Famous Colours Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Petition for an Absolute Retreat

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Give me, O indulgent Fate! 
Give me yet before I die
A sweet, but absolute retreat,
'Mongst paths so lost and trees so high
That the world may ne'er invade
Through such windings and such shade
My unshaken liberty.

No intruders thither come
Who visit but to be from home!
None who their vain moments pass
Only studious of their glass;
News, that charm to list'ning ears,
That false alarm...Read more of this...

the ordinary again

by Rg Gregory
 (1) the ordinary

you are not interested in me
a receiver of food and a giver of ****
my brain knuckled under

i have rendered the skills of my 
limbs to generations of caesars
and caesar's gods have siphoned off my spirit
by day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers
my own pieces travel through the night yearning for union

in every land i...Read more of this...

Corinnas Going A-Maying

by Robert Herrick
 Get up, get up for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air!
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangled herb and tree.
Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east
Above an hour since,—yet you not dressed;
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

Endimion and Phoebe (excerpts)

by Michael Drayton
 In Ionia whence sprang old poets' fame,
From whom that sea did first derive her name,
The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,
Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,
Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,
First unto Athens brought philosophy:
In this fair region on a goodly plain,
Stretching her bounds unto the bord'ring main,
The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,
Smiling to see the ocean billows play:
Latmus,...Read more of this...

Lovers How They Come And Part

by Robert Herrick
 A Gyges ring they bear about them still,
To be, and not seen when and where they will;
They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,
They fall like dew, and make no noise at all:
So silently they one to th' other come,
As colours steal into the pear or plum,
And air-like, leave no pression to be seen
Where'er they met, or parting...Read more of this...

The Progress of Poesy

by Thomas Gray
 A Pindaric Ode

Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers that round them blow
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign;
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it...Read more of this...

Winter Journey Over The Hartz Mountains

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [The following explanation is necessary, in order 
to make this ode in any way intelligible. The Poet is supposed to 
leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition 
in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal 
friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode 
alternately describes, in a...Read more of this...

this is the garden: colours come and go

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
this is the garden: colours come and go 
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering 
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade...Read more of this...

symptom

by Rg Gregory
 begin at a chapter you have read before
with new words and a new hand turning
the pages where the print vibrates and the white
paper runs in a stream of many colours

stand with a new light at your shoulder
and wander slowly through familiar doors
into tomorrows no shadows yet have trodden
or come in an old way to a new place

and there i...Read more of this...

Whilst it is prime

by Edmund Spenser
FRESH Spring, the herald of loves mighty king, 
In whose cote-armour richly are displayd 
All sorts of flowers, the which on earth do spring, 
In goodly colours gloriously arrayd¡ª 
Goe to my love, where she is carelesse layd, 5 
Yet in her winters bowre not well awake; 
Tell her the joyous time wil not be staid, 
Unlesse she doe him...Read more of this...

Sonnet XVII

by Edmund Spenser
 THe glorious portraict of that Angels face,
Made to amaze weake mens confused skil:
and this worlds worthlesse glory to embase,
what pen, what pencill can expresse her fill?
For though he colours could deuize at will,
and eke his learned hand at pleasure guide:
least trembling it his wormanship should spill,
yet many wondrous things there are beside.
The sweet eye-glaunces, that like arrowes glide,
the charming...Read more of this...

Sestina IV

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA IV. Chi è fermato di menar sua vita. HE PRAYS GOD TO GUIDE HIS FRAIL BARK TO A SAFE PORT.  Who is resolved to venture his vain lifeOn the deceitful wave and 'mid the rocks,Alone, unfearing death, in little bark,Can never be far distant from his end:Therefore betimes he should...Read more of this...

The Basket

by Amy Lowell
 I
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies 
white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness 
sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The 
air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow...Read more of this...

The Match

by Andrew Marvell
 Nature had long a Treasure made
Of all her choisest store;
Fearing, when She should be decay'd,
To beg in vain for more.

Her Orientest Colours there,
And Essences most pure,
With sweetest Perfumes hoarded were,
All as she thought secure.

She seldom them unlock'd, or us'd,
But with the nicest care;
For, with one grain of them diffus'd,
She could the World repair.

But likeness soon together drew
What she did...Read more of this...

Chorus of Eden Spirits

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 HEARKEN, oh hearken! let your souls behind you 
Turn, gently moved! 
Our voices feel along the Dread to find you, 
O lost, beloved! 
Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels, 
They press and pierce: 
Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,— 
Voice throbs in verse. 
We are but orphaned spirits left in Eden 
A time ago: 
God gave us golden...Read more of this...

What Is Life?

by John Clare
 Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
Too ample in itself for human sight ?
An absolute Self--an element ungrounded--
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
[Image]By encroach of darkness made ?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death ?...Read more of this...

Childhood

by Richard Aldington
 I 

The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood 
Put me out of love with God. 
I can't believe in God's goodness; 
I can believe 
In many avenging gods. 
Most of all I believe 
In gods of bitter dullness, 
Cruel local gods 
Who scared my childhood. 

II 

I've seen people put 
A chrysalis in a match-box, 
"To see," they...Read more of this...

Lepanto

by G K Chesterton
 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...

The Boston Athenaeum

by Amy Lowell
 Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,
How often in some distant gallery,
Gained by a little painful spiral stair,
Far from the halls and corridors where throng
The crowd of casual readers, have I passed
Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor
Of some retired nook, all lined with books,
Where reverie and quiet reign supreme!
Above, below, on every side, high shelved
From careless grasp...Read more of this...

To Be Blind

by A S J Tessimond
 Is it sounds
 converging,
Sounds
 nearing,
Infringement,
 impingement,
Impact,
 contact
With surfaces of the sounds
Or surfaces without the sounds:
Diagrams,
 skeletal,
 strange?

Is it winds
 curling round invisible corners?
Polyphony of perfumes?
Antennae discovering an axis,
 erecting the architecture of a world?

Is it
 orchestration of the finger-tips,
 graph of a fugue:
Scaffold for colours:
 colour itself being god?...Read more of this...

Senses

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. 
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. 

Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various 
colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim. 

My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame 
and place them before the altar...Read more of this...

The Death of Captain Ward

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas about the beginning of the past century
Billy Bowls was pressed into the British Navy,
And conveyed on board the "Waterwitch" without delay,
Scarce getting time to bid farewell to the villagers of Fairway. 

And once on board the "Waterwitch" he resolved to do his duty,
And if he returned safe home he'd marry Nelly Blyth, his beauty;
And he'd fight for old...Read more of this...

Summer Colours

by Fenny Sterenborg
 Long curls
lightest blond
like silver and gold
in the saffron sun

Summer dresses
cool white
show lots of skin
golden brown

Painted toenails
fierce red
in summer shoes
walk by

and catch eyes
green and blue
behind black shades
against the gleam


June 20, 2006
©2006 Fenny...Read more of this...

Song of the Colours: by Taj Mahomed

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Dear is my inlaid sword; across the Border
   It brought me much reward; dear is my Mistress,
   The jewelled treasure of an amorous hour.
   Dear beyond measure are my dreams and Fancies.

   These I adore; for these I live and labour,
   Holding them more than sword or...Read more of this...

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