Famous Cloud Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Cloud poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cloud poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cloud poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Conrad Aiken
Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas;
Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken!
Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's
Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers
Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their
footprints.
What, in a few short years, will remain...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
(Rock Lake, Canada)
In this country there is neither measure nor balance
To redress the dominance of rocks and woods,
The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds.
No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention,
No word make them carry water or fire the kindling
Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.
Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens: one wants...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A curious Cloud surprised the Sky,
'Twas like a sheet with Horns;
The sheet was Blue --
The Antlers Gray --
It almost touched the lawns.
So low it leaned -- then statelier drew --
And trailed like robes away,
A Queen adown a satin aisle
Had not the majesty....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Cloud withdrew from the Sky
Superior Glory be
But that Cloud and its Auxiliaries
Are forever lost to me
Had I but further scanned
Had I secured the Glow
In an Hermetic Memory
It had availed me now.
Never to pass the Angel
With a glance and a Bow
Till I am firm in Heaven
Is my intention now....Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
My fire gives forth no smoke-cloud here below,
My stock-in-trade no profit here below,
And you, who call me tavern-haunter, know
There is indeed no tavern here below...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains...Read more of this...
by
Henry David Thoreau
Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields!...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair,
Swimming in the pure quiet air!
Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below
Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow;
Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train
As cool it comes along the grain.
Beautiful cloud! I would I were with thee
In thy calm way o'er land and sea:
To rest on thy unrolling skirts, and look
On...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Jincheng silk flute day mixed Half enter river wind half enter cloud This tune only should heaven on go Human world able get how many times hear In Jincheng, music of silk and flutes mixes together all day, Half goes to the river breeze, half goes to the clouds. Music such as this should only go...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
Man, I suck me tooth when I hear
How dem croptime fiddlers lie,
And de wailing, kiss-me-**** flutes
That bring water to me eye!
Oh, when I t'ink how from young
I wasted time at de fetes,
I could bawl in a red-eyed rage
For desire turned to regret,
Not knowing the truth that I sang
At parang and la commette.
Boy, every damned tune them tune
Of love that...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day,
When clouds are one cloud till the horizon,
Our thinking senses deem the sun away
And say «'tis sunless» and «there is no sun»;
And yet the very day they wrong truth by
Is of the unseen sun's effluent essence,
The very words do give themselves the lie,
The very thought of absence comes from presence:
Even so deem we...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Lead gently, Lord, and slow,
For oh, my steps are weak,
And ever as I go,
Some soothing sentence speak;
That I may turn my face
Through doubt's obscurity
Toward thine abiding-place,
E'en tho' I cannot see.
For lo, the way is dark;
Through mist and cloud I grope,
Save for that fitful spark,
The little flame of hope.
Lead gently, Lord, and slow,
For fear that I may fall;
I know not where...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of bloom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!
Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer, -
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear; -
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Sun retired to a cloud
A Woman's shawl as big --
And then he sulked in mercury
Upon a scarlet log --
The drops on Nature's forehead stood
Home flew the loaded bees --
The South unrolled a purple fan
And handed to the trees....Read more of this...
by
Badger Clark
There is some that likes the city--
Grass that's curried smooth and green,
Theaytres and stranglin' collars,
Wagons run by gasoline--
But for me it's hawse and saddle
Every day without a change,
And a desert sun a-blazin'
On a hundred miles of...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.
The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.
Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn's call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?
Has not this trunk a deed to do
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXCV. I' mi vivea di mia sorte contento. HE FEARS THAT AN ILLNESS WHICH HAS ATTACKED THE EYES OF LAURA MAY DEPRIVE HIM OF THEIR SIGHT. I lived so tranquil, with my lot content,No sorrow visited, nor envy pined,To other loves if fortune were more kindOne pang of mine their thousand...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn
uselessly roaming in the sky, O my sun ever-glorious!
Thy touch has not yet melted my vapor,
making me one with thy light,
and thus I count months and years separated from thee.
If this be thy wish and if this be thy play,
then take this fleeting emptiness...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding...Read more of this...
by
Sandra Cisneros
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and
murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadows of a cloud cross-
ing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried
into a...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life-...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I have seen full many a sight
Born of day or drawn by night:
Sunlight on a silver stream,
Golden lilies all a-dream,
Lofty mountains, bold and proud,
Veiled beneath the lacelike cloud;
But no lovely sight I know
Equals Dinah kneading dough.
Brown arms buried elbow-deep
Their domestic rhythm keep,
As with steady sweep they go
Through the gently yielding dough.[Pg 189]
Maids may vaunt their finer charms—
Naught to...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Cloud poems.