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Famous July Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Crowley, Aleister
...Then we grew tired of being country mice,
Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice
There, giving holy berries to the moon,
July's thanksgiving for the joys of June.

And you are gone away --- and how shall I
Make August sing the raptures of July?
And you are gone away --- what evil star
Makes you so competent and popular?
How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's
Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else?
I wish you were like me a man forbid,
Banned, outcast, nice socie...Read more of this...



by Silverstein, Shel
...,
I'd search the honky tonks and bars and kill
that man that gave me that awful name.

But it was Gatlinburg in mid July and I had
just hit town and my throat was dry.
I'd thought i'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon in a street of mud
and at a table dealing stud sat the dirty,
mangy dog that named me Sue.

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
from a worn-out picture that my mother had
and I knew the scar on his cheek and his evil eye....Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...s is and this the stain of a violet 
grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom. 

And this, a certain July from Iceland: 
a young woman of that place 
breathed it toward the South. It took root there. 
The color ran true but the plant is small. 

This falling spray of snow-flakes is 
a handful of dead Februaries 
prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez 
of Guatemala. 
 Here's that old friend who 
went by my side so many years: this full...Read more of this...

by Moody, William Vaughn
...After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of Robert Shaw, 
This bright March morn I stand, 
And hear the distant spring come up the land; 
...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ld not fancy one of these; 
But, as I pour this claret, there they are: 
I've gained them--crossed St. Gothard last July 
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed 
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that? 
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself, 
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more, 


Could fancy he too had them when he liked, 
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed, 
He would not have them also in my sense. 
We play one game; I send the ball al...Read more of this...



by Bidart, Frank
...hand:

 as my father said,
"They keep a drink in her hand":

 Name Wallace du Bois
 Box No 128 Chino, Calif.
 Date July 25 ,19 54

Mr Howard Arturian
 I am writing a letter to you this afternoon while I'm in the
mood of writing. How is everything getting along with you these
fine days, as for me everything is just fine and I feel great except for 
the heat I think its lot warmer then it is up there but I don't mind
it so much. I work at the dairy half day and I g...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...awing. 
We were, at that moment, drinking vodka 
and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air, 
although it was July, and she gave me her sweater 
to bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied 
strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine. 
(It had gone into the lake twice.) 
Of such moments is happiness made. 

Forgive us, Father, for we know not. 

Once upon a time we were all born, 
popped out like jelly rolls 
forgetting our fishdom, 
the ...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...New Castle, July 4, 1878

or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in s...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...empted to catch some of the minnows but he went

about it all wrong. So did the children who came on the

Fourth of July weekend.

 The children waded out into the lake and tried to catch the

minnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons and

plastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of human

effort. Their total catch was one minnow. It jumped out of a

can full of water on their table and died under the table, gasp-

ing for watery br...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...et them back to the car.








 THE LAST TIME I SAW

 TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA







The last time we met was in July on the Big Wood River, ten

miles away from Ketchum. It was just after Hemingway had

killed himself there, but I didn't know about his death at the

time. I didn't know about it until I got back to San Francisco

weeks after the thing had happened and picked up a copy of

Life magazine. There was a photograph of Hemingway on the

cover....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...ody speech,
thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone
 out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space,
 so Ah!

 July 14, 1978...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...fsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar
soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,

'I arrive here as if I've ...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...ed and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, t...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896)

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a m...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...er's scythe makes music to my ear; 
I am the mother of all dear delights; 
I am the fairest daughter of the year. 

July

My emblem is the Lion, and I breathe 
The breath of Libyan deserts o'er the land; 
My sickle as a sabre I unsheathe, 
And bent before me the pale harvests stand. 
The lakes and rivers shrink at my command, 
And there is thirst and fever in the air; 
The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand; 
I am the Emperor whose name I bear. 

August

T...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...re Place, your mother’s ghost

At Banquo’s feast, the guest that never could

Be laid to rest.



III

One stifling July day thirty years on we returned to Honley

Where the hamlet snagged on the hillside, fattened now and hollow

And grown grey with money and success: one cottage joined on

To the next, the common land fenced off, the nearby chapel

Turned to a desirable residence, the tombstones garden ornaments,

The heart of Hall Ings Mill crumpled under mechanical ha...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...e of autumn past  
And some of spring approaching fast 50 
And some of April buds and showers  
And some of songs in July bowers  
And all of love; and so this tree ¡ª 
Oh that such our death may be!¡ª 
Died in sleep and felt no pain 55 
To live in happier form again: 
From which beneath heaven's fairest star  
The artist wrought this loved guitar; 
And taught it justly to reply 
To all who question skilfully 60 
In language gentle as thine own; 
Whispering in en...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...h branches tossed and screamed with hate
And city recollects its fate:
Here ruled Martha and Arackcheyev.



July 1914

I

Smells like burning. For four weeks now
The dry ground on the swamplands bakes.
Today even birds did not sing songs
And the aspen-tree does not shake.

Sun has stopped in divine displeasure
Easter rain did not pelt fields hard.
A one-legged passerby came here
And alone said in the yard:

"Awful times near. For...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things