"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage;" "If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty."

"I Got Into Bed. I Said Some Words to the Close and Holy Darkness, then I Slept."

are the closing lines of

A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

1914-1953

"I Hope to See My Pilot Face to Face When I Have Crossed the Bar."

are the closing lines of

Crossing the Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson

"For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar."

"In the Long Way That I Must Tread Alone, Will Lead My Steps Aright."

are the closing lines of

To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant

"He, who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright."

"I Only Know That Summer Sang in Me a Little While, That in Me Sings No More."

are the closing lines of

Sonnet XLIII by Edna St Vincent Millay

1892-1950

"I Shiver, Cross Myself, Soak Myself With Holy Water, Carve Talismans, Touch Wood, Iron, My Pendant"

are the closing lines of

Magic Spell by Bartolo Cattafi

Sicilian, 1922-1979

"It Must Be Amusing to Be Poor, N'est-ce Pas?"

are the closing lines of

The Grand Palace of Versailles by Kenneth Patchen

"It's the Beauty That Thrills Me With Wonder, It's the Stillness That Fills Me With Peace"

are the closing lines of

The Spell of the Yukon by Robert W. Service

"I Walked Into the Kitchen to Inspect My Blue Maine Lobster. It Was Boiling Nicely, and Now She Was Too."

are the closing lines of

Upon Phoning an X-wife Not Seen for 20 Years by Charles Bukowski

Bukowski, a popular and prolific poet from Los Angeles was the subject of the film "Barfly".

"I Wander'd off by Myself, In the Mystical Moist Night-air, and from Time to Time, Look'd up in Perfect Silence at the Stars."

are the closing lines of

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

"When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns...When I was shown the charts and diagrams...I became tired and sick, till rising and gliding out...."

"I Want to Drink Its Crystal-pure Oblivion, to Be Forever; but Never to Have Been"

are the closing lines of

The Enigmas by Jorge Luis Borges

"The Joy, I've Heard, That Isn't Shared, Dies Young"

are the closing lines of

Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton

"Just Enough Light to Make out The Strange Writings, the Star-charts On the Inner Walls."

are the closing lines of

Stone by Charles Simic

"a Kind of Awesome Virginal Guile, Brought the Heart of Man and the Hunger of God to Heel"

are the closing lines of

Missa Sanctorum by William Everson

"lie Gently and Wide to the Light-year Stars, Lie Back, and the Sea Will Hold You."

are the closing lines of

First Lesson by Philip Booth

B. 1925

"Lilac and Star and Bird Twined With the Chant of My Soul, There in the Fragrant Pines and Cedars Dusk and Dim"

are the closing lines of

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd by Walt Whitman

Poem about the death of Abraham Lincoln

"Many a Soldier's Loving Arms About This Neck Have Cross'd and Rested, Many a Soldier's Kiss Dwells on These Bearded Lips"

are the closing lines of

The Wound-Dresser by Walt Whitman

Whitman served as a field nurse during the American Civil War

"moving Unnoticed Into the Ponderous is of the Boulder, Breaking Down Rock"

are the closing lines of

Reindeer Moss on Granite by Margaret Atwood

"My Bright Mane Forever Shall Shine Like the Gold As I Guard O'er the Fold"

are the closing lines of

Night by William Blake

"New Cares May Claim Me, New Loves Inflame Me, She Will Not Blame Me, But Suffer It So."

are the closing lines of

I Need Not Go by Thomas Hardy

1840-1928); English poet

"The Newts in the Creek Had Gone, Already. I Don't Know Where. I Can't Remember Your Face or Anything You Said"

are the closing lines of

September by W. D. Snodgrass

"The Night Gallops on Its Shadowy Mare Shedding Blue Tassels over the Land"

are the closing lines of

Leaning Into the Afternoons by Pablo Neruda

"No Farther Seek His Merits to Disclose, Or Draw His Frailties from Their Dread Abode (There They Alike in Trembling Hope Repose), The Bosom of His Father and His God."

are the closing lines of

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray

"No One Knows Why He Came, or Why He Turned Away, and Did Not Climb the Hill"

are the closing lines of

Snowbanks North of the House by Robert Bly

"Not to Sink Under Being Man and Wife, but Get Some Color and Music out of Life?"

are the closing lines of

The Investment by Robert Frost

1847-1963

"Now Give God Praise. Send up the Strict Articulation of Your Throats, and Say His Name"

are the closing lines of

A Canticle to the Waterbirds by William Everson

"Oh the Road to Mandalay Where the Flyin' Fishes Play, an the Dawn Comes up Like Thunder Outer China Crost the Bay"

are the closing lines of

Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling

"on the Dusty Ground Under My Hand, on This Cheap Grey Paper, I'm Placing a Small Stone, Here: O"

are the closing lines of

War Photo by Margaret Atwood

"One Could Do Worse Than Be a Swinger of Birches"

are the closing lines of

Birches by Robert Frost

"Our Hearts Slow, Quite, Reliable in Their Interlocked Rhythms, the Pulse in Your Thigh Caressing My Cheek. Quite."

are the closing lines of

Quietly by Kenneth Rexroth

1905-1982

"our Lives Are Leaking from the Places, and the Day's Brightness Dwindles Into Stars"

are the closing lines of

Heart and Clock by Charles Reznikoff

"Peaceful, Touched and Atoned, He Sinks Into Sleep. And the Scale Flakes from His Eyes"

are the closing lines of

The Conversion of Saint Paul by William Everson

"Poor Ladies, Do Not Despair- God Will Come to Your Window With Skylarks And Pluck Each Year Like a White Rose."

are the closing lines of

There Has To Be a Jail for Ladies by Thomas Merton

"Quietly They Go, the Intelligent, the Witty, the Brave. I Know. But I Do Not Approve. And I Am Not Resigned."

are the closing lines of

Dirge Without Music by Edna St Vincent Millay

"Right Onward Drive Unharmed, the Port, Well Worth the Cruise, is Near, and Every Wave is Charmed"

are the closing lines of

Terminus by Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803-1882

"Set Every Threadbare Sail, and Give Her to the God of Storms, the Lightening and the Gale"

are the closing lines of

Old Ironsides by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Physician and poet, 1809-1894

"the Signals We Give - Yes or No, or Maybe - Should Be Clear: the Darkness Around Us is Deep."

are the closing lines of

A Ritual To Read To Each Other by William Stafford

1914-1993

"softening Consonants, Darkening Vowels, Till They Sound Like the Sea Moving Icebergs Back and Forth in Its Mouth"

are the closing lines of

The Icelandic Language by Bill Holm

B. 1943

"Suddenly I Realize That if I Stepped out of My Body I Would Break Into Blossom."

are the closing lines of

A Blessing by James Wright

1927-1980

"sweet Exhalations of Timothy and Vetch Go out With the Song of the Bird, the Ravaged Field Grows Wet With Dew"

are the closing lines of

Twilight: After Haying by Jany Kenyon

"that is Where We Leave Him to Go on Hurtling Through the Geat Warp & at Our Own Ineffable Goals"

are the closing lines of

Old Space Cadet Speaking by Anselm Hollo

"That Only I Remember, That Only You Admire, of the Broad Road That Stretches and the Roadside Fire."

are the closing lines of

I Will Make You Brooches by Robert Louis Stevenson

Set to music by Ralph Vaughn Williams as part of his song cycle, "Songs of Travel".

"Their Sons Grow Suicidally Beautiful at the Beginning of October, and Gallop Terribly Against Each Other's Bodies"

are the closing lines of

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright

"then the Time Lifted Them up the Dark Passage They Had No Name For"

are the closing lines of

Another River by W. S. Merwin

"they lay becalmed on the reflection of their Half Moon"

"They Place Her in the Kiln of the Earth, Where Clay is Fired Until the Bones Shine Like Porcelain."

are the closing lines of

Death of a Potter by Linda Pasten

B. 1932

"This Misty Mid Region of Weir: Well I Know, Now, This Dank Tarn of Auber, This Ghoul-haunted Woodland of Weir."

are the closing lines of

Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe

"This One Whom Habit of Memory Propels to the Ground of His Making, Sleeper Only the Mortal Sounds Can Sing Awake, This Blessing Love Gives Again Into Our Arms"

are the closing lines of

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps by Galway Kinnell

"till We Have Built Jerusalem in England's Green and Pleasant Land"

are the closing lines of

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time by William Blake

1757-1827

"to Hear the Soft Ticking of Weeds Springing Back, Undeterred, in the Lane That Leads Nowhere the Dead Want to Go"

are the closing lines of

Old Cemetery by Ted Kooser

"The Train Pulls Down the Track. We Go About Our Business; I Have Turned My Back"

are the closing lines of

The First Leaf by W. D. Snodgrass

"Two Phosphorescent Amoebas Overhead, and Two in the Bottomless Water"

are the closing lines of

The Family by Kenneth Rexroth

"The Magellanic Clouds - Two phosphorescent amoebas overhead, and two in the bottomless water"

"Up, Lad: when the Journey's over There'll Be Time Enough to Sleep."

are the closing lines of

Reveille by A.E. Housman

"Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep."

"Was It a Vision, or a Waking Dream? Fled is the Music, Do I Wake or Sleep?"

are the closing lines of

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

"Watching the Water in the Foreground Dream Reflectively, Taking a View of Delft As It Was, Under a Wide and Darkening Sky."

are the closing lines of

Vermeer by Howard Nemerov

"We Are All So Foolish, My Long Bebop Solo Begins by Saying, So Damn Foolish, We Have Become Beautiful Without Even Knowing It."

are the closing lines of

Nightclub by Billy Collins

"what, Anyway, Was That Sticky Infusion, That Rank Flavor of Blood, That Poetry by Which I Lived?"

are the closing lines of

The Bear by Galway Kinnell

1927-

"What Immortal Hand or Eye Dare Frame Thy Fearful Symmetry?"

are the closing lines of

The Tygre by William Blake

"The Wheat Leans Back Toward Its Own Darkness and I Lean Toward Mine"

are the closing lines of

Beginning by James Wright

"Wheels Shake the Roadbed Stone, the Pistons Jerk and Shove, I Stay up Half the Night to See the Land I Love."

are the closing lines of

Night Journey by Theodore Roethke

1908-1963

"when Death Opens the Back Door You'll Put on Your Carpet Slippers and Stride Out."

are the closing lines of

Courage by Anne Sexton

1928-1974

"when the Grunion Run the Pacific, and the Plunging Shearwaters, Insatiable, Stun Themselves in the Sea"

are the closing lines of

The Poet Is Dead by William Everson

For Robinson Jeffers

"where Even Now an Old Fisherman Only the Pine Tops Can See Sits in the Dry Gray Wood of His Rowboat, Waiting for Pickerel"

are the closing lines of

Fergus Falling by Galway Kinnell

"Where the Vulva and the Cod, Clutched in the Blood's Devouring Paroxysm, Beat Back Death"

are the closing lines of

Missa Defunctorum by William Everson

"Whether Love Talks and Roses Grow and the Sun Breaks at Morning Splattering the Sea With Crimson"

are the closing lines of

To a Dead Man by Carl Sandburg

"Whisper to the Earth, Mother, I Have Found Her, and I Am Safe and Always Have Been"

are the closing lines of

Kaddish by David Ignatow

"the Wild Freedom of the Dance, Extasy Silent Solitary Illumination, Enstasy Real Danger. Gambles. and the Edge of Death.

are the closing lines of

What You Should Know to Be a Poet by Gary Snyder

B.1930, US

"You Confide Yourself to the Darkness. You Step In. The Door Swings Closed."

are the closing lines of

The Door by Margaret Atwood

"your Song Dies and Changes and is Not Here Tomorrow Any More Than the Wind Blowing Ten Thousand Years Ago"

are the closing lines of

Languages by Carl Sandburg

"You Think I'm Not a Goddess? Try Me. This is a Torch Song. Touch Me and You'll Burn."

are the closing lines of

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing by Margaret Atwood

Canadian poet, novelist, critic, b. 1939

"you'v Carried Me Along on This Bloody Voyage, Carry Me Now Into That Cloud, Into the Marvel of This Final Night."

are the closing lines of

Counting Birds by Jim Harrison

American poet and novelist, b.1937

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Facts contributed by:

Allan R. Matthes

saguingoira

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