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Famous Daffodil Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...Absent Place -- an April Day --
Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow --

Drift may block within it
Deeper than without --
Daffodil delight but
Him it duplicate --...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...issi here and there
Stand separate in sweet austerity,
Dotting the unmown grass with silver stars,
And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars.

Hither the billow brought him, and was glad
Of such dear servitude, and where the land
Was virgin of all waters laid the lad
Upon the golden margent of the strand,
And like a lingering lover oft returned
To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned,

Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust,
That self...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ze of morning moves, 
 And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves 
 On a bed of daffodil sky, 
To faint in the light of the sun she loves, 
 To faint in his light, and to die. 

All night have the roses heard 
 The flute, violin, bassoon; 
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd 
 To the dancers dancing in tune: 
Till a silence fell with the waking bird, 
 And a hush with the setting moon. 

I said to the lily, "There is bu...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...r>

The falling dew is cold and chill,
And no bird sings in Arcady,
The little fauns have left the hill,
Even the tired daffodil
Has closed its gilded doors, and still
My lover comes not back to me.
False moon! False moon! O waning moon!
Where is my own true lover gone,
Where are the lips vermilion,
The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,
Why wear that veil of drifting mist?
Ah! thou hast young Endymion
Thou hast the lips that should be ki...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...errily!--
Ah, Zephyrus! art here, and Flora too!
Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew,
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill
 Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines,
Savory, latter-mint, and columbines,
Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme;
Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime,
All gather'd in the dewy morning: hie
 Away! fly, fly!--
Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven,
Aquarius! to whom king ...Read more of this...



by Smart, Christopher
...

Let Jozadak rejoice with Stephanitis a vine growing naturally into chaplets. 

Let Jozabad rejoice with the Lily-Daffodil. Easter Day 22nd March 1761. 

Let Telem rejoice with Hart's Penny-royal. 

Let Abdi rejoice with Winter-green. God be gracious to Abdy. 

Let Binnui rejoice with Spotted Lungwort or Couslip of Jerusalem. God give blessing with it. 

Let Aziza rejoice with the Day Lily. 

Let Zabbai rejoice with Buckshorn Plaintain Co...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.

A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning 
breeze,
The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

And all the wo...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...s of some wild and wind-swept sea.

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn
Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,
Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn
To water-lilies; the brown fields men till
Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,
Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death's despite.

The boy's first kiss, the hyacinth's first bell,
The man's last passion, and the last red spear
That from the lily leaps, the asphodel
Which will ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ease
Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside With a 
swift move, and a half-angry frown.
She stopped to pull a daffodil or two, And 
held them to her gown
To test the colours; put them at her side,
Then at her breast, then loosened them and tried
Some new arrangement, but it would not do.

III
A lady in a Manor-house, alone, Whose husband 
is in Flanders with the Duke
Of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, she's grown Too apathetic 
even to rebuke
Her idleness. Wh...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago! - it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radianc...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...are the beehives ranged in the sun; 
And down by the brink 
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 
Heavy and slow; 
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 
And the same brook sings of a year ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; 
And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 

I mind me how w...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...meant
For Cytheraea's brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from afar,
Although one summer evening's dew could fill
Its little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

As if Jove's gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying ...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...s, this grass;
But in the Spring, not too softly entangling
For lively feet to dance on, when the green
Flashes with daffodils. From Marcle way,
From Dymock, Kempley, Newent, Bromesberrow,
Redmarley, all the meadowland daffodils seem
Running in golden tides to Ryton Firs,
To make the knot of steep little wooded hills
Their brightest show: O bella età de l'oro!
Now I breathe you again, my woods of Ryton:
Not only golden with your daffodil-fires
Lying in pools on...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June's messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where hal...Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...er well.
 Antony and Cleopatra
 were right;
they have shown
 the way. I love you
 or I do not live
at all.

Daffodil time
 is past. This is
 summer, summer!
the heart says,
 and not even the full of it.
 No doubts
are permitted—
 though they will come
 and may
before our time
 overwhelm us.
 We are only mortal
but being mortal
 can defy our fate.
 We may
by an outside chance
 even win! We do not
 look to see
jonquils and violets
 come again
 but th...Read more of this...

by Housman, A E
...l girls go maying 
You find the primrose still, 
And find the windflower playing 
With every wind at will, 
But not the daffodil, 

Bring baskets now, and sally 
Upon the spring's array, 
And bear from hill and valley 
The daffodil away 
That dies on Easter day....Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...eath that cannot mend;

Then to lie useless, helpless, still,
Down in the earth, in dark, to fill
The roots of grass or daffodil.

Down in the earth, in dark, alone,
A mockery of the ghost in bone,
The strangeness, passing the unknown.

Time will go by, that outlasts clocks,
Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks,
Sunset be glory on the rocks:

But it, the thing, will never heed
Even the rootling from the seed
Thrusting to suck it for its need.

Since moons decay...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.

I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths of new-turn'd ploughland under them glowed.
'Twas my heart then must dance
To dwell in my delight;
No need to sing when...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!
Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
I know the wood which hides the daffodil,
I know the Fyfield tree,
I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,
And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;

I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?--
But many a tingle on the loved hillside,
With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees,
Where...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ath
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact pos...Read more of this...

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