10 Best Famous Junes Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Junes poems. This is a select list of the best famous Junes poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Junes poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of junes poems.

• All Famous Junes Poems

 To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived.
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

 I. THE FLOWER'S NAME

Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

II.

Down this side ofthe gravel-walk
She went while her rope's edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

III.

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

IV.

Roses, if I live and do well,
I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now; for she lingers
There, like sunshine over the ground,
And ever I see her soft white fingers
Searching after the bud she found.

V.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved for ever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not:
Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle---
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

VI.

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow ber, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
---Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces---
Roses, you are not so fair after all!


II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS.

Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,
Printed on paper and bound in leather,
Last month in the white of a matin-prime
Just when the birds sang all together.

II.

Into the garden I brought it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
And then proceeded to my revenge.

III.

Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:
Into this crevice I dropped our friend. 

IV.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked,
---At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate:
Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked
To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;
Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

V.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, _de profundis, accentibus ltis,
Cantate!_ quoth I, as I got a rake;
And up I fished his delectable treatise.

VI.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,
With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow:
Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!
Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?
Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

VII.

How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover? 
---When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,
And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

VIII.

All that life and fun and romping,
All that frisking and twisting and coupling,
While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping
And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!
As if you bad carried sour John Knox
To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

IX.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, _sufficit!_
See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade is not', 
And you mentioned it was dusty -- `all was dry and all was hot'. 

True, the bush `hath moods and changes' -- and the bushman hath 'em, too, 
For he's not a poet's dummy -- he's a man, the same as you; 
But his back is growing rounder -- slaving for the absentee -- 
And his toiling wife is thinner than a country wife should be. 
For we noticed that the faces of the folks we chanced to meet 
Should have made a greater contrast to the faces in the street; 
And, in short, we think the bushman's being driven to the wall, 
And it's doubtful if his spirit will be `loyal thro' it all'. 

Though the bush has been romantic and it's nice to sing about, 
There's a lot of patriotism that the land could do without -- 
Sort of BRITISH WORKMAN nonsense that shall perish in the scorn 
Of the drover who is driven and the shearer who is shorn, 
Of the struggling western farmers who have little time for rest, 
And are ruined on selections in the sheep-infested West; 
Droving songs are very pretty, but they merit little thanks 
From the people of a country in possession of the Banks. 

And the `rise and fall of seasons' suits the rise and fall of rhyme, 
But we know that western seasons do not run on schedule time; 
For the drought will go on drying while there's anything to dry, 
Then it rains until you'd fancy it would bleach the sunny sky -- 
Then it pelters out of reason, for the downpour day and night 
Nearly sweeps the population to the Great Australian Bight. 
It is up in Northern Queensland that the seasons do their best, 
But it's doubtful if you ever saw a season in the West; 
There are years without an autumn or a winter or a spring, 
There are broiling Junes, and summers when it rains like anything. 

In the bush my ears were opened to the singing of the bird, 
But the `carol of the magpie' was a thing I never heard. 
Once the beggar roused my slumbers in a shanty, it is true, 
But I only heard him asking, `Who the blanky blank are you?' 
And the bell-bird in the ranges -- but his `silver chime' is harsh 
When it's heard beside the solo of the curlew in the marsh. 

Yes, I heard the shearers singing `William Riley', out of tune, 
Saw 'em fighting round a shanty on a Sunday afternoon, 
But the bushman isn't always `trapping brumbies in the night', 
Nor is he for ever riding when `the morn is fresh and bright', 
And he isn't always singing in the humpies on the run -- 
And the camp-fire's `cheery blazes' are a trifle overdone; 
We have grumbled with the bushmen round the fire on rainy days, 
When the smoke would blind a bullock and there wasn't any blaze, 
Save the blazes of our language, for we cursed the fire in turn 
Till the atmosphere was heated and the wood began to burn. 
Then we had to wring our blueys which were rotting in the swags, 
And we saw the sugar leaking through the bottoms of the bags, 
And we couldn't raise a chorus, for the toothache and the cramp, 
While we spent the hours of darkness draining puddles round the camp. 

Would you like to change with Clancy -- go a-droving? tell us true, 
For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, 
And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock 
To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, 
And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome 
If you had a wife and children and a lot of bills at home. 

Did you ever guard the cattle when the night was inky-black, 
And it rained, and icy water trickled gently down your back 
Till your saddle-weary backbone fell a-aching to the roots 
And you almost felt the croaking of the bull-frog in your boots -- 
Sit and shiver in the saddle, curse the restless stock and cough 
Till a squatter's irate dummy cantered up to warn you off? 
Did you fight the drought and pleuro when the `seasons' were asleep, 
Felling sheoaks all the morning for a flock of starving sheep, 
Drinking mud instead of water -- climbing trees and lopping boughs 
For the broken-hearted bullocks and the dry and dusty cows? 

Do you think the bush was better in the `good old droving days', 
When the squatter ruled supremely as the king of western ways, 
When you got a slip of paper for the little you could earn, 
But were forced to take provisions from the station in return -- 
When you couldn't keep a chicken at your humpy on the run, 
For the squatter wouldn't let you -- and your work was never done; 
When you had to leave the missus in a lonely hut forlorn 
While you `rose up Willy Riley' -- in the days ere you were born? 

Ah! we read about the drovers and the shearers and the like 
Till we wonder why such happy and romantic fellows strike. 
Don't you fancy that the poets ought to give the bush a rest 
Ere they raise a just rebellion in the over-written West? 
Where the simple-minded bushman gets a meal and bed and rum 
Just by riding round reporting phantom flocks that never come; 
Where the scalper -- never troubled by the `war-whoop of the push' -- 
Has a quiet little billet -- breeding rabbits in the bush; 
Where the idle shanty-keeper never fails to make a draw, 
And the dummy gets his tucker through provisions in the law; 
Where the labour-agitator -- when the shearers rise in might -- 
Makes his money sacrificing all his substance for The Right; 
Where the squatter makes his fortune, and `the seasons rise and fall', 
And the poor and honest bushman has to suffer for it all; 
Where the drovers and the shearers and the bushmen and the rest 
Never reach the Eldorado of the poets of the West. 

And you think the bush is purer and that life is better there, 
But it doesn't seem to pay you like the `squalid street and square'. 
Pray inform us, City Bushman, where you read, in prose or verse, 
Of the awful `city urchin who would greet you with a curse'. 
There are golden hearts in gutters, though their owners lack the fat, 
And we'll back a teamster's offspring to outswear a city brat. 
Do you think we're never jolly where the trams and buses rage? 
Did you hear the gods in chorus when `Ri-tooral' held the stage? 
Did you catch a ring of sorrow in the city urchin's voice 
When he yelled for Billy Elton, when he thumped the floor for Royce? 
Do the bushmen, down on pleasure, miss the everlasting stars 
When they drink and flirt and so on in the glow of private bars? 

You've a down on `trams and buses', or the `roar' of 'em, you said, 
And the `filthy, dirty attic', where you never toiled for bread. 
(And about that self-same attic -- Lord! wherever have you been? 
For the struggling needlewoman mostly keeps her attic clean.) 
But you'll find it very jolly with the cuff-and-collar push, 
And the city seems to suit you, while you rave about the bush. 

. . . . . 

You'll admit that Up-the Country, more especially in drought, 
Isn't quite the Eldorado that the poets rave about, 
Yet at times we long to gallop where the reckless bushman rides 
In the wake of startled brumbies that are flying for their hides; 
Long to feel the saddle tremble once again between our knees 
And to hear the stockwhips rattle just like rifles in the trees! 
Long to feel the bridle-leather tugging strongly in the hand 
And to feel once more a little like a native of the land. 
And the ring of bitter feeling in the jingling of our rhymes 
Isn't suited to the country nor the spirit of the times. 
Let us go together droving, and returning, if we live, 
Try to understand each other while we reckon up the div.

 A little soul scarce fledged for earth
Takes wing with heaven again for goal
Even while we hailed as fresh from birth
A little soul.

Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,
Not knowing beyond this blind world's girth
What things are writ in heaven's full scroll.

Our fruitfulness is there but dearth,
And all things held in time's control
Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth
A little soul.



The little feet that never trod
Earth, never strayed in field or street,
What hand leads upward back to God
The little feet?

A rose in June's most honied heat,
When life makes keen the kindling sod,
Was not so soft and warm and sweet.

Their pilgrimage's period
A few swift moons have seen complete
Since mother's hands first clasped and shod
The little feet.



The little hands that never sought
Earth's prizes, worthless all as sands,
What gift has death, God's servant, brought
The little hands?

We ask: but love's self silent stands,
Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought
To search where death's dim heaven expands.

Ere this, perchance, though love know nought,
Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,
Where hands of guiding angels caught
The little hands.



The little eyes that never knew
Light other than of dawning skies,
What new life now lights up anew
The little eyes?

Who knows but on their sleep may rise
Such light as never heaven let through
To lighten earth from Paradise?

No storm, we know, may change the blue
Soft heaven that haply death descries
No tears, like these in ours, bedew
The little eyes.



Was life so strange, so sad the sky,
So strait the wide world's range,
He would not stay to wonder why
Was life so strange?

Was earth's fair house a joyless grange
Beside that house on high
Whence Time that bore him failed to estrange?

That here at once his soul put by
All gifts of time and change,
And left us heavier hearts to sigh
'Was life so strange?'



Angel by name love called him, seeing so fair
The sweet small frame;
Meet to be called, if ever man's child were,
Angel by name.

Rose-bright and warm from heaven's own heart he came,
And might not bear
The cloud that covers earth's wan face with shame.

His little light of life was all too rare
And soft a flame:
Heaven yearned for him till angels hailed him there
Angel by name.



The song that smiled upon his birthday here
Weeps on the grave that holds him undefiled
Whose loss makes bitterer than a soundless tear
The song that smiled.

His name crowned once the mightiest ever styled
Sovereign of arts, and angel: fate and fear
Knew then their master, and were reconciled.

But we saw born beneath some tenderer sphere
Michael, an angel and a little child,
Whose loss bows down to weep upon his bier
The song that smiled.

 So, Calchas, on the sacred Palatine, 
You thought of Mopsus, and o'er wastes of sea 
A flower brought your message. I divine 
(Through my deep art) the kindly mockery 
That played about your lips and in your eyes, 
Plucking the frail leaf, while you dreamed of home. 
Thanks for the silent greeting! I shall prize, 
Beyond June's rose, the scentless flower of Rome. 
All the Campagna spreads before my sight, 
The mouldering wall, the Caesars' tombs unwreathed, 
Rome and the Tiber, and the yellow light, 
Wherein the honey-colored blossom breathed. 
But most I thank it--egoists that we be! 
For proving then and there you thought of me.

 Gloomily the clouds are sailing
O'er the dimly moonlit sky;
Dolefully the wind is wailing;
Not another sound is nigh; 
Only I can hear it sweeping
Heathclad hill and woodland dale,
And at times the nights's sad weeping
Sounds above its dying wail.

Now the struggling moonbeams glimmer;
Now the shadows deeper fall,
Till the dim light, waxing dimmer,
Scarce reveals yon stately hall.

All beneath its roof are sleeping;
Such a silence reigns around
I can hear the cold rain steeping
Dripping roof and plashy ground.

No: not all are wrapped in slumber;
At yon chamber window stands
One whose years can scarce outnumber
The tears that dew his clasped hands.

From the open casement bending
He surveys the murky skies,
Dreary sighs his bosom rending;
Hot tears gushing from his eyes.

Now that Autumn's charms are dying,
Summer's glories long since gone,
Faded leaves on damp earth lying,
Hoary winter striding on, --

'Tis no marvel skies are lowering,
Winds are moaning thus around,
And cold rain, with ceaseless pouring,
Swells the streams and swamps the ground;

But such wild, such bitter grieving
Fits not slender boys like thee;
Such deep sighs should not be heaving
Breasts so young as thine must be.

Life with thee is only springing;
Summer in thy pathway lies;
Every day is nearer bringing
June's bright flowers and glowing skies.

Ah, he sees no brighter morrow!
He is not too young to prove
All the pain and all the sorrow
That attend the steps of love.

 Love is enough: cherish life that abideth,
Lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him;
For who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth,
On what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth?
And what is the joy of man's life that ye blame him
For his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire? 

Ye who tremble for death, or the death of desire,
Pass about the cold winter-tide garden and ponder
On the rose in his glory amidst of June's fire,
On the languor of noontide that gathered the thunder,
On the morn and its freshness, the eve and its wonder:
Ye may make it no more--shall Spring come to awaken? 

Live on, for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken
By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning,
When the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
And the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.

 TO me, fair friend, you never can be old; 
For as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
Such seems your beauty still. Three Winters cold 
Have from the forests shook three Summers' pride; 
Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn'd 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, 
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: 
 For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred: 
 Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

 FAME.

See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute grey lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!

LOVE.

So, the year's done with
(_Love me for ever!_)
All March begun with,
April's endeavour;
May-wreaths that bound me
June needs must sever;
Now snows fall round me,
Quenching June's fever---
(_Love me for ever!_)

 The green grass is growing,
The morning wind is in it,
'Tis a tune worth the knowing,
Though it change every minute.

'Tis a tune of the spring,
Every year plays it over,
To the robin on the wing,
To the pausing lover.

O'er ten thousand thousand acres
Goes light the nimble zephyr,
The flowers, tiny feet of shakers,
Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!
They summon thee, dearest,
Saying; "We have drest for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.

"O hasten, 'tis our time,
Ere yet the red summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
Loved of bee, the tawny hummer.

"O pride of thy race!
Sad in sooth it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,—
We pour New England flowers.

"Fairest! choose the fairest members
Of our lithe society;
June's glories and September's
Show our love and piety.

"Thou shalt command us all,
April's cowslip, summer's clover
To the gentian in the fall,
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

"O come, then, quickly come,
We are budding, we are blowing,
And the wind which we perfume
Sings a tune that's worth thy knowing."