Famous Evenings Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Coastwise Lights

by Rudyard Kipling
 Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when...Read more of this...

Confession (to Alina Osipova 1826)

by Alexander Pushkin
 I love you - though it makes me beat,
Though vain it seems, and melancholy -
Yet to this shameless, hapless folly
I'll be confessing at your feet.
It ill becomes me: that I'm older,
Time I should be more sensible...
And yet the frivolous disorder
Fills every jitter of my soul.
Say you'll be gone - I'm jaded, yawning;
You're back - I'm sad, I suffer through...Read more of this...

The still beauty of summer evenings

by Emile Verhaeren
The still beauty of summer evenings on the greenswards where they lie outspread holds out to us, without empty gesture or words, a symbol of rest in gladness.
Young morning and its tricks has gone away with the breezes; noon itself and the velvet skirts of its warm winds, of its heavy winds, no longer sweeps the torrid plain; and this...Read more of this...

The Letter

by Charlotte Bronte
 What is she writing? Watch her now, 
How fast her fingers move !
How eagerly her youthful brow 
Is bent in thought above !
Her long curls, drooping, shade the light, 
She puts them quick aside,
Nor knows, that band of crystals bright, 
Her hasty touch untied.
It slips adown her silken dress, 
Falls glittering at her feet;
Unmarked it falls, for she no...Read more of this...

Ditty of First Desire

by Federico García Lorca
 In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love....Read more of this...

Hiawathas Departure

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing In the sunshine.
Bright above him shone the...Read more of this...

To Charlotte

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 'MIDST the noise of merriment and glee,

'Midst full many a sorrow, many a care,
Charlotte, I remember, we remember thee,

How, at evening's hour so fair,
Thou a kindly hand didst reach us,

When thou, in some happy place

Where more fair is Nature s face,

Many a lightly-hidden trace
Of a spirit loved didst teach us.

Well 'tis that thy worth I rightly knew,--

That I, in...Read more of this...

Cruelty and Love

by D. H. Lawrence
 What large, dark hands are those at the window 
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light 
Which makes its way through the curtain web 
At my heart to-night? 

Ah, only the leaves! So leave me at rest, 
In the west I see a redness come 
Over the evening's burning breast -- 
For now the pain is numb. 

The woodbine creeps...Read more of this...

Song From An Evenings Love

by John Dryden
 After the pangs of a desperate lover,
When day and night I have sighed all in vain,
Ah, what a pleasure it is to discover
In her eyes pity, who causes my pain!

When with unkindness our love at a stand is,
And both have punished ourselves with the pain,
Ah, what a pleasure the touch of her hand is!
Ah, what a pleasure to touch...Read more of this...

Son

by W S Merwin
As the shadow closed on the face once my father's
Three times learning forward far off she called
Good night in a whisper from before I was born
later through the burial a wren went on singing

then it was that I left for the coast to live
a single long mountain close to the shore
from it the sun rose and everyone there asked me
who...Read more of this...

A Song of Enchantment

by Walter de la Mare
 A song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green-green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wild wood tree. 

Widdershins turned I, singing it low,
Watching the wild birds come and go;
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen
Under the thick-thatched branches green. 

Twilight came: silence came:
The planet of...Read more of this...

The Song of Yesterday

by James Whitcomb Riley
 I 
But yesterday 
I looked away 
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay 
In golden blots, 
Inlaid with spots 
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots. 

My head was fair 
With flaxen hair, 
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare, 
And, warm with drouth 
From out the south, 
Blew all my curls across my mouth. 

And, cool and sweet, 
My naked feet 
Found...Read more of this...

To Ye Kings

by Victor Hugo
 When the Christians were doomed to the lions of old 
 By the priest and the praetor, combined to uphold 
 An idolatrous cause, 
 Forth they came while the vast Colosseum throughout 
 Gathered thousands looked on, and they fell 'mid the shout 
 Of "the People's" applause. 
 
 On the eve of that day of their...Read more of this...

At the time when I had long suffered

by Emile Verhaeren
At the time when I had long suffered and the hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as the welcoming light that shines from the windows on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings.
The brightness of your hospitable soul touched my heart lightly without wounding it, like a hand of tranquil warmth.
Then came a holy trust,...Read more of this...

We grow accustomed to the Dark

by Emily Dickinson
 We grow accustomed to the Dark --
When light is put away --
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye --

A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night --
Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --
And meet the Road -- erect --

And so of larger -- Darkness --
Those Evenings of the Brain --
When not a...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 05: The Bitter Love-Song

by Conrad Aiken
 No, I shall not say why it is that I love you—
Why do you ask me, save for vanity?
Surely you would not have me, like a mirror,
Say 'yes,—your hair curls darkly back from the temples,
Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half-shy sweetness,
Your eyes are April grey. . . .with jonquils in them?'
No, if I tell at all, I shall...Read more of this...

Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 SWEET BIRD OF SORROW! ­why complain 
In such soft melody of Song, 
That ECHO, am'rous of thy Strain, 
The ling'ring cadence doth prolong? 
Ah! tell me, tell me, why, 
Thy dulcet Notes ascend the sky. 
Or on the filmy vapours glide 
Along the misty moutain's side? 
And wherefore dost Thou love to dwell, 
In the dark wood and moss-grown...Read more of this...

The Prisoner

by Emily Brontë
 Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars:
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And...Read more of this...

Night and Day

by Sidney Lanier
 When the golden day is done, 
Through the closing portal, 
Child and garden, Flower and sun, 
Vanish all things mortal. 

As the blinding shadows fall 
As the rays diminish, 
Under evening's cloak they all 
Roll away and vanish. 

Garden darkened, daisy shut, 
Child in bed, they slumber-- 
Glow-worm in the hallway rut, 
Mice among the lumber. 

In the darkness...Read more of this...

The Venal Muse

by Charles Baudelaire
 O muse of my heart, lover of palaces, 
Will you bring, when January lets loose its sleet 
And its black evenings without solace, 
An ember to warm my violet feet? 
What will revive your bruised shoulders, 
The nocturnal rays that pierce the shutters? 
When you cannot feel your palace, just your empty billfold, 
How will you harvest the gold...Read more of this...

St. George

by Emile Verhaeren
Opening the mists on a sudden through,
An Avenue!
Then, all one ferment of varied gold,
With foam of plumes where the chamfrom bends
Round his horse's head, that no bit doth hold,
St. George descends!


The diamond-rayed caparison,
Makes of his flight one declining path
From Heaven's pity down upon
Our waiting earth.


Hero and Lord
Of the joyous, helpful virtues all.
Sonorous, pure and crystalline!
Let his radiance fall
On my heart...Read more of this...

Prisoner The - (A Fragment)

by Emily Brontë
 In the dungeon-crypts, idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!"
He dared not say me nay - the hinges harshly turn. 

"Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more grey than blue;
(This was when glad spring laughed in awaking pride;)
"Aye, darkly lodged enough!"...Read more of this...

Evening Primrose

by John Clare
 When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks...Read more of this...

From A German War Primer

by Bertolt Brecht
 AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.

The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.

For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.

They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.

If the lowly do not
Think about what's...Read more of this...

A Letter to a Live Poet

by Rupert Brooke
 Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,
Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,
Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious
Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,
Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,
Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate
With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,
Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice
And serene unterrance of old. We heard
--...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Evenings 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