Famous Slanting Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Irish Unionists farewell to Greta Hellastrom in 1922

by John Betjeman
 Golden haired and golden hearted
I would ever have you be,
As you were when last we parted
Smiling slow and sad at me.
Oh! the fighting down of passion!
Oh! the century-seeming pain-
Parting in this off-hand fashion
In Dungarvan in the rain.

Slanting eyes of blue, unweeping
Stands my Swedish beauty where
Gusts of Irish rain are sweeping
Round the statue in the square;
Corner boys against the walling
Watch...Read more of this...

Dalliance of the Eagles The

by Walt Whitman
 SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) 
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, 
The rushing amorous contact high in space together, 
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, 
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, 
Till o’er the river...Read more of this...

Renascence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains...Read more of this...

The Nympholept

by Alan Seeger
 There was a boy -- not above childish fears -- 
With steps that faltered now and straining ears, 
Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, 
Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill 
Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue 
And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, 
Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun, 
Walked up into the...Read more of this...

Untitled

by Quincy Troupe
 in brussels, eye sat in the grand place cafe & heard
duke's place, played after salsa
between the old majestic architecture, jazz bouncing off
all that gilded gold history snoring complacently there
flowers all over the ground, up inside the sound
the old white band jammin the music
tight & heavy, like some food
pushin pedal to the metal
gettin all the way down
under the scaffolding surrounding
l'hotel...Read more of this...

At Ithaca

by Hilda Doolittle
 Over and back, 
the long waves crawl 
and track the sand with foam; 
night darkens, and the sea 
takes on that desperate tone 
of dark that wives put on 
when all their love is done.

Over and back, 
the tangled thread falls slack, 
over and up and on; 
over and all is sewn; 
now while I bind the end, 
I...Read more of this...

God Give to Men

by Arna Bontemps
 God give the yellow man
an easy breeze at blossom time.
Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover
every land and dream
of afterwhile. 

Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs
to whirl in tall buildings.
Allow them many ships at sea,
and on land, soldiers
and policemen.

For black man, God,
no need to bother more
but only fill afresh his meed
of laughter,
his cup of tears.

God suffer little men
the taste...Read more of this...

Contentment

by Robert William Service
 An Ancient gaffer once I knew,
Who puffed a pipe and tossed a tankard;
He claimed a hundred years or two,
And for a dozen more he hankered;
So o'er a pint I asked how he
Had kept his timbers tight together;
He grinned and answered: "It maun be
Because I likes all kinds o' weather.

"Fore every morn when I get up
I lights my clay pipe...Read more of this...

The Two Streams

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Behold the rocky wall 
That down its sloping sides 
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall, 
In rushing river-tides! 
Yon stream, whose sources run 
Turned by a pebble's edge, 
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun 
Through the cleft mountain-ledge. 
The slender rill had strayed, 
But for the slanting stone, 
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid 
Of foam-flecked...Read more of this...

Wind in the Beechwood

by Siegfried Sassoon
 The glorying forest shakes and swings with glancing 
Of boughs that dip and strain; young, slanting sprays 
Beckon and shift like lissom creatures dancing, 
While the blown beechwood streams with drifting rays. 
Rooted in steadfast calm, grey stems are seen
Like weather-beaten masts; the wood, unfurled, 
Seems as a ship with crowding sails of green 
That sweeps across the lonely...Read more of this...

Morning Express

by Siegfried Sassoon
ALONG the wind-swept platform pinched and white 
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light 
Offering themselves to morn¡¯s long slanting arrows.
The train¡¯s due; porters trundle laden barrows.
The train steams in volleying resplendent clouds 5
Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about 
Scared people hurry storming the doors in crowds.
The officials seem to waken with a shout 
Resolved to hoist and plunder;...Read more of this...

The Angle of a Landscape

by Emily Dickinson
 The Angle of a Landscape --
That every time I wake --
Between my Curtain and the Wall
Upon an ample Crack --

Like a Venetian -- waiting --
Accosts my open eye --
Is just a Bough of Apples --
Held slanting, in the Sky --

The Pattern of a Chimney --
The Forehead of a Hill --
Sometimes -- a Vane's Forefinger --
But that's -- Occasional --

The...Read more of this...

Buffalo Bill

by Carl Sandburg
 BOY heart of Johnny Jones—aching to-day?
Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town?
Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians?

Some of us know
All about it, Johnny Jones.

Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes,
 A slanting look under a hat on a horse.
He sits on a horse and a passing look is fixed
 On Johnny Jones, you and me, barelegged,
A slanting, passing,...Read more of this...

Clover

by Sidney Lanier
 Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one --
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
'Tis a...Read more of this...

The Wayfarer

by Patrick Pearse
The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would...Read more of this...

Spontaneous Me

by Walt Whitman
 SPONTANEOUS me, Nature, 
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, 
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, 
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, 
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark
 green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d
...Read more of this...

On Your Asking

by Omer Tarin
You asked me what it was all about, 
Why men and women dwelt so much 
On the slanting tangents 
Of come vague philosophy
And what I felt it was, and why
It was like this?

Sometimes, then, to answer your questions,
I dress my thoughts in brilliant costumes,
Beautiful, eloquent words, 
But to tell the truth
There is no way I can really say
Anything at all;

People...Read more of this...

Clean Hands

by Carl Sandburg
 IT is something to face the sun and know you are free.
To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth
And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:
 It is something.
To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands,
Clean for the day book today and the record of...Read more of this...

In The Naked Bed In Platos Cave

by Delmore Schwartz
 In the naked bed, in Plato's cave, 
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
 Hearing the milkman's clop,
his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink,
I rose from bed, lit a...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

She Hears The Storm

by Thomas Hardy
 There was a time in former years-- 
While my roof-tree was his-- 
When I should have been distressed by fears 
At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously, 
'The prickling rain strikes cold; 
His road is bare of hedge or tree, 
And he is getting old.'

But now the fitful chimney-roar, 
The drone of Thorncombe trees, 
The Froom...Read more of this...

The Haunted Beach

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Upon a lonely desart Beach
Where the white foam was scatter'd,
A little shed uprear'd its head
Though lofty Barks were shatter'd.
The Sea-weeds gath'ring near the door,
A sombre path display'd;
And, all around, the deaf'ning roar,
Re-echo'd on the chalky shore,
By the green billows made.

Above, a jutting cliff was seen
Where Sea Birds hover'd, craving;
And all around, the craggs were bound
With weeds--for ever waving.
And here...Read more of this...

Moonlight slanting

by Matsuo Basho
 Moonlight slanting
through the bamboo grove;
 a cuckoo crying....Read more of this...

The Task: Book V The Winter Morning Walk (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length...Read more of this...

In Memoriam Mae Noblitt

by A R Ammons
 This is just a place:
we go around, distanced, 
yearly in a star's

atmosphere, turning 
daily into and out of 
direct light and

slanting through the 
quadrant seasons: deep 
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing 
us loose: we look up 
or out so high, sight's

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs 
and oceans: water...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Slanting poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace