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Famous Trolley Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...
(our life’s amazing scoop)
the making of joy from almost lost alloy
an astonishing loop the loop
by two half off their trolley
how jolly...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg



...The rain's cold grains are silver-gray 
Sharp as golden sands, 
A bell is clanging, people sway 
Hanging by their hands.

Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff, 
Snatch and catch and grope; 
That face is yellow-pale, as if 
The fellow swung from rope.

Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives, 
Glances strike and glare, 
Fingers tangle, Bluebeard's wives 
Dangle ...Read more of this...
by Wylie, Elinor
...l.
But round about the sylvan dell
Were other sweet Arcadian shrines,
Gone now, is all the rural spell,
Arcadia has trolley lines.
Oh, once loved, sluggish, darkling stream,
For me no more, thy waters swell,
Thy music now the engines' scream,
Thy fragrance now the factory's smell;
Too near for me the clanging bell;
A false light in the water shines
While Solitude lists to her knell,—
Arcadia has trolley lines.
Thy wooded lanes with shade and gleam
Where bloomed ...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...ay.
The people and wagons come and go, out and in.
Triangles of banks and drug stores watch.
The policemen whistle, the trolley cars bump:
Wheels, wheels, feet, feet, all day.

In the false dawn when the chickens blink
And the east shakes a lazy baby toe at to-morrow,
And the east fixes a pink half-eye this way,
In the time when only one milk wagon crosses
These three streets, these six street ends,
It is the sleep time and they rest.
The triangle banks and drug stores rest.
...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John



...ow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level of the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather for the plunging
Into caves

There's a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton,
There's a line of harbour lights at Perivale,
Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire
The little fleet of trawlers under ...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...d be a sleek Ferrari
Or perhaps a joggly jeep,
And scooting around at Bankers Trust,
Beep-beep, I'd go, beep-beep.

The trolley car used to say clang-clang
And the choo-choo said toot-toot,
But the beep of the banker at Bankers Trust
Is every bit as cute.
Miaow, says the cuddly kitten,
Baa, says the woolly sheep,
Oink, says the piggy-wiggy,
And the banker says beep-beep.

So I want to play at Bankers Trust
Like a hippety-hoppety bunny,
And best of all, oh best of all,
With re...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...s designs,—
I 'll hie me otherwhere to dwell,
[Pg 205]Arcadia has trolley lines.
...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...y, or a man or a girl or a boy
That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow seem to enjoy.
The truck and the motor and trolley car and the 
elevated train
They make the weary city street reverberate with pain:
But there is yet an echo left deep down within my heart
Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made beneath a butcher's 
cart.
God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across 
the sky,
That's the path that my feet would tread whenever I have to die.
Some folks cal...Read more of this...
by Kilmer, Joyce
...ing there
Gives one, I think, a distinguished air.)

“Well, all of a sudden I felt a jar
And I said, “I’ll bet that’s a trolley car,”
And, sure enough, when I looked to see
I saw it had run right over me!
And my limbs and things were so scattered about
That for a moment I felt put out.

Well, the motorman was a nice young chap!
And he came right up and tipped his cap
And said, “Beg pardon,” and was so kind
That his gentle manner soothed my mind:
Especially as he took such pai...Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker
...And lawyers for people waiting in jail,
And a dog catcher and a superintendent of streets,
And telephones, water-works, trolley cars,
And newspapers with a splatter of telegrams from sister cities of Kalamazoo the round world over.

And the loafer lagging along said:
Kalamazoo, you ain’t in a class by yourself;
I seen you before in a lot of places.
If you are nuts America is nuts.
 And lagging along he said bitterly:
 Before I came to Kalamazoo I was silent.
 Now I am gabby, ...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...Sunday,
Like church, even if the aisles smell of phenol.
And you always bring even better gifts than any 
On your book-trolley. Though they mean only good,
Families can become a sort of burden.
I've only got my father, and he won't come,
Poor man, because it would be too much for him.
And for me, too, so it's best the way it is. 
He knows, you see, that I will predecease him,
Which is hard enough. It would take a callous man
To come and stand around and watch me failing.
(No...Read more of this...
by Hecht, Anthony
...y name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ----
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things