Famous Bear Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Crossing the Bar

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that the dark!...Read more of this...

How can you bear to look at the Neva?

by Anna Akhmatova
 How can you bear to look at the Neva? 
How can you bear to cross the bridges?. 
Not in vain am I known as the grieving one 
Since the time you appeared to me. 
The black angels' wings are sharp, 
Judgment Day is coming soon, 
And raspberry-colored bonfires bloom, 
Like roses, in the snow....Read more of this...

462. Song—The Bannocks o' Bear Meal

by Robert Burns
 Chorus—Bannocks o’ bear meal,
 Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s
 Bannocks o’ barley!


WHA, in a brulyie, will
 First cry a parley?
Never the lads wi’ the
 Bannocks o’ barley,
 Bannocks o’ bear meal, &c.


Wha, in his wae days,
 Were loyal to Charlie?
Wha but the lads wi’ the
 Bannocks o’ barley!
 Bannocks o’ bear meal, &c....Read more of this...

'Tis naught but smoke this people's fire doth bear,

by Omar Khayyam
'Tis naught but smoke this people's fire doth bear,
For my well-being not a soul doth care;
With hands fate makes me lift up in despair,
I grasp men's skirts, but find no succour there....Read more of this...

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

by Delmore Schwartz
 "the withness of the body" --Whitehead


The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy...Read more of this...

Smoky the Bear Sutra

by Gary Snyder
Smokey the Bear Sutra

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
 the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
 Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
 and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
 the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
 to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from...Read more of this...

The Bear

by Galway Kinnell
1
In late winter 
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow 
and bend close and see it is lung-colored 
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear. 

2
I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of...Read more of this...

An Invitation to Dafnis

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 When such a day, blesst the Arcadian plaine,
Warm without Sun, and shady without rain,
Fann'd by an air, that scarsly bent the flowers,
Or wav'd the woodbines, on the summer bowers,
The Nymphs disorder'd beauty cou'd not fear,
Nor ruffling winds uncurl'd the Shepheards hair,
On the fresh grasse, they trod their measures light,
And a long Evening made, from noon, to night.
Come then my...Read more of this...

God of the Open Air

by Henry Van Dyke
 I

Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair
With flowers beneath, above with starry lights,
And set thine altars everywhere,--
On mountain heights,
In woodlands dim with many a dream,
In valleys bright with springs,
And on the curving capes of every stream:
Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings
Of morning, to abide
Upon the secret places of the sea,
And on far islands, where the tide
Visits the...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Foxhunter

by William Butler Yeats
 'Lay me in a cushioned chair;
Carry me, ye four,
With cushions here and cushions there,
To see the world once more.

'To stable and to kennel go;
Bring what is there to bring;
Lead my Lollard to and fro,
Or gently in a ring.

'Put the chair upon the grass:
Bring Rody and his hounds,
That I may contented pass
From these earthly bounds.'

His eyelids droop, his head falls...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLII: Oh! Canst Thou Bear

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Oh! can'st thou bear to see this faded frame,
Deform'd and mangled by the rocky deep?
Wilt thou remember, and forbear to weep,
My fatal fondness, and my peerless fame?
Soon o'er this heart, now warm with passion's flame,
The howling winds and foamy waves shall sweep;
Those eyes be ever clos'd in death's cold sleep,
And all of Sappho perish, but her name!
Yet, if the...Read more of this...

The Truce of the Bear

by Rudyard Kipling
 Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go
By the Pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in --
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless -- toothless, broken of speech,
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over...Read more of this...

Our share of night to bear

by Emily Dickinson
 Our share of night to bear --
Our share of morning --
Our blank in bliss to fill
Our blank in scorning --

Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way!
Here a mist, and there a mist,
Afterwards -- Day!...Read more of this...

Teddy Bear

by Robert William Service
 O Teddy Bear! with your head awry
And your comical twisted smile,
You rub your eyes -- do you wonder why
You've slept such a long, long while?
As you lay so still in the cupboard dim,
And you heard on the roof the rain,
Were you thinking . . . what has become of him?
And when will he play again?

Do you sometimes long for...Read more of this...

Hear now Khayyam's advice, and bear in mind,

by Omar Khayyam
Hear now Khayyam's advice, and bear in mind,
Consort with revellers, though they be maligned,
Cast down the gates of abstinence and prayer,
Yea, drink, and even rob, but, oh! be kind!...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIV: Venus! To Thee

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Venus! to thee, the Lesbian Muse shall sing,
The song, which Myttellenian youths admir'd, 
when Echo, am'rous of the strain inspir'd,
Bade the wild rocks with madd'ning plaudits ring!
Attend my pray'r! O! Queen of rapture! bring
To these fond arms, he, whom my soul has fir'd;
From these fond arms remov'd; yet, still desir'd,
Though love, exulting, spreads his varying wing!
Oh! source of ev'ry...Read more of this...

That Wind I Used to Hear it Swelling

by Emily Brontë
 That wind I used to hear it swelling
With joy divinely deep
You might have seen my hot tears welling
But rapture made me weep 

I used to love on winter nights
To lie and dream alone
Of all the hopes and real delights
My early years had known 

And oh above the rest of those
That coming time should [bear]
Like heaven's own glorious stars they...Read more of this...

Glazunoviana

by John Ashbery
 The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he here too? 
The window giving on shade, 
Is that here too? 
And all the little helps, 
My initials in the sky, 
The hay of an arctic summer night? 

The bear
Drops dead in sight of the window.
Lovely tribes have just moved to the north.
In the flickering evening the martins...Read more of this...

The Galley-Slave

by Rudyard Kipling
 Oh gallant was our galley from her caren steering-wheel
To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel;
The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air,
But no galley on the waters with our galley could compare!

Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold --
We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the...Read more of this...

Evening in a Sugar Orchard

by Robert Frost
 From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
'O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.'
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the...Read more of this...

If Still Your Orchards Bear

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell—if still your orchards bear
Tart apples on the bough—

The early windfall under the tree,
And see the red fruit shine,
I cannot think your thoughts will be
Much different from mine.

Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the...Read more of this...

The Grizzly Bear

by A E Housman
 The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the little child.
The little child is unaware
It has been eaten by the bear....Read more of this...

My Bear

by Robert William Service
 I never killed a bear because
I always thought them critters was
 So kindo' cute;
Though round my shack they often came,
I'd raise my rifle and take aim,
 But couldn't shoot.
Yet there was one full six-feet tall
Who came each night and gobbled all
 The grub in sight;
On my pet garden truck he'd feast,
Until I thought I must at least
 Give him...Read more of this...

Bear In There

by Shel Silverstein
 There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in...Read more of this...

Man Child

by Robert William Service
 All day he lay upon the sand
When summer sun was bright,
And let the grains sift through his hand
With infantile delight;
Just like a child, so soft and fair,
Though he was twenty-five -
An innocent, my mother -care
Had kept so long alive.

Oh it is hard to bear a cross
For five-and-twenty years;
A daft son and a husband's loss
Are woes out-weighing tears.
Yet bright and...Read more of this...

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