Famous Shelving Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Voices in the Dream (Ryton Firs)

by Lascelles Abercrombie
Follow my heart, my dancing feet,
Dance as blithe as my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.

I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths...Read more of this...

Everything In Its Place

by Barry Tebb
 Desks are straining on all fours, flanks

Heaving to hurl the hunched riders

Down crack and cranny, buck

Finger-snapping lids, consume

Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth.



The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me,

Making my neck prick as it scatters dust

Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clich?,

Anoints its carved channels and cavities

With infinite black ooze and sap.



And I don’t trust that corner...Read more of this...

Thus the Mayne glideth

by Robert Browning
 THUS the Mayne glideth 
Where my Love abideth; 
Sleep 's no softer: it proceeds 
On through lawns, on through meads, 
On and on, whate'er befall, 
Meandering and musical, 
Though the niggard pasturage 
Bears not on its shaven ledge 
Aught but weeds and waving grasses 
To view the river as it passes, 
Save here and there a scanty patch 
Of...Read more of this...

Dream Song 73: Karensui Ryoan-ji

by John Berryman
 The taxi makes the vegetables fly.
'Dozo kudasai,' I have him wait.
Past the bright lake up into the temple,
shoes off, and
my right leg swings me left.
I do survive beside the garden I

came seven thousand mile the other way
supplied of energies all to see, to see.
Differ them photographs, plans lie:
how big it is!
austere a sea rectangular of sand by the oiled...Read more of this...

The Question

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There...Read more of this...

A Dream of the Unknown

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I DREAM'D that as I wander'd by the way 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kiss'd it and...Read more of this...

Ryton Firs

by Lascelles Abercrombie
The Dream
All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out — let them make uproar loud as drums — 
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.

There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple...Read more of this...

The Sea-Child

by Eliza Cook
 HE crawls to the cliff and plays on a brink 
Where every eye but his own would shrink; 
No music he hears but the billow’s noise, 
And shells and weeds are his only toys. 
No lullaby can the mother find
To sing him to rest like the moaning wind; 
And the louder it wails and the fiercer it sweeps, 
The...Read more of this...

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