Famous Cool Poems by Famous Poets

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

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August

by Elinor Wylie
 Why should this ***** insolently stride 
Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? 
Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, 
Lie heaps of smouldering daisies, sombre-eyed, 
Their copper petals shriveled up with pride, 
Hot with a superfluity of heat, 
Like a great brazier borne along the street 
By captive leopards, black and burning pied.

Are there no water-lilies, smooth...Read more of this...

At Tower Peak

by Gary Snyder
At Tower Peak

 Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing
 Freeways are clogged all day
 Academies packed with scholars writing papers
 City people lean and dark
 This land most real 
 As its western-tending golden slopes
 And bird-entangled central valley swamps
 Sea-lion, urchin coasts
 Southerly salmon-probes 
 Into the aromatic almost-Mexican hills
 Along a range of granite peaks
 The...Read more of this...

Night

by Sidney Lanier
 A pale enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea, 
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.

I am alone and need no more pretend
Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart;
I walk with solitude as with a friend
Enfolded and apart.

We tread an eerie road across the moor
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly...Read more of this...

The Plowboy

by Carl Sandburg
 AFTER the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.

I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses...Read more of this...

A cool fall night

by Matsuo Basho
 At a hermitage:

 A cool fall night--
getting dinner, we peeled
 eggplants, cucumbers....Read more of this...

Clorinda And Damon

by Andrew Marvell
 C.
Damon come drive thy flocks this way.

D.
No : 'tis too late they went astray.

C.
I have a grassy Scutcheon spy'd,
Where Flora blazons all her pride.
The grass I aim to feast thy Sheep :
The Flow'rs I for thy Temples keep.

D.
Grass withers; and the Flow'rs too fade.

C.
Seize the short Joyes then, ere they vade.
Seest thou that unfrequented Cave ?

D.
That den?

C.
Loves Shrine.

D.
But Virtue's...Read more of this...

My Strawberry

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause 
To reckon thee. I ask what cause 
Set free so much of red from heats 
At core of earth, and mixed such sweets 
With sour and spice: what was that strength 
Which out of darkness, length by length, 
Spun all thy shining thread of vine, 
Netting the fields in bond as thine....Read more of this...

Cool Tombs

by Carl Sandburg
 WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin … in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes … in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November...Read more of this...

The Progress of Poetry

by Jonathan Swift
 The Farmer's Goose, who in the Stubble, 
Has fed without Restraint, or Trouble; 
Grown fat with Corn and Sitting still, 
Can scarce get o'er the Barn-Door Sill: 
And hardly waddles forth, to cool 
Her Belly in the neighb'ring Pool: 
Nor loudly cackles at the Door; 
For Cackling shews the Goose is poor.

But when she must be turn'd to graze,...Read more of this...

Nocturne Of Remembered Spring

by Conrad Aiken
 I. 

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to...Read more of this...

A Rolling Stone

by Robert William Service
 There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I;
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.

I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
 And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
 The...Read more of this...

In The Cool Of The Evening

by James Stephens
 I thought I heard Him calling. Did you hear 
A sound, a little sound? My curious ear 
Is dinned with flying noises, and the tree 
Goes -- whisper, whisper, whisper silently 
Till all its whispers spread into the sound 
Of a dull roar. Lie closer to the ground, 
The shade is deep and He may pass us by. 
We...Read more of this...

Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you;
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain—
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the...Read more of this...

A Good Boy

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day, 
I never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play. 

And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood, 
And I am very happy, for I know that I've been good. 

My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair,...Read more of this...

The Native-Born

by Rudyard Kipling
 We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
 We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
 (But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
 And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
 A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,
 But not their hearts that roam!
We...Read more of this...

The Good Part That Shall Not Be Taken Away

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.

Her soul, like the transparent air
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.

And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes;
Subduing e'en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.

She reads to...Read more of this...

Bachin'

by Badger Clark
  Our lives are hid; our trails are strange;
    We're scattered through the West
  In canyon cool, on blistered range
    Or windy mountain crest.
  Wherever Nature drops her ears
    And bares her claws to scratch,
  From Yuma to the north frontiers,
    You'll likely find...Read more of this...

The Cool Web

by Robert Graves
 Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a...Read more of this...

Music

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 My friend went to the piano; spun the stool 
A little higher; left his pipe to cool; 
Picked up a fat green volume from the chest; 
And propped it open. 
Whitely without rest, 
His fingers swept the keys that flashed like swords, 
. . . And to the brute drums of barbarian hordes, 
Roaring and thunderous and weapon-bare, 
An...Read more of this...

O Cool Is the Valley Now

by James Joyce
 O cool is the valley now 
And there, love, will we go 
For many a choir is singing now 
Where Love did sometime go. 
And hear you not the thrushes calling, 
Calling us away? 
O cool and pleasant is the valley 
And there, love, will we stay....Read more of this...

The Strange Lady

by William Cullen Bryant
 The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by, 
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool dear sky; 
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound 
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground. 

A lovely woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight; 
Her...Read more of this...

There is no Breeze to Cool the Heat of Love

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   As those who eat a Luscious Fruit, sunbaked,
     Full of sweet juice, with zest, until they find
   It finished, and their appetite unslaked,
     And so return and eat the pared-off rind;—

   We, who in Youth, set white and careless teeth
     In...Read more of this...

We Real Cool

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 We real cool. We
Left School. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon....Read more of this...

A Subalterns Love Song

by John Betjeman
 Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad...Read more of this...

The Earth Breath

by George William Russell
 FROM the cool and dark-lipped furrows
 Breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland’s purple plumage
 To the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle
 Every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
 And enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses,
 Turns and, wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit
 Finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
 With the eyes of God
Over fields a slave...Read more of this...

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