Famous Side(A) Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lines Written by the Side of a River

by Mary Darby Robinson
 FLOW soft RIVER, gently stray, 
Still a silent waving tide 
O'er thy glitt'ring carpet glide, 
While I chaunt my ROUNDELAY, 
As I gather from thy bank, 
Shelter'd by the poplar dank, 
King-cups, deck'd in golden pride, 
Harebells sweet, and daisies pied; 
While beneath the evening sky, 
Soft the western breezes fly. 
Gentle RIVER, should'st thou be 
Touch'd with mournful...Read more of this...

This Side Of The Truth

by Dylan Thomas
 (for Llewelyn)

This side of the truth,
You may not see, my son,
King of your blue eyes
In the blinding country of youth,
That all is undone,
Under the unminding skies,
Of innocence and guilt
Before you move to make
One gesture of the heart or head,
Is gathered and spilt
Into the winding dark
Like the dust of the dead.

Good and bad, two ways
Of moving about your death
By the...Read more of this...

At Pleasure Bay

by Robert Pinsky
 In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilings
And underwater chunks of still-mortared brick
In shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottom
Where the landing was for Price's Hotel...Read more of this...

Queen Matilda

by Marriott Edgar
 Henry the first, surnamed " Beauclare," 
Lost his only son William at sea,
So when Henry died it were hard to decide 
Who his heir and successor should be.

There were two runners-up for the title- 
His daughter Matilda was one,
And the other, a boy, known as Stephen of Blois, 
His young sister Adela's son.

Matilda by right should have had it,
Being...Read more of this...

The Young Ones Flip Side

by James A Emanuel
 In tight pants, tight skirts,
Stretched or squeezed,
Youth hurts,
Crammed in, bursting out,
Flesh will sing
And hide its doubt
In nervous hips, hopping glance,
Usurping rouge,
Provoking stance.

Put off, or put on,
Youth hurts. And then
It's gone....Read more of this...

The Black Berry -- wears a Thorn in his side --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Black Berry -- wears a Thorn in his side --
But no Man heard Him cry --
He offers His Berry, just the same
To Partridge -- and to Boy --

He sometimes holds upon the Fence --
Or struggles to a Tree --
Or clasps a Rock, with both His Hands --
But not for Sympathy --

We -- tell a Hurt -- to cool...Read more of this...

Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too

by Ogden Nash
 Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And tit leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.

When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does...Read more of this...

At the Sea-Side

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 When I was down beside the sea 
A wooden spade they gave to me 
To dig the sandy shore. 

My holes were empty like a cup. 
In every hole the sea came up, 
Till it could come no more....Read more of this...

Because Your Voice Was at My Side

by James Joyce
 Because your voice was at my side 
I gave him pain, 
Because within my hand I held 
Your hand again. 

There is no word nor any sign 
Can make amend -- - 
He is a stranger to me now 
Who was my friend....Read more of this...

On A Gentlewomans Watch That Wanted A Key

by William Strode
 Thou pretty heav'n whose great and lesser spheares
With constant wheelings measure hours and yeares
Soe faithfully that thou couldst solve the doubt
Of erring Time if Nature should be out,
Where's thy intelligence? thy Soule? the Key
That gives thee Life and Motion? must thou stay
Thus cramp'd with rusty Sloth? and shall each wheele
Disorganis'd confess it is but steele?
Art's Living Creature, is thy...Read more of this...

A Sea-Side Walk

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory---like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, 'Ho! victory!'
And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale;
So runs the Arab tale.

The sky above us showed
An universal and unmoving cloud,
On which, the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds,...Read more of this...

The Deserted House

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Life and Thought have gone away
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide.
Careless tenants they!

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.

Close the door; the shutters close;
Or through the windows we shall see
The nakedness and vacancy
Of the dark deserted house.

Come away: no more of mirth
Is here or...Read more of this...

Resolution And Independence

by William Wordsworth
 I 

There was a roaring in the wind all night; 
The rain came heavily and fell in floods; 
But now the sun is rising calm and bright; 
The birds are singing in the distant woods; 
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; 
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; 
And all the air is filled with pleasant...Read more of this...

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

by Walt Whitman
 I SEE before me now, a traveling army halting; 
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer; 
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high; 
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen; 
The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on the mountain;
The shadowy forms...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XI: Spit In My Face You Jews And Pierce My Side

by John Donne
 Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he
Who could do no iniquity hath died:
But by my death can not be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They killed once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
Oh let me, then, his...Read more of this...

Lay His Sword By His Side

by Thomas Moore
 Lay his sword by his side -- it hath served him too well 
Not to rest near his pillow below; 
To the last moment true, from his hand ere it fell, 
Its point was still turn'd to a flying foe. 
Fellow-labourers in life, let them slumber in death, 
Side by side, as becomes the reposing brave -- 
That sword...Read more of this...

Forever at His side to walk

by Emily Dickinson
 Forever at His side to walk --
The smaller of the two!
Brain of His Brain --
Blood of His Blood --
Two lives -- One Being -- now --

Forever of His fate to taste --
If grief -- the largest part --
If joy -- to put my piece away
For that beloved Heart --

All life -- to know each other --
Whom we can never...Read more of this...

Notes from the Other Side

by Jane Kenyon
 I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course

no illness. Contrition 
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us. 
Our calm...Read more of this...

When Katie walks this simple pair accompany her side

by Emily Dickinson
 When Katie walks, this simple pair accompany her side,
When Katie runs unwearied they follow on the road,
When Katie kneels, their loving hands still clasp her pious knee --
Ah! Katie! Smile at Fortune, with two so knit to thee!...Read more of this...

Facts by our side are never sudden

by Emily Dickinson
 Facts by our side are never sudden
Until they look around
And then they scare us like a spectre
Protruding from the Ground --

The height of our portentous Neighbor
We never know --
Till summoned to his recognition
By an Adieu --

Adieu for whence
The sage cannot conjecture
The bravest die
As ignorant of their resumption
As you or I --...Read more of this...

A Singer

by William Allingham
 That which he did not feel, he would not sing; 
What most he felt, religion it was to hide 
In a dumb darkling grotto, where the spring 
Of tremulous tears, arising unespied, 
Became a holy well that durst not glide 
Into the day with moil or murmuring; 
Whereto, as if to some unlawful thing, 
He sto]e, musing or praying...Read more of this...

The Other Side of a Mirror

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
 I sat before my glass one day, 
And conjured up a vision bare, 
Unlike the aspects glad and gay, 
That erst were found reflected there - 
The vision of a woman, wild 
With more than womanly despair. 
Her hair stood back on either side 
A face bereft of loveliness. 
It had no envy now to hide 
What once no...Read more of this...

Dedication To M..

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Swing of the heart. O firmly hung, fastened on what
invisible branch. Who, who gave you the push,
that you swung with me into the leaves?
How near I was to the exquisite fruits. But not-staying
is the essence of this motion. Only the nearness, only
toward the forever-too-high, all at once the possible
nearness. Vicinities, then
from an irresistibly swung-up-to place
--already, once again, lost--the new...Read more of this...

If Blame be my side -- forfeit Me --

by Emily Dickinson
 If Blame be my side -- forfeit Me --
But doom me not to forfeit Thee --
To forfeit Thee? The very name
Is sentence from Belief -- and House --...Read more of this...

There was an old man of Dee-side

by Edward Lear
There was an old man of Dee-sideWhose hat was exceedingly wide,But he said, "Do not fail, if it happen to hail,To come under my hat at Dee-side!" ...Read more of this...

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