[Skip Navigation]

Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Judson Stoddard

Edgar Lee Masters

On a mountain top above the clouds
That streamed like a sea below me
I said that peak is the thought of Buddha,
And that one is the prayer of Jesus,
And this one is the dream of Plato,
And that one there the song of Dante,
And this is Kant and this is Newton,
And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare,
And this the hope of the Mother Church,
And this—why all these peaks are poems,
Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds.
And I said “What does God do with mountains
That rise almost to heaven?”
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Spoon River Anthology | 1915
Add Keyword Tags

Separate each tag with a space. You may add as many tags as you'd like to each poem.

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

More Info

This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any Internet device.