Famous Chilly Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Chilly poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous chilly poems. These examples illustrate what a famous chilly poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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To His Mistresse

by William Strode
 In your sterne beauty I can see
Whatere in Aetna wonders bee;
If coales out of the topp doe flye
Hott flames doe gush out of your eye;
If frost lye on the ground belowe
Your breast is white and cold as snowe:
The sparkes that sett my hart on fire
Refuse to melt your owne desire:
The frost that byndes your chilly breast
With double fire hath...Read more of this...

To One Coming North

by Claude McKay
 At first you'll joy to see the playful snow, 
Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, 
Or waters of the hills that softly flow 
Gracefully falling down a shining stair. 

And when the fields and streets are covered white 
And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, 
Or underneath a spell of heat and light 
The cheerless frozen spots...Read more of this...

144. A Winter Night

by Robert Burns
 WHEN biting Boreas, fell and dour,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;
When Phoebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r,
 Far south the lift,
Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r,
 Or whirling drift:


Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,
While burns, wi’ snawy wreaths up-choked,
 Wild-eddying swirl;
Or, thro’ the mining outlet bocked,
 Down headlong hurl:


List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,
I...Read more of this...

Honours Martyr

by Emily Brontë
 The moon is full this winter night;
The stars are clear, though few;
And every window glistens bright,
With leaves of frozen dew. 

The sweet moon through your lattice gleams
And lights your room like day;
And there you pass, in happy dreams,
The peaceful hours away! 

While I, with effort hardly quelling
The anguish in my breast,
Wander about the silent dwelling,
And cannot think of rest....Read more of this...

Sonnet XC

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XC. Vago augelletto che cantando vai. THE PLAINTIVE SONG OF A BIRD RECALLS TO HIM HIS OWN KEENER SORROW.  Poor solitary bird, that pour'st thy lay;Or haply mournest the sweet season gone:As chilly night and winter hurry on,And day-light fades and summer flies away;If as the cares that swell thy...Read more of this...

Clouds Above The Sea

by Philip Levine
 My father and mother, two tiny figures,
side by side, facing the clouds that move
in from the Atlantic. August, '33.
The whole weight of the rain to come, the weight
of all that has fallen on their houses
gathers for a last onslaught, and yet they
hold, side by side, in the eye of memory.
What was she wearing, you ask, what did he
say to...Read more of this...

The Evil Eye

by Anne Sexton
 It comes oozing
out of flowers at night,
it comes out of the rain
if a snake looks skyward,
it comes out of chairs and tables
if you don't point at them and say their names.
It comes into your mouth while you sleep,
pressing in like a washcloth.
Beware. Beware.

If you meet a cross-eyed person
you must plunge into the grass,
alongside the chilly ants,
fish through the green...Read more of this...

A chilly Peace infests the Grass

by Emily Dickinson
 A chilly Peace infests the Grass
The Sun respectful lies --
Not any Trance of industry
These shadows scrutinize --

Whose Allies go no more astray
For service or for Glee --
But all mankind deliver here
From whatsoever sea --...Read more of this...

Dream Song 63: Bats have no bankers and they do not drink

by John Berryman
 Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
and, in general, bats have it made.
Henry for joining the human race is bats,
known to be so, by few them who think,
out of the cave.

Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,
ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve
with personal radar,
crisisless, kid. Instead of the...Read more of this...

The Faithless Shadows

by Aleksandr Blok
 The faithless shadows of day are running 
And high and clear is the call of bells, 
Steps of the church are blazed as with the lightning, 
Their stones are alive and wait for your light steps. 

You'll here pass and touch the chilly stone, 
That's dressed in awful sanity of span, 
And let the flower of spring be thrown...Read more of this...

The Clinging Vine

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Be calm? And was I frantic? 
You’ll have me laughing soon. 
I’m calm as this Atlantic, 
And quiet as the moon; 
I may have spoken faster
Than once, in other days; 
For I’ve no more a master, 
And now—‘Be calm,’ he says. 

“Fear not, fear no commotion,— 
I’ll be as rocks and sand;
The moon and stars and ocean 
Will envy...Read more of this...

A Daughter of Eve

by Christina Rossetti
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
  And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
  A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;
  Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
  It's winter now I waken.

Talk...Read more of this...

Botany Bay Eclogues 02 - Elinor

by Robert Southey
 (Time, Morning. Scene, the Shore.)

Once more to daily toil--once more to wear
The weeds of infamy--from every joy
The heart can feel excluded, I arise
Worn out and faint with unremitting woe;
And once again with wearied steps I trace
The hollow-sounding shore. The swelling waves
Gleam to the morning sun, and dazzle o'er
With many a splendid hue the breezy strand.
Oh there was once a...Read more of this...

An Autumn Evening

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below 
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow 
And wake among the harps of leafless trees 
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies. 

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar, 
And from a gulf of...Read more of this...

Night Poem

by Margaret Atwood
 There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents...Read more of this...

If Still Your Orchards Bear

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell—if still your orchards bear
Tart apples on the bough—

The early windfall under the tree,
And see the red fruit shine,
I cannot think your thoughts will be
Much different from mine.

Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the...Read more of this...

The Dark House

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Dusk in the rain-soaked garden, 
And dark the house within. 
A door creaked: someone was early 
To watch the dawn begin. 
But he stole away like a thief 
In the chilly, star-bright air: 
Though the house was shuttered for slumber, 
He had left one wakeful there. 

Nothing moved in the garden. 
Never a bird would sing,
Nor shake and scatter...Read more of this...

The Adieu to Love

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LOVE, I renounce thy tyrant sway,
I mock thy fascinating art,
MINE, be the calm unruffled day,
That brings no torment to the heart; 
The tranquil mind, the noiseless scene, 
Where FANCY, with enchanting mien, 
Shall in her right-hand lead along 
The graceful patroness of Song;
Where HARMONY shall softly fling 
Her light tones o'er the dulcet string; 
And with her magic LYRE...Read more of this...

Dream Song 91: Op. posth. no. 14

by John Berryman
 Noises from underground made gibber some
others collected & dug henry up
saying 'You are a sight.'
Chilly, he muttered for a double rum
waving the mikes away, putting a stop
to rumors, pushing his fright

off with the now accumulated taxes
accustomed in his way to solitude
and no bills.
Wives came forward, claiming a new Axis,
fearful for their insurance, though, now, glued
to disencumbered Henry's many ills.

A...Read more of this...

Dreamland

by Edgar Allan Poe
 By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that...Read more of this...

The Death Baby

by Anne Sexton
 1. DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How...Read more of this...

Snow beneath whose chilly softness

by Emily Dickinson
 Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?...Read more of this...

The Lent Lily

by A E Housman
 'Tis spring; come out to ramble 
The hilly brakes around, 
For under thorn and bramble 
About the hollow ground 
The primroses are found. 

And there's the windflower chilly 
With all the winds at play, 
And there's the Lenten lily 
That has not long to stay 
And dies on Easter day. 

And since till girls go maying 
You find the...Read more of this...

169. Address to Wm. Tytler Esq. of Woodhouselee

by Robert Burns
 REVERED defender of beauteous Stuart,
 Of Stuart, a name once respected;
A name, which to love was the mark of a true heart,
 But now ’tis despis’d and neglected.


Tho’ something like moisture conglobes in my eye,
 Let no one misdeem me disloyal;
A poor friendless wand’rer may well claim a sigh,
 Still more if that wand’rer were royal.


My fathers that name...Read more of this...

The Seer

by George William Russell
 OH, if my spirit may foretell
 Or earlier impart,
It is because I always dwell
 With morning in my heart.


I feel the keen embrace of light
 Ere dawning on the view
It sprays the chilly fold of night
 With iridescent dew.


The robe of dust around it cast
 Hides not the earth below,
Its heart of ruby flame, the vast
 Mysterious gloom and...Read more of this...

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