Famous Arrow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Fire-Fly City

by Henry Van Dyke
 Like a long arrow through the dark the train is darting,
Bearing me far away, after a perfect day of love's delight:
Wakeful with all the sad-sweet memories of parting,
I lift the narrow window-shade and look out on the night. 

Lonely the land unknown, and like a river flowing,
Forest and field and hill are gliding backward still athwart my dream;
Till in...Read more of this...

Day of These Days

by Laurie Lee
 Such a morning it is when love
leans through geranium windows
and calls with a cockerel's tongue.

When red-haired girls scamper like roses
over the rain-green grass;
and the sun drips honey.

When hedgerows grow venerable,
berries dry black as blood,
and holes suck in their bees.

Such a morning it is when mice
run whispering from the church,
dragging dropped ears of harvest.

When the partridge draws back his spring
and...Read more of this...

Ive got an arrow here

by Emily Dickinson
 I've got an arrow here.
Loving the hand that sent it
I the dart revere.

Fell, they will say, in "skirmish"!
Vanquished, my soul will know
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow....Read more of this...

The Arrow And The Song

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found...Read more of this...

All in green went my love riding

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before. 

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer. 

Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before. 

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the...Read more of this...

224. Epistle to Hugh Parker

by Robert Burns
 IN this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme;
Where words ne’er cross’t the Muse’s heckles,
Nor limpit in poetic shackles:
A land that Prose did never view it,
Except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it;
Here, ambush’d by the chimla cheek,
Hid in an atmosphere of reek,
I hear a wheel thrum i’ the neuk,
I hear it—for in vain I leuk.
The...Read more of this...

The Arrow

by William Butler Yeats
 I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,
Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.
There's no man may look upon her, no man,
As when newly grown to be a woman,
Tall and noble but with face and bosom
Delicate in colour as apple blossom.
This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason
I could weep that the old is out of season....Read more of this...

Nimrodel

by J R R Tolkien
 An Elven-maid there was of old,
A shining star by day.
Her mantle white was hemmed with gold,
Her shoes of silver-grey.

A star was bound upon her brows,
A light was on her hair
As sun upon the golden boughs
In Lorien the fair.

Her hair was long, her limbs were white,
And fair she was and free;
And in the wind she went as light
As leaf of...Read more of this...

The Last Rhyme of True Thomas

by Rudyard Kipling
 The King has called for priest and cup,
 The King has taken spur and blade
To dub True Thomas a belted knight,
 And all for the sake o' the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
 They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
 That guards the gates...Read more of this...

Liberty

by James Whitcomb Riley
 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 sight,
And...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXLI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXLI. Fera stella (se 'l cielo ha forza in noi). TO PINE FOR HER IS BETTER THAN TO ENJOY HAPPINESS WITH ANY OTHER.  Ill-omen'd was that star's malignant gleamThat ruled my hapless birth; and dim the mornThat darted on my infant eyes the beam;And harsh the wail, that told a man...Read more of this...

Musketaquid

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Because I was content with these poor fields, 
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 
And found a home in haunts which others scorned, 
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, 
And granted me the freedom of their state, 
And in their secret senate have prevailed 
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, 
Made moon and planets parties...Read more of this...

Loss And Gain

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest...Read more of this...

Why should his tender form expire

by Kalidasa
Why should his tender form expire,
As blossoms perish in the fire?
How could that gentle life endure
The deadly arrow, sharp and sure?

Restore your arrow to the quiver;
To you were weapons lent
The broken-hearted to deliver,
Not strike the innocent....Read more of this...

Cupid Mistaken

by Matthew Prior
 As after noon, one summer's day, 
Venus stood bathing in a river; 
Cupid a-shooting went that way, 
New strung his bow, new fill'd his quiver. 

With skill he chose his sharpest dart: 
With all his might his bow he drew: 
Swift to his beauteous parent's heart 
The too well-guided arrow flew. 

I faint! I die! the Goddess cry'd: 
O...Read more of this...

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!

by Emily Dickinson
 A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!
Your prayers, oh Passer by!
From such a common ball as this
Might date a Victory!
From marshallings as simple
The flags of nations swang.
Steady -- my soul: What issues
Upon thine arrow hang!...Read more of this...

The Eagle And Dove

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IN search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,
In torment writhed
Throughout three long, three weary nights;
And then was cured,
Thanks to all-healing Nature's
Soft, omnipresent balm.
He crept away from out the copse,
And stretch'd his wing--alas!
Lost is all power...Read more of this...

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin
 That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday 
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran 
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began, 
Where sky and Lincolnshire and...Read more of this...

Stars

by Emily Brontë
 Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky? 

All through the night, your glorious eyes
Were gazing down in mine,
And, with a full heart's thankful sighs,
I blessed that watch divine. 

I was at peace, and drank your beams
As they were life to me;
And revelled in my changeful dreams,
Like petrel on...Read more of this...

Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star...Read more of this...

There is no shield which is proof against an arrow

by Omar Khayyam
There is no shield which is proof against an arrow
hurled by Destiny. Grandeur, money, gold all go for
nothing. The more I consider the things of this world,
the more I see that the only good is good, all else is
nothing.
303...Read more of this...

Dancer

by Carl Sandburg
 THE LADY in red, she in the chile con carne red,
Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,
She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade,
The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music,

 I sit in...Read more of this...

Venus Runaway

by Ben Jonson
 Beauties, have ye seen this toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say?
He is Venus' runaway.

She that will but now discover
Where the winged wag doth hover,
Shall to-night receive a kiss,
How or where herself would wish:
But who brings him to his mother,
Shall have that kiss, and another.

He hath marks about...Read more of this...

Barb-Wire Bill

by Robert William Service
 At dawn of day the white land lay all gruesome-like and grim,
When Bill Mc'Gee he says to me: "We've got to do it, Jim.
We've got to make Fort Liard quick. I know the river's bad,
But, oh! the little woman's sick . . . why! don't you savvy, lad?"
And me! Well, yes, I must confess it wasn't hard to see
Their...Read more of this...

John Keats

by George (Lord) Byron
 Who killed John Keats? 
'I,' says the Quarterly, 
So savage and Tartarly; 
''Twas one of my feats.' 

Who shot the arrow? 
'The poet-priest Milman 
(So ready to kill man), 
Or Southey or Barrow.'...Read more of this...

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