The Whiskey Taster’s Flavor Guide

Famous Floral Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Now Bare To The Beholders Eye

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 NOW bare to the beholder's eye
Your late denuded bindings lie,
Subsiding slowly where they fell,
A disinvested citadel;
The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe,
The Dutchman's breeches frilled below.
Those that the lover notes to note,
And white and crackling petticoat.

From these, that on the ground repose,
Their lady lately re-arose;
And laying by the lady's name,
A living woman re-became.
Of her, that from the public eye
They do enclose...Read more of this...

The Queens Jubilee Celebrations

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1897, and on the 22nd of June,
Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee in London caused a great boom;
Because high and low came from afar to see,
The grand celebrations at Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee. 

People were there from almost every foreign land,
Which made the scene really imposing and grand;
Especially the Queen's carriage, drawn by eight coloured bays,
And...Read more of this...

The Death of the Queen

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Alas! our noble and generous Queen Victoria is dead,
And I hope her soul to Heaven has fled,
To sing and rejoice with saints above,
Where ah is joy, peace, and love. 

'Twas on January 22, 1901, in the evening she died at 6.30 o'clock,
Which to the civilised world has been a great shock;
She was surrounded by her children and grandchildren dear,
And...Read more of this...

I Ask You

by Billy Collins
 What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge,...Read more of this...

Attempted Assassination of the Queen

by William Topaz McGonagall
 God prosper long our noble Queen,
And long may she reign!
Maclean he tried to shoot her,
But it was all in vain. 

For God He turned the ball aside
Maclean aimed at her head;
And he felt very angry
Because he didn't shoot her dead. 

There's a divinity that hedges a king,
And so it does seem,
And my opinion is, it has hedged
Our most gracious...Read more of this...

The Mowed Hollow

by Les Murray
 When yellow leaves the sky 
they pipe it to the houses 
to go on making red 
and warm and floral and brown 
but gradually people tire of it, 
return it inside metal, and go 
to be dark and breathe water colours. 

Some yellow hangs on outside 
forlornly tethered to posts. 
Cars chase their own supply. 

When we went down...Read more of this...

Morning Song

by Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's...Read more of this...

Marriage Bells

by Emma Lazarus
 Music and silver chimes and sunlit air, 
Freighted with the scent of honeyed orange-flower; 
Glad, friendly festal faces everywhere. 
She, rapt from all in this unearthly hour, 
With cloudlike, cast-back veil and faint-flushed cheek, 
In bridal beauty moves as in a trance 
Alone with him, and fears to breathe, to speak, 
Lest the rare, subtle spell dissolve perchance. 
But...Read more of this...

Early Poems

by Victor Hugo
 MOSES ON THE NILE. 
 
 ("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.") 
 
 {TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.} 


 "Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray 
 Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; 
 The river bank is lonely: come away! 
 The early murmurs of old Memphis creep 
 Faint on...Read more of this...

An Ode to Antares

by Alan Seeger
 At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide 
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills 
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills 
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, 
I watched the red star rising in the East, 
And while his fellows of the flaming sign 
From prisoning daylight more and more released, 
Lift their pale lamps, and,...Read more of this...

John M. Church

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was attorney for the "Q"
And the Indemnity Company which insured
The owners of the mine.
I pulled the wires with judge and jury,
And the upper courts, to beat the claims
Of the crippled, the widow and orphan,
And made a fortune thereat.
The bar association sang my praises
In a high-flown resolution.
And the floral tributes were many --
But the rats devoured my heart
And a...Read more of this...

Horace to phyllis

by Eugene Field
 Come, Phyllis, I've a cask of wine
That fairly reeks with precious juices,
And in your tresses you shall twine
The loveliest flowers this vale produces.

My cottage wears a gracious smile,--
The altar, decked in floral glory,
Yearns for the lamb which bleats the while
As though it pined for honors gory.

Hither our neighbors nimbly fare,--
The boys agog, the maidens snickering;
And savory smells possess the...Read more of this...

Flee On Your Donkey

by Anne Sexton
 Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
came back last night at midnight,
arriving in the thick June night
without luggage or defenses,
giving up my car keys and my cash,
keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes
the way a child holds on to a toy.
I signed myself in where a stranger
puts the inked-in...Read more of this...

Salts And Oils

by Philip Levine
 In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived...Read more of this...

Madelaine

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ecoute-moi, Madeline.") 
 
 {IX., September, 1825.} 


 List to me, O Madelaine! 
 Now the snows have left the plain, 
 Which they warmly cloaked. 
 Come into the forest groves, 
 Where the notes that Echo loves 
 Are from horns evoked. 
 
 Come! where Springtide, Madelaine, 
 Brings a sultry breath from Spain, 
 Giving...Read more of this...

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