Famous Skyline Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Skyline poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous skyline poems. These examples illustrate what a famous skyline poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lawson, Henry
...far out,
They who would garden the deserts---it is they who would conquer the drought!
They see the dykes to the skyline, where a dust-waste blazes to-day,
And they hear the lap of the waters on the miles of sand and clay;
They see the rainfall increasing, and the bountiful sweeps of grass,
And all the year on the rivers long strings of their barges pass.
. . . . . . .
But still are the steamers loading with our timber and wood...Read more of this...
by
Matthew, John
...ted entrails,
Lie pauper and millionaire,
Separated only by the whimsy,
Of your very partial benevolence.
On your skyline of sooty chimneys,
Decaying concrete, bristling antennas,
Are the sad stories of fortunes,
Made and lost, just as lost loves.
City of gold, they say, which never sleeps,
Will you stay awake, tonight,
Wipe away our cascading tears,
And give our tired bodies some sleep?...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...lood of sunset fire
The little fleet of trawlers under sail?
Can those boats be only roof tops
As they stream along the skyline
In a race for port and Padstow
With the gale?...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...faces rise on the prairie.
They are the unborn. The future.
Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the skyline
The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits.
In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o’clock June nights … the dead men and the unborn children speak to me … I can not tell you what they say … you listen and you know.
I don’t care who you are, man:
I know a woman is looking for you
and her soul...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...ere gone,
in the heat and draft
of our silver, rattling
over the river
into the South Bronx,
against whose greasy
skyline rose that neoned
billboard for cigarettes
which hostages
my attention, always,
as it is meant to do,
its motto ruby
in the dark morning:
ALIVE WITH PLEASURE....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ir dust noon and afternoon;
In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city,
The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city;
In the night, when the trains and wagons start from a long way off
For the city where the people ask bread and want letters;
In the night the city lives too—the day is not all.
In the night there are dancers dancing and singers singing,
And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors.
In the night the sea-winds ta...Read more of this...
by
Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...Till the soft sands thrill beneath your coming feet.
Till I see you, tall and slender, standing clear against the skyline
A graceful shade across the lingering red,
While your hair the breezes ruffle, turns to silver in the twilight,
And makes a fair faint aureole round your head.
Far away towards the sunset I can see a narrow river,
That unwinds itself in red tranquillity;
I can hear its rippled meeting, and the gurgle of its greeting,
As ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...And then I roused with fear for lo!
I saw six grisly ships of war.
A grim, grey line of might and dread
Against the skyline looming sheer:
With horror to myself I said:
"Courage, my comrades, war is near!"
I saw my cottage on the hill
With rambling roses round the door;
It was so peaceful and so still
I sighed . . . and then it was no more.
A flash of flame, a rubble heap;
I cried aloud with woe and fear . . .
And wok myself from troubled slee...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.
In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter’s chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.
To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short.. . .
What...Read more of this...
by
Clark, Badger
...undred miles of range.
_Just a-ridin', a-ridin'--_
_Desert ripplin' in the sun,_
_Mountains blue along the skyline--_
_I don't envy anyone_
_When I'm ridin'._
When my feet is in the stirrups
And my hawse is on the bust,
With his hoofs a-flashin' lightnin'
From a cloud of golden dust,
And the bawlin' of the cattle
Is a-coming' down the wind
Then a finer life than ridin'
Would be mighty hard to find.
_Just a-ridi...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ut the damper up,
You may put the damper down,
The smoke goes up the chimney just the same.
Smoke of a city sunset skyline,
Smoke of a country dusk horizon—
They cross on the sky and count our years.
Smoke of a brick-red dust
Winds on a spiral
Out of the stacks
For a hidden and glimpsing moon.
This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill,
This is the slang of coal and steel.
The day-gang hands it to the night-gang,
The night-gang hands it back.
...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...ion
but once it’s over – see how light can steal
through cracks of trees and curtains - beneath the keel
of the eastern skyline (rocking like a boat
surprised so early to find itself afloat)
and from the earth presentiments are rustling
as cheeky snowdrops hoist their periscopes
within a week a mass of them is bustling
and white becomes the flavour of the slopes
and people flock invigorating hopes
seasons (they say) have forfeited effect on
one snowdrop-look and instantly de...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...side it,
but they never spotted him.
The soldiers were all over,
On all sides of the hill,
And right against the skyline
A row of them, small and still.
Children peeked out of windows,
And men in the drink shop swore,
And spat a little cachaça
At the light cracks in the floor.
But the soldiers were nervous, even
with tommy guns in hand,
And one of them, in a panic,
Shot the officer in command.
He hit him in three places;
The other shots went wild.<...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...t gaze and gone again --
The Brides of Death that wait the groom --
The Choosers of the Slain!
Offshore where sea and skyline blend
In rain, the daylight dies;
The sullen, shouldering sweels attend
Night and our sacrifice.
Adown the stricken capes no flare --
No mark on spit or bar, --
Birdled and desperate we dare
The blindfold game of war.
Nearer the up-flung beams that spell
The council of our foes;
Clearer the barking guns that tell
Their scattered flank ...Read more of this...
by
Nandy, Pritish
...ise once more that forever means an
empty room, a tired night swirling into nowhere,
when I shore up to your tattered skyline.
2
At midnight I move in on strangers, for the caress
or the kill. I have come to terms with shadows,
I have been assaulted by gentler lovetimes: once
in a long while a face comes near, our eyes meet
in challenge, or is it love? Our bodies come alive
in secret oneness: one spring ago, terrified to be
touched, you draw me tonight, at last,...Read more of this...
by
Clark, Badger
...hen all the sod,
Without no fence nor fuss,
Belonged in pardnership to God,
The Gover'ment and us.
With skyline bounds from east to west
And room to go and come,
I loved my fellow man the best
When he was scattered some.
_Oh, it's squeak! squeak! squeak!_
_Close and closer cramps the wire._
_There's hardly play to back away_
_And call a man a liar._
_Their house has locks on every door;_
_Their land is in a cr...Read more of this...
by
Clark, Badger
...undred miles of range.
_Just a-ridin', a-ridin'--_
_Desert ripplin' in the sun,_
_Mountains blue along the skyline--_
_I don't envy anyone_
_When I'm ridin'._
When my feet is in the stirrups
And my hawse is on the bust,
With his hoofs a-flashin' lightnin'
From a cloud of golden dust,
And the bawlin' of the cattle
Is a-coming' down the wind
Then a finer life than ridin'
Would be mighty hard to find.
_Just a-ridi...Read more of this...
by
Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...ding the swift waves sunder
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
One gleam like a bloodshot swordblade swims on
The skyline, staining the green gulf crimson
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun
That strikes through his stormy winding sheet.
Oh, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, or your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never a man has ri...Read more of this...
by
Xavier, Emanuel
...errorists have features too foreign
to be recognized in the mirror
Our mistakes are our responsibility
4.
The skyline outside my window
is the only thing that has changed
Men still rape women
and blame them for their weaknesses
Children are still molested
by the perversion of Catholic guilt
My ex-boyfriend still takes comfort
in the other white powder-
the one used solely to destroy himself
and those around him
Not the one used to ignite and create carn...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Ted
...nd that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each o...Read more of this...
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