10 Best Famous Rainbows Poems

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

• All Famous Rainbows Poems

I rode a rainbow unicorn.
We sailed across the sky.
(I’d fed him lots of Skittles,
since they always make him fly.)
We took off like a comet
on a long and graceful flight.
And everywhere the people stopped
and marveled at the sight.
His path was bright and colorful.
It sparkled, shimmered, shined,
as he arced across the heavens
shooting rainbows from behind.

 --Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2016. All Rights Reserved.

 (Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni)

1

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom -
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, - with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, amon the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

2

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve - dark, deep Ravine-
Thou many-colored, many voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest; -thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odors, and their mighty swinging
To hear - an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;-
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion,
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound-
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

3

Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,-that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live. -I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far and round and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes amon the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears,-still snowy and serene-
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there - how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. -Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply - all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

4

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower; -the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him, and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquility,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands , for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves,
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air.

5

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:-the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:-Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

 I
The irresponsive silence of the land, 
The irresponsive sounding of the sea, 
Speak both one message of one sense to me:--
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand?--
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong and life itself not weak.

II
Thus am I mine own prison. Everything
Around me free and sunny and at ease:
Or if in shadow, in a shade of trees
Which the sun kisses, where the gay birds sing
And where all winds make various murmuring;
Where bees are found, with honey for the bees;
Where sounds are music, and where silences
Are music of an unlike fashioning.
Then gaze I at the merrymaking crew,
And smile a moment and a moment sigh
Thinking: Why can I not rejoice with you?
But soon I put the foolish fancy by:
I am not what I have nor what I do;
But what I was I am, I am even I. 

III
Therefore myself is that one only thing
I hold to use or waste, to keep or give;
My sole possession every day I live, 
And still mine own despite Time's winnowing.
Ever mine own, while moons and seasons bring
From crudeness ripeness mellow and sanitive;
Ever mine own, till Death shall ply his sieve;
And still mine own, when saints break grave and sing.
And this myself as king unto my King
I give, to Him Who gave Himself for me;
Who gives Himself to me, and bids me sing
A sweet new song of His redeemed set free;
he bids me sing: O death, where is thy sting?
And sing: O grave, where is thy victory?

 There was a hope for poetry in the sixties

And for education and society, teachers free

To do as they wanted: I could and did teach

Poetry and art all day and little else -

That was my way.



I threw rainbows against the classroom walls,

Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and

Halls; the children’s eyes were full of stars;

I taught the alphabet in Greek and spoke of

Peace and war in Vietnam, of birth and sex and

Death and immortality - the essences of lyric poetry;

Richards and Ogden on ‘The Meaning of Meaning’,

Schopenhauer on sadness, Nietzsche and Lawrence on

Civilisation and Plato on the Theory of Forms;

I read aloud ‘The Rainbow’ and the children drew

The waterfall with Gudrun bathing, I showed

Them Gauguin and Fra Angelico in gold and a film

On painting from life, and the nude girls

Bothered no-one.



It was the Sixties -

Art was life and life was art and in the

Staff-room we talked of poetry and politics

And passionately I argued with John. a clinical

Psychologist, on Freud and Jung; Anne, at forty

One, wanted to be sterilised and amazingly asked

My advice but that was how it was then: Dianne

Went off to join weekly rep at Brighton, Dave

Clark had given up law to teach a ‘D’ stream in the

Inner city. I was more lucky and had the brightest

Children - Sheila Pritchard my genius child-poet with

Her roguish eye and high bright voice, drawing skulls

In Avernus and burning white chrysanthemums, teasing me

With her long legs and gold salmon-flecked eyes.



It was a surprise when I made it into Penguin Books;

Michael Horovitz busy then as now and madly idealistic

As me; getting ready for the Albert Hall jamboree,

The rainbow bomb of peace and poetry.

 Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time 
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up by the shelling 
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us 
In the darkness of cellars. 

*** 
Here there is no "I". 
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay. 

*** 
On the verge of death, he says: 
I have no trace left to lose:
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand. 
Soon I shall penetrate my life, 
I shall be born free and parentless, 
And as my name I shall choose azure letters... 

*** 
You who stand in the doorway, come in, 
Drink Arabic coffee with us 
And you will sense that you are men like us 
You who stand in the doorways of houses 
Come out of our morningtimes, 
We shall feel reassured to be 
Men like you! 

*** 
When the planes disappear, the white, white doves 
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven 
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession 
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves 
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky 
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me]. 

*** 
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting 
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel 
Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank— 
And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in 
A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass... 

*** 
[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face 
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the 
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle 
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way 
to find one’s identity again. 

*** 
The siege is a waiting period 
Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm. 

*** 
Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment 
Were it not for the visits of the rainbows. 

*** 
We have brothers behind this expanse. 
Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep. 
Then, in secret, they tell each other: 
"Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence: 
"Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us." 

*** 
Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day. 
And ten wounded. 
And twenty homes. 
And fifty olive trees... 
Added to this the structural flaw that 
Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas. 

*** 
A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved 
For my clothing is drenched with his blood. 

*** 
If you are not rain, my love 
Be tree 
Sated with fertility, be tree 
If you are not tree, my love 
Be stone 
Saturated with humidity, be stone 
If you are not stone, my love 
Be moon 
In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon 
[So spoke a woman 
to her son at his funeral] 

*** 
Oh watchmen! Are you not weary 
Of lying in wait for the light in our salt 
And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound 
Are you not weary, oh watchmen? 

*** 

A little of this absolute and blue infinity 
Would be enough 
To lighten the burden of these times 
And to cleanse the mire of this place. 

*** 
It is up to the soul to come down from its mount 
And on its silken feet walk 
By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime 
Friends who share the ancient bread 
And the antique glass of wine 
May we walk this road together 
And then our days will take different directions: 
I, beyond nature, which in turn 
Will choose to squat on a high-up rock. 

*** 
On my rubble the shadow grows green, 
And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat 
He dreams as I do, as the angel does 
That life is here...not over there. 

*** 
In the state of siege, time becomes space 
Transfixed in its eternity 
In the state of siege, space becomes time 
That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow. 

*** 
The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day 
And questions me: Where were you? Take every word 
You have given me back to the dictionaries 
And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz. 

*** 
The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse 
I did not look 
For the virgins of immortality for I love life 
On earth, amid fig trees and pines, 
But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it 
With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure. 

*** 
The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations 
Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph 
How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me. 
I first, I the first one! 

*** 
The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed. 
I put a gazelle on my bed, 
And a crescent of moon on my finger 
To appease my sorrow. 

*** 
The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty! 

*** 
Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health, 
The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease: 
The disease of hope. 

*** 
And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior 
And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me. 

*** 
Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to 
The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the 
Blackness of this tunnel! 

*** 
Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me 
In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces: 
Greetings to my apparition. 

*** 
My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me, 
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees 
A marble epitaph of time 
And always I anticipate them at the funeral: 
Who then has died...who? 

*** 
Writing is a puppy biting nothingness 
Writing wounds without a trace of blood. 

*** 
Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees 
In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall 
To another like a gazelle 
The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us 
Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories 
Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid, 
And that we are the guests of eternity.

 Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
curtains on his windows, fog seeping in
the chimney but a nice warm house 
and an incredibly sweet hooknosed
Eliot he loved me, put me up,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I read him Corso Creeley Kerouac
advised Burroughs Olson Huncke
the bearded lady in the Zoo, the
intelligent puma in Mexico City
6 chorus boys from Zanzibar
who chanted in wornout polygot
Swahili, and the rippling rythyms
of Ma Rainey and Vachel Lindsay.
On the Isle of the Queen
we had a long evening's conversation
Then he tucked me in my long 
red underwear under a silken 
blanket by the fire on the sofa
gave me English Hottie
and went off sadly to his bed,
Saying ah Ginsberg I am glad
to have met a fine young man like you.
At last, I woke ashamed of myself.
Is he that good and kind? Am I that great?
What's my motive dreaming his 
manna? What English Department
would that impress? What failure
to be perfect prophet's made up here?
I dream of my kindness to T.S. Eliot
wanting to be a historical poet
and share in his finance of Imagery-
overambitious dream of eccentric boy.
God forbid my evil dreams come true.
Last nite I dreamed of Allen Ginsberg.
T.S. Eliot would've been ashamed of me.

  "Don't overdo it," Dad yelled, watching me
Play shortstop, collect stamps and shells,
Roll on the grass laughing until I peed my pants.
"Screw him," I said, and grabbed every cowry

I could find, hogged all the books I could
From Heights Library, wore out the baseball
Diamond dawn to dusk, and—parents in Duluth—
Gorged on bountiful Candy dusk to dawn.

Not until a Committee wrote of my poems,
"Enthusiasm should be tempered,"
Did I change my song. I write now
The way I live: calm and sober, steering

Toward the Golden Mean. The Committee
Was right to withhold funds. I'd have bought
A hundred box turtles with lemon-speckled shells,
Flyfished for rainbows six months straight,

Flown to the Great Barrier Reef and dived
Non-stop among pink coral and marble cones,
Living on chocolate malts, peaches, and barbecue.
I'd have turned into a ski bum, married

Ten women in ten states, written nothing
Poetry would glance at twice, instead
Of rising at 5:00 as I do now, writing
'Til noon about matters serious and deep,

Teaching 'til 6:00, eating a low-fat meal
High in fiber and cruciferous vegetables,
Then bed by 9:00, alarm clock set
Five minutes late: my one indulgence of the day.

 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain shadow droops the day. 
She comes! The loosen'd rivulets run; 
The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair; 
Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun, 
Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bar 
To breaths of balmier air; 

Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her, 
About her glance the ****, and shriek the jays, 
Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker, 
The linnet's bosom blushes at her gaze, 
While round her brows a woodland culver flits, 
Watching her large light eyes and gracious looks, 
And in her open palm a halcyon sits 
Patient--the secret splendour of the brooks. 
Come Spring! She comes on waste and wood, 
On farm and field: but enter also here, 
Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blood, 
And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere, 
Lodge with me all the year! 

Once more a downy drift against the brakes, 
Self-darken'd in the sky, descending slow! 
But gladly see I thro' the wavering flakes 
Yon blanching apricot like snow in snow. 
These will thine eyes not brook in forest-paths, 
On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech; 
They fuse themselves to little spicy baths, 
Solved in the tender blushes of the peach; 
They lose themselves and die 
On that new life that gems the hawthorn line; 
Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put them by, 
And out once more in varnish'd glory shine 
Thy stars of celandine. 

She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours, 
But in the tearful splendour of her smiles 
I see the slowl-thickening chestnut towers 
Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles. 
Now past her feet the swallow circling flies, 
A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand; 
Her light makes rainbows in my closing eyes, 
I hear a charm of song thro' all the land. 
Come, Spring! She comes, and Earth is glad 
To roll her North below thy deepening dome, 
But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad, 
And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam, 
Make all true hearths thy home. 

Across my garden! and the thicket stirs, 
The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets, 
The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs, 
The starling claps his tiny castanets. 
Still round her forehead wheels the woodland dove, 
And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew, 
The kingcup fills her footprint, and above 
Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue. 
Hail ample presence of a Queen, 
Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay, 
Whose mantle, every shade of glancing green, 
Flies back in fragrant breezes to display 
A tunic white as May! 

She whispers, 'From the South I bring you balm, 
For on a tropic mountain was I born, 
While some dark dweller by the coco-palm 
Watch'd my far meadow zoned with airy morn; 
From under rose a muffled moan of floods; 
I sat beneath a solitude of snow; 
There no one came, the turf was fresh, the woods 
Plunged gulf on gulf thro' all their vales below 
I saw beyond their silent tops 
The steaming marshes of the scarlet cranes, 
The slant seas leaning oll the mangrove copse, 
And summer basking in the sultry plains 
About a land of canes; 

'Then from my vapour-girdle soaring forth 
I scaled the buoyant highway of the birds, 
And drank the dews and drizzle of the North, 
That I might mix with men, and hear their words 
On pathway'd plains; for--while my hand exults 
Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers 
To work old laws of Love to fresh results, 
Thro' manifold effect of simple powers-- 
I too would teach the man 
Beyond the darker hour to see the bright, 
That his fresh life may close as it began, 
The still-fulfilling promise of a light 
Narrowing the bounds of night.' 

So wed thee with my soul, that I may mark 
The coming year's great good and varied ills, 
And new developments, whatever spark 
Be struck from out the clash of warring wills; 
Or whether, since our nature cannot rest, 
The smoke of war's volcano burst again 
From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West, 
Old Empires, dwellings of the kings of men; 
Or should those fail, that hold the helm, 
While the long day of knowledge grows and warms, 
And in the heart of this most ancient realm 
A hateful voice be utter'd, and alarms 
Sounding 'To arms! to arms!' 

A simpler, saner lesson might he learn 
Who reads thy gradual process, Holy Spring. 
Thy leaves possess the season in their turn, 
And in their time thy warblers rise on wing. 
How surely glidest thou from March to May, 
And changest, breathing it, the sullen wind, 
Thy scope of operation, day by day, 
Larger and fuller, like the human mind ' 
Thy warmths from bud to bud 
Accomplish that blind model in the seed, 
And men have hopes, which race the restless blood 
That after many changes may succeed 
Life, which is Life indeed.

 I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never
could move, come creeping to his window with their stories and with
trays crowded with bright toys.
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby's mind,
and out beyond all bounds;
Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms
of kings of no history;
Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, the Truth
sets Fact free from its fetters.

 The essence of true beauty
Lingers in all-encompassing rainbows
Of your joy and laughter

You hold my hand and smile
As we ensconce ourselves in our world of fire
Our love is all there is

I touch your face
Your gentleness astounds me
I'm held in the honour of your love

Then overnight, the wrold truns suor
61 mInnIts past the ELevenTHH HouRR
I'M A L 0 N E