Famous Doves Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Sonnet 01

by Robert Southey
 Go Valentine and tell that lovely maid
Whom Fancy still will pourtray to my sight,
How her Bard lingers in this sullen shade,
This dreary gloom of dull monastic night.
Say that from every joy of life remote
At evening's closing hour he quits the throng,
Listening alone the ring-dove's plaintive note
Who pours like him her solitary song.
Say that her absence calls the sorrowing sigh,
Say...Read more of this...

Mistress Gurtons Cat

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Old MISTRESS GURTON had a Cat,
A Tabby, loveliest of the race,
Sleek as a doe, and tame, and fat
With velvet paws, and whisker'd face;
The Doves of VENUS not so fair,
Nor JUNO'S Peacocks half so grand
As MISTRESS GURTON'S Tabby rare,
The proudest of the purring band;
So dignified in all her paces--
She seem'd, a pupil of the Graces!
There never was a finer creature
In...Read more of this...

Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Desert is parched in the burning sun
   And the grass is scorched and white.
   But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
   We are camping here to-night.
        I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
     ...Read more of this...

The Pigeon Shooting

by Robert William Service
 They say that Monte Carlo is
A sunny place for shady people;
But I'm not in the gambling biz,
And sober as a parish steeple.
so though this paradisal spot
The devil's playground of the rich is,
I love it and I love it not,
As men may sometimes fall for bitches.

I lazed beneath the sky's blue bliss,
The sea swooned with a sequin glimmer;
The breeze was...Read more of this...

Arrival

by Philip Larkin
 Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;
And the windows flock open
And the curtains fly out like doves
And a past dries in a wind.

Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference,
Shovel-faces like pennies
Down the back of the mind,
Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,
And...Read more of this...

Silver

by Walter de la Mare
 Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes...Read more of this...

The Pigeons Of St. Marks

by Robert William Service
 Something's wrong in Pigeon-land;
'Tisn't as it used to be,
When the pilgrim, corn in hand,
Courted us with laughing glee;
When we crooned with pinions furled,
Tamest pigeons in the world.

When we packed each arm and shoulder,
Never deeming man a menace;
Surly birds were never bolder
Than our dainty doves of Venice:
Who would have believed a pigeon
Could become wild as a widgeon.

Well, juts blame it...Read more of this...

Oberon to the Queen of the Fairies

by Mary Darby Robinson
 My OBERON, with ev'ry sprite
"That gilds the vapours of the night,
"Shall dance and weave the verdant ring
"With joy that mortals thus can sing; 
"And when thou sigh'st MARIA'S name, 
"And mourn'st to feel a hopeless flame, 
"Eager they'll catch the tender note
"Just parting from thy tuneful throat, 
"And bear it to the careless ear 
"Of her who scorn'd a...Read more of this...

The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day

by Rabindranath Tagore
 It was mid-day when you went 
away .
The sun was strong in the sky.
I had done my work and sat alone
on my balcony when you went away.
Fitful gusts came winnowing
through the smells of may distant
fields.
The doves cooed tireless in the shade,
and a bee strayed in my room hum-
ming the news of many distant fields.
The village slept in the noonday
heat....Read more of this...

The Dove's Visit

by Anonymous
I knew a little, sickly child,The long, long summer’s day,When all the world was green and bright,Alone in bed to lay;There used to come a little doveBefore his window small,[Pg 011]And sing to him with her sweet voice,Out of the fir-tree tall.And when the sick child better grew,And he could creep along,Close to that window he would come,And listen to...Read more of this...

Hudsons Last Voyage

by Henry Van Dyke
 June 22, 1611 

THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY 

One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship 
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard 
These waters, greater grown than any since
We left the shores of England. We were first, 
My men, to battle in between the bergs
And floes to these wide...Read more of this...

Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles

by Alan Seeger
 Be my companion under cool arcades 
That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square 
Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades 
White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. 
Lie near me in dim forests where the croon 
Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, 
Or musing late till the midsummer moon 
Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose. 
Sweetest...Read more of this...

A Look Into The Gulf

by Edwin Markham
 I LOOKED one night, and there the Semiramis, 
With all her mourning doves about her head, 
Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell, 
Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon 
Snatches of song they sang to her of old 
Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh. 
And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh: 
"The bugles! they are...Read more of this...

In the Train

by James Thomson
 AS we rush, as we rush in the Train, 
 The trees and the houses go wheeling back, 
But the starry heavens above the plain 
 Come flying on our track. 

All the beautiful stars of the sky, 
 The silver doves of the forest of Night, 
Over the dull earth swarm and fly, 
 Companions of our flight....Read more of this...

Our Guardian Angels and Their Children

by Vachel Lindsay
 Where a river roars in rapids
And doves in maples fret,
Where peace has decked the pastures
Our guardian angels met.

Long they had sought each other
In God's mysterious name,
Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
Alone, with hope aflame:

Amid the demon deeps had wound
By many a fearful way.
As they beheld each other
Their shout made glad the day.

No need of purse delayed them,
No hand of...Read more of this...

Bellinglise

by Alan Seeger
 Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds 
The head of a green valley that I know, 
Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds 
Of Bellinglise, the beautiful chateau. 
Through shady groves and fields of unmown grass, 
It was my joy to come at dusk and see, 
Filling a little pond's untroubled glass, 
Its antique towers and mouldering masonry. 
Oh,...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...

Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Vicisti, Galilæe
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of...Read more of this...

424. Song—Phillis the Fair

by Robert Burns
 WHILE larks, with little wing,
 Fann’d the pure air,
Tasting the breathing Spring,
 Forth I did fare:
Gay the sun’s golden eye
Peep’d o’er the mountains high;
Such thy morn! did I cry,
 Phillis the fair.


In each bird’s careless song,
 Glad I did share;
While yon wild-flowers among,
 Chance led me there!
Sweet to the op’ning day,
Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;
Such thy bloom! did I...Read more of this...

A Ballad of Death

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for...Read more of this...

The Doves

by Katharine Tynan
 The house where I was born,
Where I was young and gay, 
Grows old amid its corn, 
Amid its scented hay. 

Moan of the cushat dove, 
In silence rich and deep; 
The old head I love 
Nods to its quiet sleep. 

Where once were nine and ten 
Now two keep house together; 
The doves moan and complain 
All day in...Read more of this...

Under Siege

by Mahmoud Darwish
 Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time 
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up...Read more of this...

To the Name above every Name the Name of Jesus

by Richard Crashaw
 I sing the Name which None can say
But touch’t with An interiour Ray:
The Name of our New Peace; our Good:
Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:
The Name of All our Lives and Loves.
Hearken, And Help, ye holy Doves!
The high-born Brood of Day; you bright
Candidates of blissefull Light,
The Heirs Elect of Love; whose Names belong
Unto The everlasting life of Song;
All ye wise...Read more of this...

Verses from the Shepherds Hymn

by Richard Crashaw
 WE saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,
 Young dawn of our eternal day;
We saw Thine eyes break from the East,
 And chase the trembling shades away:
We saw Thee, and we blest the sight,
We saw Thee by Thine own sweet light.

Poor world, said I, what wilt thou do
 To entertain this starry stranger?
Is this the best thou canst bestow--
 A...Read more of this...

Advice to a Prophet

by Richard Wilbur
 When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Doves poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace