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Famous Short Bridge Poems

Famous Short Bridge Poems. Short Bridge Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Bridge short poems


by Matsuo Basho
 First snow
falling
 on the half-finished bridge.



by Oscar Wilde
 An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

Hunted  Create an image from this poem
by Paul Eluard
 A few grains of dust more or less 
On ancient shoulders 
Locks of weakness on weary foreheads 
This theatre of honey and faded roses 
Where incalcuable flies 
Reply to the black signs that misery makes to them 
Despairing girders of a bridge 
Thrown across space 
Thrown across every street and every house 
Heavy wandering madnesses 
That we shall end by knowing by heart 
Mechanical appetites and uncontrolled dances 
That lead to the regret of hatred 

Nostalgia of justice

by Bob Kaufman
 Music from her breast, vibrating
Soundseared into burnished velvet.
Silent hips deceiving fools.
Rivulets of trickling ecstacy
From the alabaster pools of Jazz
Where music cools hot souls.
Eyes more articulately silent
Than Medusa's thousand tongues.
A bridge of eyes, consenting smiles
reveal her presence singing
Of cool remembrance, happy balls
Wrapped in swinging
Jazz
Her music...
Jazz.

by Ted Kooser
 Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.



by Emily Dickinson
 Before the ice is in the pools --
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow --

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
On a summer's day --
What is only walking
Just a bridge away --

That which sings so -- speaks so --
When there's no one here --
Will the frock I wept in
Answer me to wear?

by Derek Walcott
 Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.

by Siegfried Sassoon
 There stood a Poplar, tall and straight; 
The fair, round Moon, uprisen late, 
Made the long shadow on the grass 
A ghostly bridge ’twixt heaven and me. 
But May, with slumbrous nights, must pass;
And blustering winds will strip the tree. 
And I’ve no magic to express 
The moment of that loveliness; 
So from these words you’ll never guess 
The stars and lilies I could see.

by Richard Brautigan
 Yup.
A long lazy September look
in the mirror
say it's true.

I'm 31
and my nose is growing
old.

It starts about 1/2
an inch
below the bridge
and strolls geriatrically
down
for another inch or so:
stopping.

Fortunately, the rest
of the nose is comparatively
young.

I wonder if girls
will want me with an
old nose.

I can hear them now
the heartless bitches!

"He's cute
but his nose
is old."

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 As I sat down by Saddle Stream
 To bathe my dusty feet there,
A boy was standing on the bridge
 Any girl would meet there.

As I went over Woody Knob
 And dipped into the hollow,
A youth was coming up the hill
 Any maid would follow.

Then in I turned at my own gate,—
 And nothing to be sad for—
To such a man as any wife
 Would pass a pretty lad for.

by Henrik Ibsen
 TO skies that were brighter 
Turned he his prows; 
To gods that were lighter 
Made he his vows. 

The snow-land's mountains 
Sank in the deep; 
Sunnier fountains 
Lulled him to sleep. 

He burns his vessels, 
The smoke flung forth 
On blue cloud-trestles 
A bridge to the north. 

From the sun-warmed lowland 
Each night that betides, 
To the huts of the snow-land 
A horseman rides.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Beyond M?gdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain, 
In Summer, in a burst of summertime 
Following falls and falls of rain, 
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of 
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
. . . . . . . .
The motion of that man’s heart is fine 
Whom want could not make p?ne, p?ne 
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him 
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.
. . . . . . . .

by A E Housman
 Far in a western brookland 
That bred me long ago 
The poplars stand and tremble 
By pools I used to know. 

There, in the windless night-time, 
The wanderer, marvelling why, 
Halts on the bridge to hearken 
How soft the poplars sigh. 

He hears: no more remembered 
In fields where I was known, 
Here I lie down in London 
And turn to rest alone. 

There, by the starlit fences, 
The wanderer halts and hears 
My soul that lingers sighing 
About the glimmering weirs.

by Ogura Hyakunin Isshu
If the "Magpie Bridge"--
Bridge by flight of magpies spanned,--
White with frost I see:--
With a deep-laid frost made white:--
Late, I know, has grown the night.

by Carl Sandburg
 THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am.
The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up.
The white water says: I go on; around, under, over, I go on.
A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they nearly got me last year.
A sliver of moon slides by on a high wind calling: I know why; I’ll see you to-morrow; I’ll tell you everything to-morrow.

by Geoffrey Hill
 King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the
M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at
Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh
Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates:
saltmaster: money-changer: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the
friend of Charlemagne.

'I liked that,' said Offa, 'sing it again.'

by Katherine Mansfield
 A Gulf of silence separates us from each other.
I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other.
I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there.
Often I call you by your childish name
And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice.
How can we bridge the gulf? Never by speech or touch.
Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears.
Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.

by Emily Dickinson
 Faith -- is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not --
Too slender for the eye

It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side --
It joins -- behind the Veil

To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.

by Emily Dickinson
 How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread --
No Bridge below doth totter so --
Yet none hath such a Crowd.

It is as old as God --
Indeed -- 'twas built by him --
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm.

by Edgar Lee Masters
 At first I suspected something --
She acted so calm and absent-minded.
And one day I heard the back door shut,
As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
Back of the smokehouse into the lot,
And run across the field.
And I meant to kill him on sight.
But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge,
Without a stick or a stone at hand,
All of a sudden I saw him standing,
Scared to death, holding his rabbits,
And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't,"
As he aimed and fired at my heart.

by Mother Goose
  The two gray kits,And the gray kits' mother,  All went overThe bridge together.The bridge broke down,  They all fell in;"May the rats go with you,"  Says Tom Bolin.

by Carl Sandburg
 DUST of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now. . .
. . Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,
No more dust and wagons.

Voices of dollars
And drops of blood
. . . . .
Voices of broken hearts,
. . Voices singing, singing,
. . Silver voices, singing,
Softer than the stars,
Softer than the mist.

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Thou hast crossed over torrents, and swung through wide-spreading ocean,--
Over the chain of the Alps dizzily bore thee the bridge,
That thou might'st see me from near, and learn to value my beauty,
Which the voice of renown spreads through the wandering world.
And now before me thou standest,--canst touch my altar so holy,--
But art thou nearer to me, or am I nearer to thee?

Pigeon  Create an image from this poem
by Carl Sandburg
 THE FLUTTER of blue pigeon’s wings
Under a river bridge
Hunting a clean dry arch,
A corner for a sleep—
This flutters here in a woman’s hand.

A singing sleep cry,
A drunken poignant two lines of song,
Somebody looking clean into yesterday
And remembering, or looking clean into
To-morrow, and reading,—
This sings here as a woman’s sleep cry sings.

Pigeon friend of mine,
Fly on, sing on.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry