Famous Waterfall Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Waterfall poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous waterfall poems. These examples illustrate what a famous waterfall poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...and Lawrence on
Civilisation and Plato on the Theory of Forms;
I read aloud ‘The Rainbow’ and the children drew
The waterfall with Gudrun bathing, I showed
Them Gauguin and Fra Angelico in gold and a film
On painting from life, and the nude girls
Bothered no-one.
It was the Sixties -
Art was life and life was art and in the
Staff-room we talked of poetry and politics
And passionately I argued with John. a clinical
Psychologist, on Freud and Jung; Anne, at forty
...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...th all their colours
as if they drew it from the flowering trees.
At night his two finger whistle brought her down
the waterfall stairs to his shy smile
which like an eddy, turned her round and round
lazily and slowly so her will
was nowhere—as in dreams things are and aren't.
Walking along avenues in the dark
street lamps sang like sopranos in their heads
with a voilence they never understood
and all their movements when they were together
had no conclusion.
Only leaning ...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
...erty but a book.
In Roundhay’s Tropical World Nepalese Trumpets
Glow in red and yellow like mendicant priests,
The waterfall roars like Lodore and I am more
Myself here than anywhere.
11
The morning sun is melting
The dome of Leeds Town Hall,
Frost on Kirkstall Abbey stone
Is falling into the Aire;
At fifty-four my dreams
Have ceased, the bowling green
At Eastend Park has gone;
The trams have stopped,
The purple gondola with
Gold sashes locked in a muse...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...easily
As hour-glass sand--and fast, as you might see
Swallows obeying the south summer's call,
Or swans upon a gentle waterfall.
Thus went that beautiful multitude, nor far,
Ere from among some rocks of glittering spar,
Just within ken, they saw descending thick
Another multitude. Whereat more quick
Moved either host. On a wide sand they met,
And of those numbers every eye was wet;
For each their old love found. A murmuring rose,
Like what was never heard in all the throe...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...nd out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is act...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...t of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the cr...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...f earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-f...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...e with words,
vibrating like a cymbal
touched before it has been struck,
he has prophesied correctly --
the industrious waterfall,
"the speedy stream
which violently bears all before it,
at one time silent as the air
and now as powerful as the wind."
"Treading chasms
on the uncertain footing of a spear,"
forgetting that there is in woman
a quality of mind
which is an instinctive manifestation
is unsafe,
he goes on speaking
in a formal, customary strain
of "past states," the ...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, amon the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
2
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve - dark, deep Ravine-
Thou many-colored, many voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...bought 563 feet. He's going to give it
to his niece for a birthday present, " the salesman said.
"We're selling the waterfalls separately of course, and
the trees and birds, flowers grass and ferns we're also sell-
ing extra. The insects we're giving away free with a mini-
mum purchase of ten feet of stream. "
"How much are you selling the stream for?" I asked.
"Six dollars and fifty-cents a foot, " he said. "That's for
the first hundred feet. After that it's ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ore buffalo than they had ever seen before in one place.
"They kept on going until they heard the faraway sound of
a waterfall and saw a distant column of spray rising and dis-
appearing. They followed the sound as it got louder and loud-
er. After a while the sound was tremendous and they were at
the great falls of the Missouri River. It was about noon when
they got there.
"A nice thing happened that afternoon, they went fishing
below the falls and caught half a do...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corne...Read more of this...
by
Dunn, Stephen
...n the walls of the halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground,
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far waterfall like doom....Read more of this...
by
Belloc, Hilaire
...Lee! He has no son, he has no child, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village common. And he is lean and he is sick, His dwindled body's half awry, His ancles they are swoln and thick; His legs are thin and dry. When he was young he little knew 'Of husbandry or tillage; And now he's forced to work, though weak,&n...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...Bang! Squeeze!
And the hammer strokes fall like buzzing bees
Or pattering rain,
Or faster than these,
Like the hum of a waterfall struck by a breeze.
Clank! from the bellows-chain pulled up and down.
Clank!
And sunshine twinkles on Victorine's flank,
Starting it to blue,
Dropping it to black.
Clack! Clack!
Tap-a-tap! Tap!
Lord! What galloping! Some mishap
Is making that man ride so furiously.
"Francois, you!
Victorine won't be through
For another quarter of an hour." "As you ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...nbsp; Or in the castle he's pursuing, Among the ghosts, his own undoing; Or playing with the waterfall," At poor old Susan then she railed, While to the town she posts away; "If Susan had not been so ill, Alas! I should have had him still, My Johnny, till my dying day." Poor Betty! in this sad distemper, The doctor's self would hardly spare, Unwor...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...him
Come tow'ring, arm'd in adamant and gold.
Let others love soft Summer's evening smiles,
As listening to the distant waterfall,
They mark the blushes of the streaky west';
I choose the pale December's foggy glooms.
Then, when the sullen shades of evening close,
Where through the room a blindly- glimmering gleam
They dying embers scatter, far remote
From Mirth's mad shouts, that through th' illumined roof
Resound with festive echo, let me sit,
Blest with the lowly cricket's...Read more of this...
by
Warton, Thomas
...as covered with green grass and
bushes. On top of the hill there was a grove of tall, dark trees. At a
distance I saw a waterfall come pouring down off the hill. It was long and
white and I could almost feel its cold spray.
There must be a creek there, I thought, and it probably has trout in it.
Trout.
At last an opportunity to go trout fishing, to catch my first Trout,
to behold Pittsburgh.
It was growing dark. I didn't have time to go and look at the creek.
I walked hom...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...hat
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and m...Read more of this...
by
Carver, Raymond
...ie?"
When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water ruching over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.
Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?
When he says, "Ours is a transitional era."
"That's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the Martini he is sipping.
They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with a...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
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