Famous Birds Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Birds poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous birds poems. These examples illustrate what a famous birds poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...rous than they!
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning!
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be
enough
for myself.
20
I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes,
Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself.
America isolated, yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself?
These States—what are they except myself?
I...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...upe—
Or lay a Prima, mad,
And though I had no Gown of Gauze—
No Ringlet, to my Hair,
Nor hopped to Audiences—like Birds,
One Claw upon the Air,
Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls,
Nor rolled on wheels of snow
Till I was out of sight, in sound,
The House encore me so—
Nor any know I know the Art
I mention—easy—Here—
Nor any Placard boast me—
It's full as Opera—
341
After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
The ...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...he season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer,
And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters.
Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound,
Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands,
Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September
Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel.
All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement.
Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had h...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...But still be true 'till I am dead, My pretty thing! then thou shalt sing, As merry as the birds in spring. Thy father cares not for my breast, 'Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest: 'Tis all thine own! and if its hue Be changed, that was so fair to view, 'Tis fair enough for thee, my dove! My beauty, little child, is flown; But thou wi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...f soothing and pacifying—the joy of concord and harmony.
O to go back to the place where I was born!
To hear the birds sing once more!
To ramble about the house and barn, and over the fields, once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
5
O male and female!
O the presence of women! (I swear there is nothing more exquisite to me than the mere
presence
of women;)
O for the girl, my mate! O for the happiness with my mate!
O the young ma...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...tering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet,
Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay,
And small birds sang on every twining spray.
O waving trees, O forest liberty!
Within your haunts at least a man is free,
And half forgets the weary world of strife:
The blood flows hotter, and a sense of life
Wakes i' the quickening veins, while once again
The woods are filled with gods we fancied slain.
Long time I watched, and surely hoped to see
Some goat-...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...the sleep
Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,
Than the man fighting it to keep above it,
Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?
Their bulk in water would be frozen rock
In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow
They will come budding boughs from tree to tree
Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee,
As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm.”
“But why when no one wants you to go on?
Your w...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...thing now but listen,
To accrue what I hear into myself—to let sounds contribute toward me.
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of
sticks cooking my meals;
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice;
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following;
Sounds of the city, and sounds out of the city—sounds of the day and night;
Talkative young ones to those that like them—the loud laugh of wor...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...t green stone.
And a Shape that moveth murkily
In mirrors of ice and night,
Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds,
As death and a shock of evil words
Blast a man's hair with white.
And the cry of the palms and the purple moons,
Or the cry of the frost and foam,
Swept ever around an inmost place,
And the din of distant race on race
Cried and replied round Rome.
And there was death on the Emperor
And night upon the Pope:
And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,
H...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...R> And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopp'd and play'd: Their thoughts I cannot measure, But the least motion which they made, It seem'd a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there w...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ds of primrose lie.
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming;
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid,
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring.
7
In thee my spring of life hath bid the while
A rose unfold beyond the summer's best,
The mystery of joy made manifest
In love's self-answering and awakening smile;
Whereby the lips...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...her none had he; but some
Called him a son of Lancelot, and some said
Begotten by enchantment--chatterers they,
Like birds of passage piping up and down,
That gape for flies--we know not whence they come;
For when was Lancelot wanderingly lewd?
`But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away
Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair
Which made a silken mat-work for her feet;
And out of this she plaited broad and long
A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver threa...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...sp; The moon was setting on the hill, So pale you scarcely looked at her: The little birds began to stir, Though yet their tongues were still. The pony, Betty, and her boy, Wind slowly through the woody dale; And who is she, be-times abroad, That hobbles up the steep rough road? Who is it, but old Susan Gale? Long Susan la...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...to die.'
XIV.
Ballad Continued.
'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood,
Though the birds have stilled their singing;
The evening blaze cloth Alice raise,
And Richard is fagots bringing.
Up Urgan starts, that hideous dwarf,
Before Lord Richard stands,
And, as he crossed and blessed himself,
'I fear not sign,' quoth the grisly elf,
'That is made with bloody hands.'
...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ltars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
T...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...piration was but ichor,
Or some such other spiritual liquor.
XXIV
The very cherubs huddled all together,
Like birds when soars the falcon; and they felt
A tingling to the top of every feather,
And form'd a circle like Orion's belt
Around their poor old charge; who scarce knew whither
His guards had led him, though they gently dealt
With royal manes (for by many stories,
And true, we learn the angels all are Tories.)
XXVII
As things were in this posture...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...s is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush
which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of
Birds of Eastern North America) "it is most at home in secluded
woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable
for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and
exquisite modulation they are unequalled." Its
"water-dripping song"
is justly celebrated.
360. The following lines were stimulated by the...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...Oh, English voices, are there any words
Those tones to tell, those cadences to teach!
As song of thrushes is to other birds,
So English voices are to other speech;
Those pure round 'o's '—those lovely liquid 'l's'
Ring in the ears like sound of Sabbath bells.
Yet I have loathed those voices when the sense
Of what they said seemed to me insolence,
As if the dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.
Many years later, I remember when
One...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...
How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.
THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I ha...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...e.
I understand now, that we need no words,
The snowed branches are light, and more,
The birdcatcher, to catch birds,
Has laid nets on the rivershore.
x x x
How can you look at Nieva,
How can on the bridges you rise?
With a reason I'm sad since the time
You appeared before my eyes.
Sharp are black angels' wings,
The last judgment is coming soon,
And raspberry fires, like roses,
In the white snow bloom.
x x x
I do not count ...Read more of this...
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