Famous Blackbirds Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Blackbirds poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous blackbirds poems. These examples illustrate what a famous blackbirds poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
It can't be "Summer"!
That -- got through!
It's early -- yet -- for "Spring"!
There's that long town of White -- to cross --
Before the Blackbirds sing!
It can't be "Dying"!
It's too Rouge --
The Dead shall go in White --
So Sunset shuts my question down
With Cuffs of Chrysolite!...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
(To L. L.)
Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,
Were it worth the pleasure,
We never could learn love's song,
We are parted too long.
Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead,
Could we live it all over again,
Were it worth the pain!
I remember we used to meet
By an ivied seat,
And you warbled each pretty word
With the air of a bird;
And...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Where have you been, South Wind, this May-day morning,—
With larks aloft, or skimming with the swallow,
Or with blackbirds in a green, sun-glinted thicket?
Oh, I heard you like a tyrant in the valley;
Your ruffian haste shook the young, blossoming orchards;
You clapped rude hands, hallooing round the chimney,
And white your pennons streamed along the river.
You...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHILE winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
An’ bar the doors wi’ driving snaw,
An’ hing us owre the ingle,
I set me down to pass the time,
An’ spin a verse or twa o’ rhyme,
In hamely, westlin jingle.
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
Ben to the chimla lug,
I grudge a wee the great-folk’s gift,
That live sae bien an’ snug:
...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
1
When the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
The winter...Read more of this...
by
Richard Aldington
Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind
Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breaks
Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight.
The shining of the sun upon the water
Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals
In a long wavering irregular flight.
The water is cold to the eye
As the wind to the cheek.
In the budding chestnuts...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie!
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting-house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlor,
...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
Among the taller wood with ivy hung,
The old fox plays and dances round her young.
She snuffs and barks if any passes by
And swings her tail and turns prepared to fly.
The horseman hurries by, she bolts to see,
And turns agen, from danger never free.
If any stands she runs among the poles
And barks and snaps and drive them in the holes.
The...Read more of this...
by
Erin Belieu
Writing from Boston, where sky is simply
property, a flourish topping crowds
of condos and historic real estate,
I'm trying to imagine blue sky:
the first time, where it happened,
what I was becoming. Being taken there
by car, from a town so newly born that grass
still accounted all distance, an explanation
drawn in measureless yellows, a tone
stubbling the whole world, ten minutes away.
Consider now how...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
FLOW gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering Fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton,...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
...Read more of this...
by
Edward Thomas
She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone owned
Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime
And had her kittens duly drowned.
In Spring, nevertheless, this cat
Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,
And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,
As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails.
I loathed and hated her for this;
One speckle on a thrush’s breast
Was worth a...Read more of this...
by
Craig Raine
A pair of blackbirds
warring in the roses,
one or two poppies
losing their heads,
the trampled lawn
a battlefield of dolls.
Branch by pruned branch,
a child has climbed
the family tree
to queen it over us:
we groundlings search
the flowering cherry
till we find her face,
its pale prerogative
to rule our hearts.
Sir Walter Raleigh
trails his comforter
about the muddy garden,
a full-length Hilliard
in miniature hose
and padded pants.
How rakishly upturned
his fine moustache
of...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen
A deal I'd sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,'
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
'Stretch bones till the daylight come
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'
Upon a grey old battered tombstone
In Glendalough beside the stream
Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,
He stretched his bones and fell in a dream
Of sun and moon that...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
FOR the fairest maid in Hampton
They needed not to search,
Who saw young Anna favor
Come walking into church,--
Or bringing from the meadows,
At set of harvest-day,
The frolic of the blackbirds,
The sweetness of the hay.
Now the weariest of all mothers,
The saddest two years' bride,
She scowls in the face of her husband,
And spurns her child aside.
"Rake out the red coals, goodman,--
For there the...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Down by the beautiful Lakes of Killarney,
Off times I have met my own dear Barney,
In the sweet summer time of the year,
In the silvery moonlight so clear,
I've rambled with my sweetheart Barney,
Along the green banks of the Lakes of Killarney.
The Lakes of Killarney are most lovely to be seen
In the summer season when nature's face is green,
Especially in...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The pleasant task with the window open and the shadow of the green leaves and the passage of the sun on the ruddy paper, maintains the gentle violence of its silence in our good and pensive house.
And the flowers bend nimbly and the large fruits shine from branch to branch, and the blackbirds, the bullfinches and the chaffinches sing and...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas on the 16th of October, in the year 1894,
I was invited to Inverness, not far from the sea shore,
To partake of a banquet prepared by the Heatherblend Club,
Gentlemen who honoured me without any hubbub.
The banquet was held in the Gellion Hotel,
And the landlord, Mr Macpherson, treated me right well;
Also the servant maids were very kind to me,
Especially...Read more of this...
by
Katharine Tynan
'O spare my cherries in the net,'
Brother Benignus prayed; 'and I
Summer and winter, shine and wet,
Will pile the blackbirds' table high.'
'O spare my youngling peas,' he prayed,
'That for the Abbot's table be;
And every blackbird shall be fed;
Yea, they shall have their fill,' said he.
His prayer, his vow, the blackbirds heard,
And spared his shining garden-plot....Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O WHA will to Saint Stephen’s House,
To do our errands there, man?
O wha will to Saint Stephen’s House
O’ th’ merry lads of Ayr, man?
Or will we send a man o’ law?
Or will we send a sodger?
Or him wha led o’er Scotland a’
The meikle Ursa-Major? 1
Come, will ye court a noble lord,
Or buy a score...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart --
I walk by sedge and brown river rot
to where the old lake boats went daily out.
All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen
in upon itself. Even the channel's
grown over. Once we set sail here
for Bob-Lo, the Brewery Isles, Cleveland.
We would have gone as far...Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
Farewell to the bushy clump close to the river
And the flags where the butter-bump hides in forever;
Farewell to the weedy nook, hemmed in by waters;
Farewell to the miller's brook and his three bonny daughters;
Farewell to them all while in prison I lie—
In the prison a thrall sees naught but the sky.
Shut out are the green fields and birds in...Read more of this...
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