Famous Dove Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Bistro Styx

by Rita Dove
 She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,

I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl

down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late,"...Read more of this...

The Captive Dove

by Anne Bronte
 Poor restless dove, I pity thee;
And when I hear thy plaintive moan,
I mourn for thy captivity,
And in thy woes forget mine own. 
To see thee stand prepared to fly,
And flap those useless wings of thine,
And gaze into the distant sky,
Would melt a harder heart than mine. 

In vain ­ in vain! Thou canst not rise:
Thy prison roof confines thee...Read more of this...

What the Gray-Winged Fairy Said

by Vachel Lindsay
 The moon's a gong, hung in the wild,
Whose song the fays hold dear.
Of course you do not hear it, child.
It takes a FAIRY ear.

The full moon is a splendid gong
That beats as night grows still.
It sounds above the evening song
Of dove or whippoorwill....Read more of this...

The Dove

by Sidney Lanier
 If haply thou, O Desdemona Morn,
Shouldst call along the curving sphere, "Remain,
Dear Night, sweet Moor; nay, leave me not in scorn!"
With soft halloos of heavenly love and pain; --

Shouldst thou, O Spring! a-cower in coverts dark,
'Gainst proud supplanting Summer sing thy plea,
And move the mighty woods through mailed bark
Till mortal heart-break throbbed in every tree; --

Or (grievous `if' that...Read more of this...

The Captive Dove

by Anne Bronte
 Poor restless dove, I pity thee; 
And when I hear thy plaintive moan, 
I mourn for thy captivity, 
And in thy woes forget mine own. 

To see thee stand prepared to fly, 
And flap those useless wings of thine, 
And gaze into the distant sky, 
Would melt a harder heart than mine. 

In vain-in vain! Thou canst not rise:...Read more of this...

The Dove

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Out of the sunshine and out of the heat,
Out of the dust of the grimy street,
A song fluttered down in the form of a dove,
And it bore me a message, the one word—Love!
Ah, I was toiling, and oh, I was sad:
I had forgotten the way to be glad.
Now, smiles for my sadness and for my toil, rest
Since the dove fluttered...Read more of this...

Sonnet 35 - If I leave all for thee wilt thou exchange

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors, another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead...Read more of this...

Once more my now bewildered Dove

by Emily Dickinson
 Once more, my now bewildered Dove
Bestirs her puzzled wings
Once more her mistress, on the deep
Her troubled question flings --

Thrice to the floating casement
The Patriarch's bird returned,
Courage! My brave Columbia!
There may yet be land...Read more of this...

Farewell Frost Or Welcome Spring

by Robert Herrick
 Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper;
Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring
Gives to each mead a neat enamelling;
The palms put forth their gems, and every tree
Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry.
The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings
With warbling notes her Terean sufferings.
--What gentle winds perspire! as if here
Never had...Read more of this...

Parable Of The Dove

by Louise Gluck
 A dove lived in a village.
When it opened its mouth
sweetness came out, sound
like a silver light around
the cherry bough. But
the dove wasn't satisfied.

It saw the villagers
gathered to listen under
the blossoming tree.
It didn't think: I
am higher that they are.
It wanted to wealk among them,
to experience the violence of human feeling,
in part for its song's sake.

So it became human.
It found passion,...Read more of this...

D was a dove

by Edward Lear
D  was a dove,Who lived in a wood,With such pretty soft wings,And so gentle and good!  d! Dear little Dove!...Read more of this...

My Dove My Beautiful One

by James Joyce
 My dove, my beautiful one, 
Arise, arise! 
The night-dew lies 
Upon my lips and eyes. 

The odorous winds are weaving 
A music of sighs: 
Arise, arise, 
My dove, my beautiful one! 

I wait by the cedar tree, 
My sister, my love, 
White breast of the dove, 
My breast shall be your bed. 

The pale dew lies 
Like a veil...Read more of this...

The Eagle And Dove

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IN search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,
In torment writhed
Throughout three long, three weary nights;
And then was cured,
Thanks to all-healing Nature's
Soft, omnipresent balm.
He crept away from out the copse,
And stretch'd his wing--alas!
Lost is all power...Read more of this...

77. Epitaph on John Dove Innkeeper

by Robert Burns
 HERE lies Johnie Pigeon;
What was his religion?
 Whae’er desires to ken,
To some other warl’
Maun follow the carl,
 For here Johnie Pigeon had nane!


Strong ale was ablution,
Small beer persecution,
 A dram was memento mori;
But a full-flowing bowl
Was the saving his soul,
 And port was celestial glory....Read more of this...

For Catherine: Juana Infanta of Navarre

by Erin Belieu
 Ferdinand was systematic when
he drove his daughter mad.

With a Casanova's careful art,
he moved slowly,
stole only one child at a time
through tunnels specially dug
behind the walls of her royal
chamber, then paid the Duenna
well to remember nothing
but his appreciation.

Imagine how quietly
the servants must have worked,

loosening the dirt, the muffled
ring of pick-ends against
the castle stone. The Duenna,
one eye gauging the drugged girl's
sleep,...Read more of this...

Dove Sta Amore

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 Dove sta amore
Where lies love
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
The ring dove love
In lyrical delight
Hear love's hillsong
Love's true willsong
Love's low plainsong
Too sweet painsong
In passages of night
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
The ring dove love
Dove sta amore
Here lies love...Read more of this...

Adolescence II

by Rita Dove
 Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting.
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert.
Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.

Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round
As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines.
They bring the scent of licorice. One sits in the washbowl,

One on the bathtub...Read more of this...

The Dove of Dacca

by Rudyard Kipling
 1892
The freed dove flew to the Rajah's tower--
 Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings--
And the thorns have covered the city of Guar.
 Dove--dove--oh, homing dove!
Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings!


The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall;
 He set in his bosom a dove of flight--
"If she return, be sure that I fall."
 Dove--dove--oh, homing dove!
Pressed...Read more of this...

Dove in the Arch

by Robert Desnos
 Cursed!
be the father of the bride
of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe
with which the woodsman hacked down the oak
from which the bed was carved
in which was conceived the great-grandfather
of the man who was driving the carriage
in which your mother met your father....Read more of this...

The Song Of The Standard

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Maiden most beautiful, mother most bountiful, lady of lands,
Queen and republican, crowned of the centuries whose years are thy sands,
See for thy sake what we bring to thee, Italy, here in our hands.

This is the banner thy gonfalon, fair in the front of thy fight,
Red from the hearts that were pierced for thee, white as thy mountains are white,
Green...Read more of this...

The Dove And The Wren

by Mother Goose
The dove says coo, coo, what shall I do?
I can scarce maintain two.
Pooh, pooh! says the wren, I've got ten,
And keep them all like gentlemen....Read more of this...

The House Slave

by Rita Dove
The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass
and in the slave quarters there is a rustling –
children are bundled into aprons, cornbread

and water gourds grabbed, a salt pork breakfast taken.
I watch them driven into the vague before-dawn
while their mistress sleeps like an ivory toothpick

and Massa dreams of asses, rum and slave funk.
I cannot fall asleep again. At the...Read more of this...

Soiled Dove

by Carl Sandburg
 Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she
 married a corporation lawyer who picked her from
 a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid
 for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing
 and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the
 game was changing her looks, calling...Read more of this...

If I Could Mourn Like A Mourning Dove

by Frank Bidart
 It is what recurs that we believe,
your face not at one moment looking
sideways up at me anguished or

elate, but the old words welling up by
gravity rearranged:
two weeks before you died in

pain worn out, after my usual casual sign-off
with All my love, your simple
solemn My love to you, Frank....Read more of this...

Psalm 55

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-8,16-18,22 
C. M.
Support for the afflicted and tempted soul.

O God, my refuge, hear my cries,
"Behold my flowing tears;
For earth and hell my hurt devise,
And triumph in my fears.

Their rage is leveled at my life,
My soul with guilt they load,
And fill my thoughts with inward strife,
To shake my hope in God.

With inward pain my heart-strings sound,
I groan with ev'ry breath;
Horror...Read more of this...

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