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Famous Railings Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...os."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's writ...Read more of this...



by Wilmot, John
...saucy eloquence,
To chide at kings, and rail at men of sense;
Who from his pulpit vents more peevlsh lies,
More bitter railings, scandals, calumnies,
Than at a gossiping are thrown about
When the good wives get drunk, and then fall out.
None of that sensual tribe, whose talents lie
In avarice, pride, sloth, and gluttony.
Who hunt good livings; but abhor good lives,
Whose lust exalted, to that height arrives,
They act adultery with their own wives.
And ere a score...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...olds the Laureate’s Crown

With sceptre and with gown,

The carved heads have grown

On grey Sheldonian stone.

The railings on the ramparts

On York Wall held my breath

As I walked my ten year old

Spirit in rain and sun, wind

Willing me on while no one knew

Where I had gone.





13



With every car alarm

I hear the air raid

Siren’s song, Waterloo Road’s

Bomb hole big enough to hold

A bus that could not stop;

Maurice the butcher gave a

Crayoning book I fil...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...journey torn, Troy long gone, a blind memory

In Homer’s song: I sing of where I was born, war-torn,

Blitzed, the iron railings stripped, the munitions

Factory at Barnbow closed.





3



There is a photograph in the archives

Of the city museum marked ‘Shed, Falmouth

Place, 1937’; it is your street, Margaret,

The creosoted palings and cart turned on

Its end, the shafts raised like a memorial

Stone, our last memory gone.





4



For fish and chips

We went pa...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...nce on rendering
invisibles solid. What's
more frankly actual
than cement? Surfaced,

here, in pure decor:
even the railings
curlicued with rows
of identical whelks,

even the lampposts
and birdhouses,
and big encrusted urns
wagging with lunar flowers!

A little dizzy,
the world he's made,
and completely
unapologetic, high

on a hill in Dickeyville
so the wind whips
around like crazy.
A bit pigheaded,

yet full of love
for glitter qua glitter,
sheer materiality;
a bit...Read more of this...



by McGough, Roger
...ounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.

And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep out wolves and monsters?
Things that carry off and eat children?
Things you don't take sweets from?
Perhaps they're to stop us getting out
Running away from the lessins. Lessin.
What does a lessin look like?
Sounds small and slimy.
They keep them in the glassrooms.
Whole rooms made ...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...on your snowy horsemen, and the four-stringed hill,
Over the sea-gut loudening, sets a rock alive;
Hurdles and guns and railings, as the boulders heave,
Crack like a spring in vice, bone breaking April,
Spill the lank folly's hunter and the hard-held hope.

Down fall four padding weathers on the scarlet lands,
Stalking my children's faces with a tail of blood,
Time, in a rider rising, from the harnessed valley;
Hold hard, my country darlings, for a hawk descends,
Golden G...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...bitter tropics could be found.
Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk....Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...ill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kelsal Green and Highgate silent under s...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...flags of the sidewalk,
And his muffler and his coat-tails blown straight out behind him.
It bumped him against area railings,
And chuckled in his ear when he said "Ouch!"
Sometimes it lifted him clear off his little patting feet
And bore him in triumph over three grey flagstones and a quarter.
The moon dodged in and out of clouds, winking.
It was all very unpleasant for Mr. Spruggins,
And when the wind flung him hard against his own front door
It was a relief,...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...deep of a sea-blue noon
many women run in a man’s head,
phantom women leaping from a man’s forehead
 .. to the railings … into the sea … to the
 sea rim …
 .. a man’s mother … a man’s wife … other
 women …

I asked a sure-footed sailor how and he said:
 I have known many women but there is only one sea.
I saw the North Star once
and our old friend, The Big Dipper,
 only the sea between us:
 “Take away the sea
 and I lift The Dipper,
 swing the handle of i...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...tongues of snow
speak for the Holy Ghost;

the self-increasing silence 
of words dropped from a roof
points along iron railings,
direction, in not proof.

But best is this night surf
with slow scriptures of sand,
that sends, not quite a seraph,
but a late cormorant,

whose fading cry propels
through phosphorescent shoal
what, in my childhood gospels,
used to be called the Soul....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...at rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
 O there we cast the stout railings
 That stand around St. Paul's.

 See you the dimpled track that runs
 All hollow through the wheat?
 O that was where they hauled the guns
 That smote King Philip's fleet.

(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
S...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...
--Let me climb up, at least, 
up to the high balconies; 
Let me climb up! Let me, 
up to the green balconies. 
Railings of the moon 
through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up, 
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood. 
Leaving a trail of teardrops. 
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines 
struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green, 
green wind, green branches. ...Read more of this...

by Wilmot, John
...oquence, 
To chide at Kings, and raile at Men of sense. 
Who from his Pulpit, vents more peevish Lyes, 
More bitter railings, scandals, Calumnies, 
Than at a Gossipping, are thrown about, 
When the good Wives, get drunk, and then fall out. 
None of that sensual Tribe, whose Tallents lye, 
In Avarice, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony. 
Who hunt good Livings, but abhor good Lives, 
Whose Lust exalted, to that height arrives, 
They act Adultery with their own Wives. 
A...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...e brick faces and immaculate white-stone doorsteps;
And the gabled houses of the Dutch, with their high stoops and iron railings,
(I can see their little brass knobs shining in the morning sunlight);
And the solid houses of the descendants of the Puritans,
Fronting the street with their narrow doors and dormer-windows;
And the triple-galleried, many-pillared mansions of Charleston,
Standing sideways in their gardens full of roses and magnolias. 

Yes, they are all dear to...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...d me on the house of ghosts.
I flattened my feet on the pavement
To feel it solid under me;
I ran my hand along the railings
And shook them,
And pressed their pointed bars
Into my palms.
The hurt of it reassured me,
And I did it again and again
Until they were bruised.
When I woke in the night
I laughed to find them aching,
For only living flesh can suffer....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...For months my hand was sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she knew not of.

The hand had collapse,
a small wood pigeon
that had gone into seclusion.
I turn...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...not

signing it in his olden script:

 Meister aus Deutschland

•

In coldest Europe end of that war
frozen domes iron railings frozen stoves lit in the
 streets
memory banks of cold

the Nike of Samothrace
on a staircase wings in blazing
backdraft said to me
: : to everyone she met
 Displaced, amputated never discount me

Victory
 indented in disaster striding
 at the head of stairs

 for Tory Dent...Read more of this...

by Joseph, Jenny
...n on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But no...Read more of this...

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