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Famous Walled Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Frost, Robert
...plant and tend and reap herself,
 And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
 He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
 And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
 An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
 On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden,
 Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
 But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the w...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...t dispense with heart
In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,---
Oh, the world's hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!

XXI.

Each in the crypt would cry
``But one freezes here! and why? 
``When a heart, as chill,
``At my own would thrill
``Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
``Heart, shall we live or die?
``The rest. . . . settle by-and-by!''

XXII.

So, she'd efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
It is twelve o'clock:
I shal...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their ...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...once bore; 
 Our rows of roses, by urchins' haste, 
 Are destroyed where they leap the barrier o'er. 
 The fount is walled in where, at noonday pride, 
 She so gayly drank, from the wood descending; 
 In her fairy hand was transformed the tide, 
 And it turned to pearls through her fingers wending 
 
 The wild, rugged path is paved with spars, 
 Where erst in the sand her footsteps were traced, 
 When so small were the prints that the surface mars, 
 That they see...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...er could gain 
 A view beyond the pines and rocks, of spires 
 That pierce the shade the distant scene acquires; 
 A walled town is it, but 'tis not ally 
 Of the old citadel's proud majesty; 
 Unto itself belonging this remained. 
 Often a castle was thus self-sustained 
 And equalled towns; witness in Lombardy 
 Crama, and Plato too in Tuscany, 
 And in Apulia Barletta;—each one 
 Was powerful as a town, and dreaded none. 
 Corbus ranked thus; its precincts seeme...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...ng greatness of his destiny, 
 Who in the Empyrean Heaven elect was called 
 Sire of the Eternal City, that throned and walled 
 Made Empire of the world beyond, to be 
 The Holy Place at last, by God's decree, 
 Where the great Peter's follower rules. For he 
 Learned there the causes of his victory. 

 "And later to the third great Heaven was caught 
 The last Apostle, and thence returning brought 
 The proofs of our salvation. But, for me, 
 I am not &Aelig;nea...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...im fill me
from now
until I die.
I offer my bones,
my poems,
my luck with roses,
and the secret garden
I have found
walled in my center,
and the sunflower
who raises her head
despite her heavy seeds.

I am ready now, Muse,
to serve you faithfully
even with
a graceful dancing partner--
for I have learned
to stand alone.

Give me your blessing.
Let the next
epithalamion I write
be my own.
And let it last
more than the years
of my life--
and without the least...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
 nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of contempt, that
 easily lock the world out of doors.

Here on the rock it is great and beautiful, here on the foam-wet
 granite sea-fang it is easy to praise
Life and water and the shining stones: but whose cattle are the
 herds of the people that one should love them?

If they were yours, th...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...us & didn't fall down.


 June 18, 1978


II -- Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
 over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
 -- am I going to stop that?

 *

Rocky Mountains rising behind us
 Denver shining in morning light
-- Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

 *

Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
 to the greyhaired Sheriff's van -- 
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein
 Come back!


...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ach place these
Nigh to Bethabara—in Jericho 
The city of palms, AEnon, and Salem old,
Machaerus, and each town or city walled
On this side the broad lake Genezaret,
Or in Peraea—but returned in vain.
Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek,
Where winds with reeds and osiers whispering play,
Plain fishermen (no greater men them call),
Close in a cottage low together got,
Their unexpected loss and plaints outbreathed:—
 "Alas, from what high hope to what relapse 
Unlooked f...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ur necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal: we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a wish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. 
We reached the barn with merry din, 
And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about; ...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd kill you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ould devote and dedicate forever 
To the truths we keep coming back and back to. 
So desert it would have to be, so walled 
By mountain ranges half in summer snow, 
No one would covet it or think it worth 
The pains of conquering to force change on. 
Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly 
Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk 
Blown over and over themselves in idleness. 
Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew 
The babe born to the desert, the sand storm 
Re...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...foam and fret.'
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!
One last look at the white-walled town,
And the little grey church on the windy shore;
Then come down!
She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...he space in two.
And, like a tunnel some magician
Has wrought in twinkling green, an alley grew,
Pleached thick and walled with apple trees; their flowers
Incensed the garden, and when Autumn came
The plump and heavy apples crowding stood
And tapped against the arbour. Then the dame
Katrina shook them down, in pelting showers
They plunged to earth, and died transformed to sugared food.

29
Against the high, encircling walls were grapes,
Nailed close to feel the ba...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...alone 
And wearying in a land of sand and thorns. 

`And I rode on and found a mighty hill, 
And on the top, a city walled: the spires 
Pricked with incredible pinnacles into heaven. 
And by the gateway stirred a crowd; and these 
Cried to me climbing, "Welcome, Percivale! 
Thou mightiest and thou purest among men!" 
And glad was I and clomb, but found at top 
No man, nor any voice. And thence I past 
Far through a ruinous city, and I saw 
That man had once dwelt ...Read more of this...

by Thompson, Francis
...lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning with our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting with her in her wind walled palace,
Underneath her azured dai:s,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice, lucent weeping out of the dayspring.

So it was done.
I in their delicate fellowship was one.
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,
I knew all the swift importings on the wilful face of skies,
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spume d of the wild sea-snortin...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...h a noble theatre as it was,
I dare well say, in all this world there n'as*. *was not
The circuit a mile was about,
Walled of stone, and ditched all without.
*Round was the shape, in manner of compass,
Full of degrees, the height of sixty pas* *see note *
That when a man was set on one degree
He letted* not his fellow for to see. *hindered
Eastward there stood a gate of marble white,
Westward right such another opposite.
And, shortly to conclude, such a pl...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...orth, O wind, our message on thy wings,
 And they shall hear thee pass and bid thee speed,
In reed-roofed hut, or white-walled home of kings,
 Who have been helpen by ther in their need.
 All spring shall give thee fragrance, and the wheat
 Shall be a tasselled floorcloth to thy feet. 

Haste, for our hearts are with thee, take no rest!
 Loud-voiced ambassador, from sea to sea
Proclaim the blessing, mainfold, confessed.
 Of those in darkness by her hand set free.<...Read more of this...

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