Famous Delicate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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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 Black Birds

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

Once, only once, I saw it clear, --
That Eden every human heart has dreamed
A hundred times, but always far away!
Ah, well do I remember how it seemed,
Through the still atmosphere
Of that enchanted day,
To lie wide open to my weary feet:
A little land of love and joy and rest,
With meadows of soft green,
Rosy with cyclamen, and sweet
With delicate breath...Read more of this...

The Ruined Maid

by Thomas Hardy
"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? 
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?"--
"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

--"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"--
"Yes: that's how we dress when...Read more of this...

Silver Filigree

by Elinor Wylie
 The icicles wreathing 
On trees in festoon 
Swing, swayed to our breathing: 
They're made of the moon.

She's a pale, waxen taper; 
And these seem to drip 
Transparent as paper 
From the flame of her tip.

Molten, smoking a little, 
Into crystal they pass; 
Falling, freezing, to brittle 
And delicate glass.

Each a sharp-pointed flower, 
Each a brief stalactite 
Which hangs for...Read more of this...

Dirge

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?

In the long sunny afternoon,
The plain was full of ghosts,
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.

The winding Concord gleamed below,
Pouring as wide a flood
As when my brothers long ago,
Came with me to the wood.

But they are gone,— the...Read more of this...

Solitude

by Anna Akhmatova
 So many stones have been thrown at me,
That I'm not frightened of them anymore,
And the pit has become a solid tower,
Tall among tall towers.
I thank the builders,
May care and sadness pass them by.
From here I'll see the sunrise earlier,
Here the sun's last ray rejoices.
And into the windows of my room
The northern breezes often fly.
And from my hand a dove...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

The Foolish Fir-Tree

by Henry Van Dyke
 A tale that the poet Rückert told
To German children, in days of old;
Disguised in a random, rollicking rhyme
Like a merry mummer of ancient time,
And sent, in its English dress, to please
The little folk of the Christmas trees. 

A little fir grew in the midst of the wood 
Contented and happy, as young trees should. 
His body was straight and...Read more of this...

Ode To a Lemon

by Pablo Neruda
 Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the...Read more of this...

"Love Lightly"

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Rose-colour
   Rose Pink am I, the colour gleams and glows
     In many a flower; her lips, those tender doors
   By which, in time of love, love's essence flows
     From him to her, are dyed in delicate Rose.
   Mine is the earliest Ruby light...Read more of this...

An Indian Love Song

by Sarojini Naidu
 He

Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon 
of thy glory and grace,
Withhold not, O love, from the night 
of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,
Give me a spear of the scented keora 
guarding thy pinioned curls, 
Or a silken thread from the fringes 
that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;
Faint grows my soul with...Read more of this...

Ballade of an Omnibus

by Amy Levy
 "To see my love suffices me."
--Ballades in Blue China.


Some men to carriages aspire; 
On some the costly hansoms wait;
Some seek a fly, on job or hire;
Some mount the trotting steed, elate.
I envy not the rich and great,
A wandering minstrel, poor and free,
I am contented with my fate --
An omnibus suffices me.

In winter days of rain and mire
I find within...Read more of this...

Craving for Spring

by D. H. Lawrence
 I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets...Read more of this...

Golden Silence

by Ellis Parker Butler
 I told her I loved her and begged but a word,
One dear little word, that would be
For me by all odds the most sweet ever heard,
But never a word said she!

I raged at her then, and I said she was cold;
I swore she was nothing to me;
I prayed her the cause of her silence unfold,
But never a word said...Read more of this...

The Ragged Wood

by William Butler Yeats
 O hurry where by water among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images -
Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood? -
O that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurty...Read more of this...

All Thats Not Love . .

by Alan Seeger
 All that's not love is the dearth of my days, 
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, 
The temple in times without prayer, without praise, 
The altar unset and the candle unlit. 


Let me survive not the lovable sway 
Of early desire, nor see when it goes 
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, 
Whence sometime sweet...Read more of this...

The Scapegoat

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We have all of us read how the Israelites fled 
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em, 
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup" 
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em. 
The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had" 
That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad. 
You...Read more of this...

Delicate Cluster

by Walt Whitman
 DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life! 
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining! 
Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing! 
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!) 
Flag cerulean! sunny flag! with the orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty! ah my woolly white and crimson! 
Ah to sing the...Read more of this...

On Being Human

by C S Lewis
 Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence 
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of 
Arboreal life,...Read more of this...

Miracles

by Walt Whitman
 WHY! who makes much of a miracle? 
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk...Read more of this...

The Child and the Mariner

by William Henry Davies
 A dear old couple my grandparents were, 
And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven 
The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; 
Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them 
Death was a rainbow in Eternity, 
That promised everlasting brightness soon. 
An old seafaring man was he; a rough 
Old man, but kind; and hairy,...Read more of this...

El Extraviado

by Alan Seeger
 Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, 
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled 
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind 
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world. 


I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes 
On the way of...Read more of this...

Bien Loin Dici

by Charles Baudelaire
 HERE is the chamber consecrate, 
Wherein this maiden delicate, 
And enigmatically sedate, 

Fans herself while the moments creep, 
Upon her cushions half-asleep, 
And hears the fountains plash and weep. 

Dorothy's chamber undefiled. 
The winds and waters sing afar 
Their song of sighing strange and wild 
To lull to sleep the petted child. 

From head to foot with subtle care,...Read more of this...

Courage

by Robert William Service
 Today I opened wide my eyes,
And stared with wonder and surprise,
To see beneath November skies
An apple blossom peer;
Upon a branch as bleak as night
It gleamed exultant on my sight,
A fairy beacon burning bright
Of hope and cheer.

"Alas!" said I, "poor foolish thing,
Have you mistaken this for Spring?
Behold, the thrush has taken wing,
And Winter's near."
Serene it seemed to lift its head:
"The...Read more of this...

Maecenas Atavis

by Horace
Maecenas, born of monarch ancestors,
       The shield at once and glory of my life!
       There are who joy them in the Olympic strife
     And love the dust they gather in the course;
     The goal by hot wheels shunn'd, the famous...Read more of this...

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