great highways,
Afflighted by the tramp of insolent feet,...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...a shifting world,
Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,
Or serpentine, or driving arrows,
Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
There slipping wave and shore are one,
And weed and mud. No ray of sun,
But glow to glow fades down the deep
(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);
Shaken translucency illumes
The hyaline of drifting glooms;
The strange soft-handed depth subdues
Drowned colour there, but black to hues,
As death to living, decomposes— 
Red darkness of the hear...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...ies
Seeing how strangely in the moon he lies? . . .
The room grows dark once more,
The crack of white light narrows around the door,
And all is silent, except a slow complaining
Of flutes and violins, like music waning.

Take my hand, then, walk with me
By the slow soundless crashings of a sea . . .
Look, how white these shells are, on this sand!
Take my hand,
And watch the waves run inward from the sky
Line upon foaming line to plunge and die....Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the
 narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
 As far as Cho-fu-sa....Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...man's nature; shrewdly bringeth all 
Their inspiration of strange eagerness(
To a judgment bought by safe experience; 
Narrows desire into the scope of thought. 
But it is written in the heart of man, 
Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire. 
Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight 
To pore only within the candle-gleam 
Of conscious wit and reasonable brain; 
But search into the sacred darkness lying 
Outside thy knowledge of thyself, the vast 
Measureless ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...The sparkling stars gush forth in sudden blaze, 
 As twilight open flings the doors of night; 
 The fringe of carmine narrows in the west, 
 The rippling waves are tipped with silver light; 
 The bush, the path—all blend in one dull gray; 
 The doubtful traveller gropes his anxious way. 
 
 Oh, day! with toil, with wrong, with hatred rife; 
 Oh, blessed night! with sober calmness sweet, 
 The sad winds moaning through the ruined tower, 
 The age-worn hind, the sheep...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...u art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight

Keen as are the arrows 
Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air 
With thy voice is loud¡ª 
As, when night is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd. 

What thou art we know not; 
What is most like thee?¡ª 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 
Drops so bright to ...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...your praise, 
For never shall the clan 
Confine my singing to its ways 
Beyond the ways of man. 

No racial option narrows grief, 
Pain is not patriot, 
And sorrow plaits her dismal leaf 
For all as lief as not. 
With blind sheep groping every hill, 
Searching an oriflamme, 
How shall the shpherd heart then thrill 
To only the darker lamb?...Read more of this...

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