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Famous Drowsy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...sterious fire,
Delicate gold that only fairies see.
When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks
And come out on the drowsy park, they look
Along the empty paths and say, "Oh, here
They went, and here, and here, and here! Come, see,
Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance
About it in a windy ring and make
A circle round it only they can cross
When they come back again!" . . . Look at the lake --
Do you remember how we watched the swans
That night in late October w...Read more of this...
by Teasdale, Sara



...nd dim plain
Her way, but left not yet her Therasaean reign.
PART II

High on a mountain of enamell'd head-
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven-
Of rosy head that, towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve- at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light-...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...h not a soul can choose but hear
From Bratha Head to Wyndermere.
Saith Bracy the bard, 'So let it knell!
And let the drowsy sacristan
Still count as slowly as he can!'
There is no lack of such, I ween,
As well fill up the space between.
In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair,
And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent,
With ropes of rock and bells of air
Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent,
Who all give back, one after t' other,
The death-note to their living brother;
And oft...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...ous dissonance;
At which I ceased, and listened them awhile,
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds
That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep.
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,
And stole upon the air, that even Silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more,
Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,
And took in strains that might crea...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...os, full of tumbling waves
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantment!--who, upfurl'd
Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,
But renovates and lives?--Thus, in the bower,
Endymion was calm'd to life again.
Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,
He said: "I feel this thine endearing love
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
Such morning incense from the fields ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...ounds were in harmony blended.
Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farm-yards,
Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons,
All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and the great sun
Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors around him;
While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow,
Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest
Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantl...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ale;
And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud,
To see their sister in her snowy shroud.

XXXIV.
And she had died in drowsy ignorance,
But for a thing more deadly dark than all;
It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall
For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall
With cruel pierce, and bringing him again
Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

XXXV.
It was a vision.--In the dro...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...some bewildered bird
That seeks its nest but knows not where it is,
And every dream that haunts, with dim delight,
The drowsy hour between the day and night,
The wakeful hour between the night and day,--
Imprisoned, waits for thee,
Impatient, yearns for thee,
The queen who comes to set the captive free
Thou lendest wings to grief to fly away,
And wings to joy to reach a heavenly height;
And every dumb desire that Storms within the breast
Thou leadest forth to sob or sing its...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5 
But being too happy in thine happiness, 
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...of the street,
And show me figures of myself beside
A self diminished at their judgment seat;
Then do I sit as in a drowsy pew
To hear a priest expounding th' heavenly will,
Defiling wonder that he never knew
With stolen words of measured good and ill;
For to the love that knows their counselling,
Out of my love contempt alone I bring.
X 	Not love of you is most that I can bring,
Since what I am to love you is the test,
And should I love you more than any thing
Y...Read more of this...
by Drinkwater, John
...Romance, who loves to nod and sing
With drowsy head and folded wing
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ts roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

What matter how the night behaved? 
What matter how t...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...e to hear the merry tune
Of mating warblers in the boughs above
And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon
Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove
Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon
That like the voice of visionary love
Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze
(Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);

And, parting tangled bushes as I passed
Down beechen allies beautiful and dim,
Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last
My feet wo...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...art a downward ray
And fiercely shed intolerable day;
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;
Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling t...Read more of this...
by Goldsmith, Oliver
...rsel to my mouth that day did lift,  Nor dared my hand at any door to knock.  I lay, where with his drowsy mates, the cock  From the cross timber of an out-house hung;  How dismal tolled, that night, the city clock!  At morn my sick heart hunger scarcely stung,  Nor to the beggar's language could I frame my tongue.   So passed another day, and so the third:  Then did I try, in vain, the cro...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
..."O Kabibonokka, 
You are but my fellow-mortal!"
Shawondasee, fat and lazy, 
Had his dwelling far to southward, 
In the drowsy, dreamy sunshine, 
In the never-ending Summer. 
He it was who sent the wood-birds, 
Sent the robin, the Opechee, 
Sent the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
Sent the Shawshaw, sent the swallow, 
Sent the wild-goose, Wawa, northward, 
Sent the melons and tobacco, 
And the grapes in purple clusters.
From his pipe the smoke ascending 
Filled the sky with haze and ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...any glass. 

48
Come gentle sleep, I woo thee: come and take
Not now the child into thine arms, from fright
Composed by drowsy tune and shaded light,
Whom ignorant of thee thou didst nurse and make;
Nor now the boy, who scorn'd thee for the sake
Of growing knowledge or mysterious night,
Tho' with fatigue thou didst his limbs invite,
And heavily weigh the eyes that would not wake; 
No, nor the man severe, who from his best
Failing, alert fled to thee, that his breath,
Blood, f...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...Gilding on battled tower the warder's lance,
         And warning student pale to leave his pen,
     And yield his drowsy eyes to the kind nurse of men.

     What various scenes, and O, what scenes of woe,
         Are witnessed by that red and struggling beam!
     The fevered patient, from his pallet low,
         Through crowded hospital beholds it stream;
     The ruined maiden trembles at its gleam,
         The debtor wakes to thought of gyve and jail,
   ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...rth's mad shouts, that through th' illumined roof
Resound with festive echo, let me sit,
Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge.
Then let my thought contemplative explore
This fleeting state of things, the vain delights,
The fruitless toils, that still our search elude,
As through the wilderness of life we rove.
This sober hour of silence will unmask
False Folly's smile , that like the dazzling spells
Of wily Comus cheat th' unweeting eye
With blear illusion, and persuad...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas
...; all, but my fears, 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Yet my Disciples sleep: I cannot gain
One hour of watching; but their drowsy brain
Comforts not me, and doth my doctrine stain: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Arise, arise, they come. Look how they run.
Alas! what haste they make to be undone! 
How with their lanterns do they seek the sun! 
Was ever grief like mine? 

With clubs and staves they seek me, as a thief, 
Who am the way of truth, the true relief; 
Most true to those, ...Read more of this...
by Herbert, George

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry