10 Best Famous Whippoorwills Poems

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

• All Famous Whippoorwills Poems

 At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide 
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills 
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills 
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, 
I watched the red star rising in the East, 
And while his fellows of the flaming sign 
From prisoning daylight more and more released, 
Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher, 
Out of their locks the waters of the Line 
Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire, 
Rose in the splendor of their curving flight, 
Their dolphin leap across the austral night, 
From windows southward opening on the sea 
What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too, 
Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony. 
Where, from the garden to the rail above, 
As though a lover's greeting to his love 
Should borrow body and form and hue 
And tower in torrents of floral flame, 
The crimson bougainvillea grew, 
What starlit brow uplifted to the same 
Majestic regress of the summering sky, 
What ultimate thing -- hushed, holy, throned as high 
Above the currents that tarnish and profane 
As silver summits are whose pure repose 
No curious eyes disclose 
Nor any footfalls stain, 
But round their beauty on azure evenings 
Only the oreads go on gauzy wings, 
Only the oreads troop with dance and song 
And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng 
Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar 
Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star. 


Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night 
Shines the red flower in her beautiful hair. 
Her breasts are distant islands of delight 
Upon a sea where all is soft and fair. 
Those robes that make a silken sheath 
For each lithe attitude that flows beneath, 
Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers, 
Call them far clouds that half emerge 
Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge, 
Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers 
Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod, 
And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod; 
There always from serene horizons blow 
Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow 
That Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nest 
Each hundred years in Araby the Blest. 


Star of the South that now through orient mist 
At nightfall off Tampico or Belize 
Greetest the sailor rising from those seas 
Where first in me, a fond romanticist, 
The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles 
Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles -- 
Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst, 
O'er planted acres at the jungle's rim 
Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose, 
Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows 
Among the palms where beauty waits for him; 
Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North, 
Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts, 
Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts 
And all the joys a summer can bring forth ---- 


Be thou my star, for I have made my aim 
To follow loveliness till autumn-strown 
Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame 
As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown. 
Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate 
Than reconcilement to a common fate 
Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed 
In hues of high romance. I cannot rest 
While aught of beauty in any path untrod 
Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad 
Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see 
In Life's profusion and passionate brevity 
How hearts enamored of life can strain too much 
In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch. 
Now on each rustling night-wind from the South 
Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth 
Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled 
May point the path through this fortuitous world 
That holds the heart from its desire. Away! 
Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day, 
Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set 
With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret. 
Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here, 
White roads wind up the dales and disappear, 
By silvery waters in the plains afar 
Glimmers the inland city like a star, 
With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze 
And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze, 
Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems! 
How like a fair its ample beauty seems! 
Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: 
What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise, 
Down seething alleys what melodious din, 
What clamor importuning from every booth! 
At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in 
Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!

 I 
But yesterday 
I looked away 
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay 
In golden blots, 
Inlaid with spots 
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots. 

My head was fair 
With flaxen hair, 
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare, 
And, warm with drouth 
From out the south, 
Blew all my curls across my mouth. 

And, cool and sweet, 
My naked feet 
Found dewy pathways through the wheat; 
And out again 
Where, down the lane, 
The dust was dimpled with the rain. 

II 
But yesterday! -- 
Adream, astray, 
From morning's red to evening's dray, 
O'er dales and hills 
Of daffodils 
And lorn sweet-fluting whippoorwills. 

I knew nor cares 
Nor tears nor prayers -- 
A mortal god, crowned unawares 
With sunset -- and 
A scepter-wand 
Of apple-blossoms in my hand! 

The dewy blue 
Of twilight grew 
To purple, with a star or two 
Whose lisping rays 
Failed in the blaze 
Of sudden fireflies through the haze. 

III 
But yesterday 
I heard the lay 
Of summer birds, when I, as they 
With breast and wing, 
All quivering 
With life and love, could only sing. 

My head was leant 
Where, with it, blent 
A maiden's, o'er her instrument; 
While all the night, 
From vale to height, 
Was filled with echoes of delight. 

And all our dreams 
Were lit with gleams 
Of that lost land of reedy streams, 
Along whose brim 
Forever swim 
Pan's lilies, laughing up at him. 

IV 
But yesterday! . . . 
O blooms of May, 
And summer roses -- where away? 
O stars above; 
And lips of love, 
And all the honeyed sweets thereof! -- 

O lad and lass, 
And orchard pass, 
And briered lane, and daisied grass! 
O gleam and gloom, 
And woodland bloom, 
And breezy breaths of all perfume! -- 

No more for me 
Or mine shall be 
Thy raptures -- save in memory, -- 
No more -- no more -- 
Till through the Door 
Of Glory gleam the days of yore.

 The pine woods on the hill,
And the farmhouse miles away,
Showed clear as though behind a lens
Under a sky of peacock blue!
But a blanket of cloud by afternoon
Muffled the earth. And you walked the road
And the clover field, where the only sound
Was the cricket's liquid tremolo.
Then the sun went down between great drifts
Of distant storms. For a rising wind
Swept clean the sky and blew the flames
Of the unprotected stars;
And swayed the russet moon,
Hanging between the rim of the hill
And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard.
You walked the shore in thought
Where the throats of the waves were like whippoorwills
Singing beneath the water and crying
To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees,
Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot,
And looking up saw Jupiter,
Tipping the spire of the giant pine,
And looking down saw my vacant chair,
Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch --
Be brave, Beloved!

 Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry,
The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high,
The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar,
White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar.
I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone.
My home was a hut without orchard or lawn.
It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream,
Nothing else built by man could I see in my dream...
Then...
Ghost-kings came headlong, row upon row,
Gods of the Indians, torches aglow.

They mounted the bear and the elk and the deer,
And eagles gigantic, aged and sere,
They rode long-horn cattle, they cried "A-la-la."
They lifted the knife, the bow, and the spear,
They lifted ghost-torches from dead fires below,
The midnight made grand with the cry "A-la-la."
The midnight made grand with a red-god charge,
A red-god show,
A red-god show,
"A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la."

With bodies like bronze, and terrible eyes
Came the rank and the file, with catamount cries,
Gibbering, yipping, with hollow-skull clacks,
Riding white bronchos with skeleton backs,
Scalp-hunters, beaded and spangled and bad,
Naked and lustful and foaming and mad,
Flashing primeval demoniac scorn,
Blood-thirst and pomp amid darkness reborn,
Power and glory that sleep in the grass
While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass.
They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast,
They rode in infinite lines to the west,
Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.
They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep.
And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.

And the wind crept by
Alone, unkempt, unsatisfied,
The wind cried and cried —
Muttered of massacres long past,
Buffaloes in shambles vast...
An owl said: "Hark, what is a-wing?"
I heard a cricket carolling,
I heard a cricket carolling,
I heard a cricket carolling.

Then...
Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on high
Rose royal old buffaloes, row upon row.
The lords of the prairie came galloping by.
And I cried in my heart "A-la-la, a-la-la,
A red-god show,
A red-god show,
A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la."

Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast,
A scourge and amazement, they swept to the west.
With black bobbing noses, with red rolling tongues,
Coughing forth steam from their leather-wrapped lungs,
Cows with their calves, bulls big and vain,
Goring the laggards, shaking the mane,
Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes,
Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise.

Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranks
With shoulders like waves, and undulant flanks.
Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.
They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep,
And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.

I heard a cricket's cymbals play,
A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags,
And a pan that hung by his shoulder rang,
Rattled and thumped in a listless way,
And now the wind in the chimney sang,
The wind in the chimney,
The wind in the chimney,
The wind in the chimney,
Seemed to say: —
"Dream, boy, dream,
If you anywise can.
To dream is the work
Of beast or man.
Life is the west-going dream-storm's breath,
Life is a dream, the sigh of the skies,
The breath of the stars, that nod on their pillows
With their golden hair mussed over their eyes."
The locust played on his musical wing,
Sang to his mate of love's delight.
I heard the whippoorwill's soft fret.
I heard a cricket carolling,
I heard a cricket carolling,
I heard a cricket say: "Good-night, good-night,
Good-night, good-night,...good-night."