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Famous Afternoon Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...olidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the ...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan



...Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,
looking for friendship or an old love's sleeve
or writing letters to his children, lost,
and to his children's children, and to us.
What was his light? of lamp or moon or sun?
Say that it changed, for better or for worse,
sifted by leaves, sifted by snow; on mulberry silk
a slant of witch-light; on...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...ning there.

So for a year it went; and so it went 
For half another year—when, all at once, 
At someone’s tinkling afternoon at home 
I saw that in the eyes of Avon’s wife 
The fire that I had met the day before
In his had found another living fuel. 
To look at her and then to think of him, 
And thereupon to contemplate the fall 
Of a dim curtain over the dark end 
Of a dark play, required of me no more
Clairvoyance than a man who cannot swim 
Will exercise in seeing...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...oat with wide wings
Strained to a bell: 'gainst noon-day glare
You count the streaks and rings.

XXXII.

But at afternoon or almost eve
'Tis better; then the silence grows
To that degree, you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows,
Its bosom does so heave.

XXXIII.

Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,
While my heart, convulsed to really speak,
Lay choking in its pride.

XXXIV.

S...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...e Enoch spoke no word to anyone,
But homeward--home--what home? had he a home?
His home, he walk'd. Bright was that afternoon,
Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either chasm,
Where either haven open'd on the deeps,
Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray;
Cut off the length of highway on before,
And left but narrow breadth to left and right
Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage.
On the nigh-naked tree the Robin piped
Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze
...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...the shore and the ships did the boats ply;
All day long the wains came laboring down from the village.
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting,
Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard.
Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors
Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers.
Even as pilgrims, who journey ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ng is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village, in the electric heat
Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light
Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.

 In that open field
If you do not come too close,...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...itches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children 
and a keg of beer and an
accordion....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking scream...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...ere popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the S...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...hilological excursion 
Into new lands and languages begin? 

BURR

Anon—that is, already. Only Fortune
Gave me this afternoon the benefaction 
Of your blue back, which I for love pursued, 
And in pursuing may have saved your life— 
Also the world a pounding piece of news: 
Hamilton bites the dust of Washington,
Or rather of his horse. For you alone, 
Or for your fame, I’d wish it might have been so. 

HAMILTON

Not every man among us has a friend 
So jealous for t...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...oot on the ice—I have
 a
 small axe to cut holes in the ice; 
Behold me, well-clothed, going gaily, or returning in the afternoon—my brood of tough
 boys
 accompaning me, 
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so well as they
 love to
 be with me, 
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.

Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots, where they are
 sunk
 with heavy stones, (I know the buoys;) 
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Prelu...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...lth I hold? 
What chnce can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? 
And while in late life's late afternoon, 
Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 
Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 
Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 
The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

Brisk wielder of the bi...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...

10
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt, 
Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee; 
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, 
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game;
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves, with my dog and gun by my side. 

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails—she cuts the sparkle and scud; 
My eyes settle the land—I bend at her prow, or shout joyously from the
 deck. 

The boatmen an...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Isolt, 
`I had forgotten all in my strong joy 
To see thee--yearnings?--ay! for, hour by hour, 
Here in the never-ended afternoon, 
O sweeter than all memories of thee, 
Deeper than any yearnings after thee 
Seemed those far-rolling, westward-smiling seas, 
Watched from this tower. Isolt of Britain dashed 
Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand, 
Would that have chilled her bride-kiss? Wedded her? 
Fought in her father's battles? wounded there? 
The King was all fulfilled...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fai...Read more of this...
by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...of his birth, the U.S.A.

AUGUST REIN: 
from a last camp near St. Remy

 I dig in the soft earth all 
 afternoon, spacing the holes 
 a foot or so from the wall. 
 Tonight we eat potatoes, 
 tomorrow rice and carrots. 
 The earth here is like the earth 
 nowhere, ancient with wood rot. 
 How can anything come forth, 

 I wonder; and the days are 
 all alike, if there is more 
 than one day. If there is more 
 of this I will not endure. 
 I...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...ughters.
279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv,
letter of De Quadra
to Philip of Spain:
"In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river.
(The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop,
when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert
at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they
should not be married if the queen pleased."
293. Cf. Purgatorio, v. 133:
 "Ricordi...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry