Famous Shingle Poems by Famous Poets

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

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After Long Drought

...ion in the sky; 
After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes, 
The rain. It slashes leaves, and doubly drums 
On tin and shingle; beats and bends awry 
The flower heads; puddles dust, and with a sigh 
Like love sinks into grasses, where it hums 
As bees did once, among chrysanthemums 
And asters when the summer thought to die. 

The whole world dreamed of this, and has it now. 
Nor was the waking easy. The dull root 
Is jealous of its death; the sleepy brow 
Smiles in its slum...Read more of this...
by Van Doren, Mark


An Afternoon

...s he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.
The tide is going out across the shingle.
But it isn't that. No,
it's because at that moment she chooses
to walk into the room without any clothes on.
Drowsy, not even sure where she is
for a moment. She waves the hair from her forehead.
Sits on the toilet with her eyes closed,
head down. Legs sprawled. He sees her
through the doorway. Maybe
she's remembering what happened that morning.
For...Read more of this...
by Carver, Raymond

Baby's Seaside Grave

...re, frais gazon.") 
 
 {XXXVIII., 1840.} 


 Brown ivy old, green herbage new; 
 Soft seaweed stealing up the shingle; 
 An ancient chapel where a crew, 
 Ere sailing, in the prayer commingle. 
 A far-off forest's darkling frown, 
 Which makes the prudent start and tremble, 
 Whilst rotten nuts are rattling down, 
 And clouds in demon hordes assemble. 
 
 Land birds which twit the mews that scream 
 Round walls where lolls the languid lizard; 
 Brine-bubbl...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Carol of Occupations

...ne. 

House-building, measuring, sawing the boards; 
Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-dressing,
Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks by flaggers, 
The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln, 
Coal-mines, and all that is down there,—the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs,
 what
 meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through smutch’d faces, 
Iron-works, for...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Dawlish

...Bird-watching colonels on the old sea wall,
Down here at Dawlish where the slow trains crawl:
Low tide lifting, on a shingle shore,
Long-sunk islands from the sea once more:
Red cliffs rising where the wet sands run,
Gulls reflecting in the sharp spring sun;
Pink-washed plaster by a sheltered patch,
Ilex shadows upon velvet thatch:
What interiors those names suggest!
Queen of lodgings in the warm south-west.......Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John


Enoch Arden

...h'd a little garden square and wall'd:
And in it throve an ancient evergreen,
A yewtree, and all round it ran a walk
Of shingle, and a walk divided it:
But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole
Up by the wall, behind the yew; and thence
That which he better might have shunn'd, if griefs
Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw. 

For cups and silver on the burnish'd board
Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth:
And on the right hand of the hearth he saw
Philip, the sl...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Felixstowe or The Last of Her Order

...With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown
Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.
Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.

In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller
Than those of summer, all their cold unload
Full on the gimcrack attic of the villa
Whe...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John

Gareth And Lynette

...nd Kay 
Fell shoulder-slipt, and Gareth cried again, 
'Lead, and I follow,' and fast away she fled. 

But after sod and shingle ceased to fly 
Behind her, and the heart of her good horse 
Was nigh to burst with violence of the beat, 
Perforce she stayed, and overtaken spoke. 

'What doest thou, scullion, in my fellowship? 
Deem'st thou that I accept thee aught the more 
Or love thee better, that by some device 
Full cowardly, or by mere unhappiness, 
Thou hast overthrown and ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Hemlock and Cedar

...THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs … near the shingle mill … winter morning.
Falling of a dry leaf might be heard … circular steel tears through a log.
Slope of woodland … brown … soft … tinge of blue such as pansy eyes.
Farther, field fires … funnel of yellow smoke … spellings of other yellow in corn stubble.
Bobsled on a down-hill road … February snow mud … horses steaming … Oscar the driver sings rag...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Knucks

...IN Abraham Lincoln’s city,
Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories
From Tallahassee to the Yukon,
The place now where the shaft of his tomb
Points white against the blue prairie dome,
In Abraham Lincoln’s city … I saw knucks
In the window of Mister Fischman’s second-hand store
On Second Street.

I went in and asked, “How much...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Kotri, by the River

...he river, maybe I too shall sleep
   The sleep that lasts for ever, too deep for dreams; too deep.
   Maybe among the shingle and sand of floods to be
   Her dust and mine may mingle and float away to sea.

   Ah Kotri, by the river, when evening's sun is low,
   Your faint reflections quiver, your golden ripples glow.
   You knew, oh Kotri river, that love which could not last.
   For me your palms still shiver with passions of the past....Read more of this...
by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory

Off the Ground

...Down where the mermaids 
Finned and fair, 
Sleek with their combs 
Their yellow hair. . . . 
Bates and Giles -- 
On the shingle sat, 
Gazing at Turvey's 
Floating hat. 
But never a ripple 
Nor bubble told 
Where he was supping 
Off plates of gold. 
Never an echo 
Rilled through the sea 
Of the feasting and dancing 
And minstrelsy. 
They called -- called -- called; 
Came no reply: 
Nought but the ripples' 
Sandy sigh. 
Then glum and silent 
They sat instead, 
Vacantly brooding...Read more of this...
by de la Mare, Walter

On the Beach at Fontana

...Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single
Slimesilvered stone.

From whining wind and colder
Grey sea I wrap him warm
And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder
And boyish arm.

Around us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending 
Ache of love!...Read more of this...
by Joyce, James

Peter Anderson And Co

...He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago, 
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.', 
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood -- 
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good. 
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had -- 
He was fond of beer and leisure -- and the Co. was just as bad. 
It was limited in number to a unit, was the Co. -- 
'Twas a bos...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

Places and Men

...In Sussex here, by shingle and by sand, 
Flat fields and farmsteads in their wind-blown trees, 
The shallow tide-wave courses to the land, 
And all along the down a fringe one sees 
Of ducal woods. That 'dim discovered spire' 
Is Chichester, where Collins felt a fire 
Touch his sad lips; thatched Felpham roofs are these, 
Where happy Blake found heaven more close at hand. 

Go...Read more of this...
by Allingham, William

Song of the Broad-Axe

...utterances; 
They tumble forth, they rise and form, 
Hut, tent, landing, survey, 
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, 
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, 
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, 
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, 
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, string’...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Holy Grail

...e dreary deep, 
And with me drove the moon and all the stars; 
And the wind fell, and on the seventh night 
I heard the shingle grinding in the surge, 
And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up, 
Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek, 
A castle like a rock upon a rock, 
With chasm-like portals open to the sea, 
And steps that met the breaker! there was none 
Stood near it but a lion on each side 
That kept the entry, and the moon was full. 
Then from the boat I leapt, ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Lobster Quadrille

...ind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won' t you, won' t you join the dance? 

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied, "Too far, too far!" and gave a ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point

...And no better a liberty sought.

XI.
In the sunny ground between the canes,
He said "I love you" as he passed:
When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,
I heard how he vowed it fast:
While others shook, he smiled in the hut
As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut,
Through the roar of the hurricanes.

XII.
I sang his name instead of a song;
Over and over I sang his name--
Upward and downward I drew it along
My various notes; the same, the same!
I sang it low, that the s...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point

...And no better a liberty sought.

XI.
In the sunny ground between the canes,
He said "I love you" as he passed:
When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,
I heard how he vowed it fast:
While others shook, he smiled in the hut
As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut,
Through the roar of the hurricanes.

XII.
I sang his name instead of a song;
Over and over I sang his name--
Upward and downward I drew it along
My various notes; the same, the same!
I sang it low, that the s...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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