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Famous Rim Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...ward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's g...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...e seawave as I explored the green

Springs of my birth, in the bare hedges

Of Knostrop where I began this present

Pilgrimage by Joyce Summersgill’s side

As she ran from the shouting man and in

Disarray began this never-ending flight

And still at fifty-four I run, I know not

Why or where and death cannot be far

From this half-open door.



For luck I count each cobble, there’s enough

Beneath the ginnel to take a breath

And that’s the luck I need to live on.

I...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,

XII.

That crimson the creeper's leaf across
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,

XIII.

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening---nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,
Where a freaked fawn-coloured flaky crew
Of toadstool...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...g merchants made his way
Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day

Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud,
Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet
Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd
Of busy priests, and from some dark retreat
Watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring
The firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling

The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang
His studded crook against the temple wall
To Her who ...Read more of this...

by Walker, Alice
...r>
You, standing in the grave
With me. Stop it!


Each one must pull one.


Look, I, temporarily on the rim
Of the grave,
Have grasped my mother's hand
My father's leg.
There is the hand of Robeson
Langston's thigh
Zora's arm and hair
Your grandfather's lifted chin
And lynched woman's elbow
What you've tried to forget
Of your grandmother's frown.


Each one, pull one back into the sun


We who have stood over
So many graves
Know that ...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...' nodding carillons
Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,
That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berr...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ite of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that of India; 
I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.

I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human forms; 
I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth—oracles, sacrificers, brahmins,
 sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters; 
I see where druids walked the groves of Mona—I see the mistletoe and vervain; 
I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...eward bound, are we. 
Before, behind, and all around, 
Floats and swings the horizon's bound, 
Seems at its distant rim to rise 
And climb the crystal wall of the skies, 
And then again to turn and sink, 
As if we could slide from its outer brink. 
Ah! it is not the sea, 
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, 
But ourselves 
That rock and rise 
With endless and uneasy motion, 
Now touching the very skies, 
Now sinking into the depths of ocean. 
Ah! if our soul...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...neath vaults of gold on shining floors, 
 Glanced at the throne deserted, stalked from hall 
 To hall—green, yellow, crimson—empty all! 
 Rich couches void, soft seats unoccupied! 
 And as he walked he looked from side to side 
 To find some pleasant nook for his repast, 
 Since appetite was come to munch at last 
 The princely morsel!—Ah! what sight astounds 
 That grisly lounger? 
 
 In the palace grounds 
 An alcove on a garden gives, and there 
 A tiny thing—f...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...r a subtle memory
Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun,
When April laughed between her tears to see
The early primrose with shy footsteps run
From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold,
Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with shimmering
gold.

Nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet
As thou thyself, my soul's idolatry!
And when thou art a-wearied at thy feet
Shall oxlips weave their brightest tapestry,
For thee the woodbine shall forget...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...ith plenty;
Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim
Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,
A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored to the world
With cables of rain.

Acres of gold wheat
Stir in the sunshine,
Rounding the hill-top,
Crested with plenty,
Filling the valley,
Brimmed with abundance,
Wind in the wheat-field
Eddying and settli...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...nds on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.


VI.

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white...Read more of this...

by Stephens, James
...er again to Eden would He haste 
At cool of evening, when the sun had paced 
Back from the tree-tops, slanting from the rim 
Of a low cloud, what time the twilight dim 
Knit tree to tree in shadow, gathering slow 
Till all had met and vanished in the flow 
Of dusky silence, and a brooding star 
Stared at the growing darkness from afar, 
While haply now and then some nested bird 
Would lift upon the air a sleepy word 
Most musical, or swing its airy bed 
To the high moon that ...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...the twain were casting dice;
'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip--
...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...1 Adios, Carenage

In idle August, while the sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Carribean, I blow out the light
by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion
to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight.
Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pa...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ut his mind
Wandered, and he would wake to find
His hand suspended, his eyes grown dim,
And nothing advanced beyond the rim
Of his dreaming. The Cardinal sent to pay
For his watch, which had purchased so fine a day.
But Paul could hardly touch the gold,
It seemed the price of his Shadow, sold.
With the first twilight he struck a match
And watched the little blue stars hatch
Into an egg of perfect flame.
He lit his candle, and almost in shame
At his eagerness, ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...k and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him. 

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude: 

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,
And he was going out to dine. 

"To dine!" she sneered in acid tone.
"To bend thy being to a bone...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...e great trackway to the sea, dim, dim, 
Already gone before the stars were gone. 
I saw her at the sea-line's smoky rim 
Grow swiftly vaguer as they towed her on. 

Soon even her masts were hidden in the haze 
Beyond the city; she was on her course 
To trample billows for a hundred days; 
That afternoon the northerner gathered force, 

Blowing a small snow from a point of east. 
"Oh, fair for her," we said, "to take her south." 
And in our spirits, as the wind...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...spot.—
Lives there a novel-reader who has not 
At some time wept for those delightful girls, 
Daughters of dukes, prime ministers and earls, 
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques, 
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks 
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those 
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose? 
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill 
Loving against her noble parent's will 
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm 
Feels her hand kissed behind a po...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...k sky began to get lighter,
Someone called from the bridge to us,
As with both hands I was clutching
On my chest the rim of the cross.

On your arms, as I lost all my power,
Like a little girl you carried me,
That on deck of a yacht alabaster
Incorruptible day's light we'd meet.



x x x

When with a strong but tired hand
In dreary capital of nation
Upon the whiteness of the page
I did record my recantations,

And wind into the window round
Poure...Read more of this...

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