Famous Ridges Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Man From Snowy River

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 There was movement at the station, for the word has passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses—he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard...Read more of this...

Sanctuary

by Elinor Wylie
 My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges....Read more of this...

Woak Hill

by William Barnes
 When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden
Green-ruddy in hedges,
Bezide the red doust o' the ridges,
A-dried at Woak Hill;

I packed up my goods, all a-sheenen
Wi' long years o' handlen,
On dousty red wheels ov a waggon,
To ride at Woak Hill.

The brown thatchen ruf o' the dwellen
I then wer a-leaven,
Had sheltered the sleek head o' Meary,
My bride at Woak Hill.

But now vor zome years,...Read more of this...

Eternity

by James Lee Jobe
  for C. G. Macdonald, 1956-2006


Charlie, sunrise is a three-legged mongrel dog,

going deaf, already blind in one eye,

answering to the unlikely name, 'Lucky.'


The sky, at gray-blue dawn, is a football field painted 

by smiling artists. Each artist has 3 arms, 3 hands, 3 legs.

One leg drags behind, leaving a trail, leaving a mark.


The future resembles a cloudy dream 

where...Read more of this...

Psalm 65 part 3

by Isaac Watts
 The blessings of the spring; or, God gives rain.
A Psalm for the husbandman.

Good is the Lord, the heav'nly King,
Who makes the earth his care;
Visits the pastures ev'ry spring,
And bids the grass appear.

The clouds, like rivers raised on high,
Pour out at thy command
Their wat'ry blessings from the sky,
To cheer the thirsty land.

The softened ridges of the field
Permit the corn to...Read more of this...

The Mountain

by Robert Frost
 The mountain held the town as in a shadow 
I saw so much before I slept there once: 
I noticed that I missed stars in the west, 
Where its black body cut into the sky. 
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall 
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. 
And yet between the town and...Read more of this...

The Song Of Old Joe Swallow

by Henry Lawson
 When I was up the country in the rough and early days, 
I used to work along ov Jimmy Nowlett's bullick-drays; 
Then the reelroad wasn't heered on, an' the bush was wild an' strange, 
An' we useter draw the timber from the saw-pits in the range -- 
Load provisions for the stations, an' we'd travel far and slow 
Through...Read more of this...

Woak Hill

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden
Green-ruddy in hedges,
Bezide the red doust o' the ridges,
A-dried at Woak Hill;

I packed up my goods, all a-sheenen
Wi' long years o' handlen,
On dousty red wheels ov a waggon,
To ride at Woak Hill.

The brown thatchen ruf o' the dwellen
I then wer a-leaven,
Had sheltered the sleek head o' Meary,
My bride at Woak Hill.

But now vor zome years,...Read more of this...

The Quest Eternal

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 O west of all that a man holds dear, on the edge of the Kingdom Come, 
Where carriage is far too high for beer, and the pubs keep only rum, 
On the sunburnt ways of the Outer Back, on the plains of the darkening scrub, 
I have followed the wandering teamster's track, and it always led to a pub....Read more of this...

Reedy River

by Henry Lawson
 Ten miles down Reedy River 
A pool of water lies, 
And all the year it mirrors 
The changes in the skies, 
And in that pool's broad bosom 
Is room for all the stars; 
Its bed of sand has drifted 
O'er countless rocky bars. 

Around the lower edges 
There waves a bed of reeds, 
Where water rats are hidden 
And...Read more of this...

Ascent To The Sierras

by Robinson Jeffers
 Beyond the great valley an odd instinctive rising
Begins to possess the ground, the flatness gathers 
 to little humps and
barrows, low aimless ridges,
A sudden violence of rock crowns them. The crowded 
 orchards end, they
have come to a stone knife;
The farms are finished; the sudden foot of the 
 slerra. Hill over hill,
snow-ridge beyond mountain gather
The blue air of...Read more of this...

Eurunderee

by Henry Lawson
 There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not, 
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot. 
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze 
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees, 
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange, 
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range. 

Still I see in my fancy...Read more of this...

Borderland

by Henry Lawson
 I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went -- 
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent; 
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track -- 
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back. 
Further out may be the pleasant scenes...Read more of this...

The Bush Girl

by Henry Lawson
 So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” 

Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn--- 

You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect 

That you were glad to be gone; 

You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her 

By the homestead receding from view, 

And you breathed with relief as you rounded...Read more of this...

Up The Country

by Henry Lawson
 I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went -- 
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent; 
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track, 
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back. 
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of...Read more of this...

The Lights of Cobb and Co

by Henry Lawson
 Fire lighted; on the table a meal for sleepy men; 

A lantern in the stable; a jingle now and then; 

The mail-coach looming darkly by light on moon and star; 

The growl of sleepy voices; a candle in the bar; 

A stumble in the passage of folk with wits abroad; 

A swear-word from a bedroom---the shout of "All aboard!"...Read more of this...

White Horses

by Rudyard Kipling
 Where run your colts at pasture?
 Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
 Or wove Sargasso weed;
By chartless reef and channel,
 Or crafty coastwise bars,
But most the ocean-meadows
 All purple to the stars!

Who holds the rein upon you?
 The latest gale let free.
What meat is in your mangers?
 The glut of all the sea.
'Twixt tide and...Read more of this...

Winter Seascape

by John Betjeman
 The sea runs back against itself
With scarcely time for breaking wave
To cannonade a slatey shelf
And thunder under in a cave.

Before the next can fully burst
The headwind, blowing harder still,
Smooths it to what it was at first -
A slowly rolling water-hill.

Against the breeze the breakers haste,
Against the tide their ridges run
And all the sea's a dappled waste
Criss-crossing underneath the sun.

Far...Read more of this...

The Wilderness

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes, 
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland 
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. 
There is nothing left but ashes...Read more of this...

Redbud Trail - Winter

by James Lee Jobe
 It??™s two muddy miles from Highway 20,
just past the north fork of Cache Creek,
across the broad meadow, through 
blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge,
and back down to the creek bank,
the crossing point, me striding with
mud caking my old hiking boots.



For a millennia the Miwok people walked 
these canyons and ridges. Pomo, too.
Gathering acorns to trade, the sweetest...Read more of this...

The Truce of the Bear

by Rudyard Kipling
 Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go
By the Pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in --
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless -- toothless, broken of speech,
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over...Read more of this...

The Brook

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I come from haunts of coot and hern, 
I make a sudden sally 
And sparkle out among the fern, 
To bicker down a valley. 

By thirty hills I hurry down, 
Or slip between the ridges, 
By twenty thorpes, a little town, 
And half a hundred bridges. 

Till last by Philip's farm I flow 
To join the brimming river, 
For...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Drover

by Henry Lawson
 Across the stony ridges,
Across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover,
Comes riding home again.
And well his stock-horse bears him,
And light of heart is he,
And stoutly his old pack-horse
Is trotting by his knee. 

Up Queensland way with cattle
He travelled regions vast;
And many months have vanished
Since home-folk saw him last.
He hums a song of someone
He hopes to marry soon;
And hobble-chains and...Read more of this...

The Pines

by Robert William Service
 We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;
The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines,
And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.

On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed;
We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the...Read more of this...

The Waving Of The Corn

by Sidney Lanier
 Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled
Thy plough to ring this solitary tree
With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field,
In cool green radius twice my length may be --
Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield,
To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me,
That here come oft together -- daily I,
Stretched prone in summer's mortal ecstasy,
Do stir with thanks to thee,...Read more of this...

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