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Famous Precipices Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...d be thankit that we’ve tint the gate o’t!
Gaunt, ghastly, ghaist-alluring edifices,
Hanging with threat’ning jut, like precipices;
O’er-arching, mouldy, gloom-inspiring coves,
Supporting roofs, fantastic, stony groves;
Windows and doors in nameless sculptures drest
With order, symmetry, or taste unblest;
Forms like some bedlam Statuary’s dream,
The craz’d creations of misguided whim;
Forms might be worshipp’d on the bended knee,
And still the second dread command be free;
Th...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January,
Roar'd as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,
Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory.
So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries
Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand,
Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously,
Then her pulses at the clamoring of...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while th...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...for a sail:
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail. 

There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch,
So still, the golden lizard on him paused,
A ph...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
 The forest looked a great gulf all around, 
 And on the rock of Corbus there were found 
 Secret and blood-stained precipices tall. 
 Duke Plato built the tower and banquet hall 
 Over great pits,—so was it Rumor said. 
 The flooring sounds 'neath Eviradnus' tread 
 Above abysses many. 
 "Page," said he, 
 "Come here, your eyes than mine can better see, 
 For sight is woman-like and shuns the old; 
 Ah! he can see enough, when years are told, 
 Who backwards loo...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor



...d 
By that day's grief and travel, evermore 
Seemed catching at a rootless thorn, and then 
Went slipping down horrible precipices, 
And strongly striking out her limbs awoke; 
Then thought she heard the wild Earl at the door, 
With all his rout of random followers, 
Sound on a dreadful trumpet, summoning her; 
Which was the red cock shouting to the light, 
As the gray dawn stole o'er the dewy world, 
And glimmered on his armour in the room. 
And once again she rose to look a...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...re's monuments and spires, also ruins,
Which serve for a safe retreat from the wild bruins. 

And there's icy crags and precipices, also beautiful waterfalls,
And as the stranger gazes thereon, his heart it appals
With a mixture of wonder, fear, and delight,
Till at last he exclaims, Oh! what a wonderful sight! 

The icy mountains they're higher than a brig's topmast,
And the stranger in amazement stands aghast
As he beholds the water flowing off the melted ice
Adown the moun...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...ay up from the sky-wall I saw the morning sun,
And heard the heaven's cock crowing in the mid-air.
Now among a thousand precipices my way wound round and round;
Flowers choked the path; I leaned against a rock; I swooned.

Roaring bears and howling dragons roused me—
Oh, the clamorous waters of the rapids!
I trembled in the deep forest, and shuddered at the overhanging crags, 
one heaped upon another.
Clouds on clouds gathered above, threatening rain;
The waters gushed below,...Read more of this...
by Po, Li
...nk.
We gain the top. a boundless plain
Spreads through the shadow of the night,
And onward, onward, onward, seems,
Like precipices in our dreams, 
To stretch beyond the sight;
And here and there a speck of white,
Or scattered spot of dusky green, 
In masses broke into the light, 
As rose the moon upon my right:
But nought distinctly seen
In the dim waste would indicate
The omen of a cottage gate;
No twinkling taper from afar
Stood like a hospitable star;'
Not even an ignis-fa...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...e it--o'er the flood of cloud, 
Which sunrise from its eastern caves
Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,
Hung with its precipices proud--
From that gray stone where first we met)
There--now who knows the dead feel nought?--
Should be my grave; for he who yet
Is my soul's soul once said: ''T were sweet
'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,
And winds, and lulling snows that beat
With their soft flakes the mountain wide, 
Where weary meteor lamps repose,
And languid storms their ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...s ken,
A heap of fluttering feathers--never more
Shall the lake glass her, flying over it;
Never the black and dripping precipices
Echo her stormy scream as she sails by--
As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, 
So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood
Over his dying son, and knew him not. 

But, with a cold, incredulous voice, he said:--
"What prate is this of fathers and revenge?
The mighty Rustum never had a son."

And, with a failing voice, Sohrab replied:--
...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...Sun, 
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound' 
Said Ida; 'let us down and rest;' and we 
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices, 
By every coppice-feathered chasm and cleft, 
Dropt through the ambrosial gloom to where below 
No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent 
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she leaned on me, 
Descending; once or twice she lent her hand, 
And blissful palpitations in the blood, 
Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. 

But when we planted level fe...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...s, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed-in with rifts and precipices grey,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

And, whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge foamed like a wounded thing
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightningflash
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke-...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...for thee a spumy tent,
 And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
 And precipices show untrodden green,
There is a budding morrow in midnight,
 There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell....Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...ut Grashoppers are Gyants there:
They, in there squeking Laugh, contemn
Us as we walk more low then them:
And, from the Precipices tall
Of the green spir's, to us do call.

To see Men through this Meadow Dive,
We wonder how they rise alive.
As, under Water, none does know
Whether he fall through it or go.
But, as the Marriners that sound,
And show upon their Lead the Ground,
They bring up Flow'rs so to be seen,
And prove they've at the Bottom been.

No Scene that turns with E...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...overhanging the waters
of the god’s sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.

I climb airy peaks, precipices,
following the wind in the pines,
and the crowd of them, lightly accompanying me,
fly off into the air,
wave of love and sound,
and you take me to you,
you from whom I wrongly drew
evil, and fear of silence, shadow,
- refuge of sweetness, once certain -
and death of spirit.

It is unknown to you, that country
where each day I go down deep
to nouri...Read more of this...
by Quasimodo, Salvatore

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things