Famous Full Moon Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Full Moon poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous full moon poems. These examples illustrate what a famous full moon poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Adrian Green
New moon on the lake.
Your voice and the nightingale
serenade springtime.
Full moon on the lake.
Your voice and the waterbirds
celebrate summer.
Old moon on the lake.
Owls hunting autumnal food -
your voice still singing....Read more of this...
by
Dame Edith Sitwell
LOVELY Semiramis
Closes her slanting eyes:
Dead is she long ago.
From her fan, sliding slow,
Parrot-bright fire's feathers,
Gilded as June weathers,
Plumes bright and shrill as grass
Twinkle down; as they pass
Through the green glooms in Hell
Fruits with a tuneful smell,
Grapes like an emerald rain,
Where the full moon has lain,
Greengages bright as...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,
The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,
The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float
Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous
With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
An old man cocked his car upon a bridge;
He and his friend, their faces to the South,
Had trod the uneven road. Their hoots were soiled,
Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;
They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,
Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon,
Were distant still. An old man cocked his ear.
Aherne....Read more of this...
by
Julie Hill Alger
I walk home at August moonrise
past a bright window.
Inside the room
an old woman sees the full moon
and turns off the lamp.
Afterimage shines in my eye:
pale face, snowy hair.
Moonlight streams over the dark house
like cool milk.
When the lamp is out, is the woman
still standing there alone?
In memory, her upraised hand glows;
in the house it is darker than shadow.
I stand on the...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Win' a-blowin' gentle so de san' lay low,
San' a little heavy f'om de rain,
All de pa'ms a-wavin' an' a-weavin' slow,
Sighin' lak a sinnah-soul in pain.
Alligator grinnin' by de ol' lagoon,
Mockin'-bird a-singin' to be big full moon.[Pg 192]
'Skeeter go a-skimmin' to his fightin' chune
(Lizy Ann's a-waitin' in de lane!).
Moccasin a-sleepin' in de cyprus swamp;
Need n't wake de gent'man, not...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dornburg, 25th August, 1828.
WILT thou suddenly enshroud thee,
Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,
Thou art hidden from mine eye.
Yet my sadness thou well knowest,
Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,
Though my loved one may be far.
Upward mount then! clearer, milder,
Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,
Fraught with...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
Fell the beautiful Nokomis,
She a wife, but not a mother.
She was sporting with her women,
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines,
When her rival the rejected,
Full of jealousy and hatred,
Cut the leafy swing asunder,
Cut...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Full moon. Our Narragansett gales subside
and the land is celebrating men of war
more or less, less or more.
In valleys, thin on headlands, narrow & wide
our targets rest. In us we trust. Far, near,
the bivouacs of fear
are solemn in the moon somewhere tonight,
in turning time. It's late for gratitude,
an annual, rude
roar of a moment's turkey's 'Thanks'. Bright & white
their ordered...Read more of this...
by
Coventry Patmore
Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
May gaze within,k and sing the pomp I see;
For, crown'd with roses all,
'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival!
But first warn off the beatific spot
Those wretched who have not
Even afar beheld the shining wall,
And those who, once beholding, have forgot,
And...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
i met a frog in my garden today
lurking under a stone - it said
there used to be a pond here
i know i said i had to dig it up
pity said the frog and looked at me
as if i was the thickest mortal
a garden without water it croaked
is worse than a tongue without spit
there's a pond next door i said
you...Read more of this...
by
Lucille Clifton
1
the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them
2
who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Afield at dusk
What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of...Read more of this...
by
Jose Asuncion Silva
One night
one night all full of murmurings, of perfumes and music of wings;
one night
in which fantastic fireflies burnt in the humid nuptial shadows,
slowly by my side, pressed altogether close, silent and pale,
as if a presentiment of infinite bitternesses
agitated you unto the most hidden fibers of your being,
along the flowering path which crosses the plain
you...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Old goatherds swear how all night long they hear
The warning whirr and burring of the bird
Who wakes with darkness and till dawn works hard
Vampiring dry of milk each great goat udder.
Moon full, moon dark, the chary dairy farmer
Dreams that his fattest cattle dwindle, fevered
By claw-cuts of the Goatsucker, alias Devil-bird,
Its eye, flashlit, a chip of ruby fire.
So fables say...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
They sleep within. . . .
I cower to the earth, I waking, I only.
High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely.
We have slept too long, who can hardly win
The white one flame, and the night-long crying;
The viewless passers; the world's low sighing
With desire, with yearning,
To the fire unburning,
To the heatless fire, to the flameless ecstasy! . ....Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
On the first night
of the full moon,
the primeval sack of ocean
broke,
& I gave birth to you
little woman,
little carrot top,
little turned-up nose,
pushing you out of myself
as my mother
pushed
me out of herself,
as her mother did,
& her mother's mother before her,
all of us born
of woman.
I am the second daughter
of a second daughter
of a second daughter,
but you shall be the first.
You shall see...Read more of this...
by
Kumaran Asan
Oh beautiful flower.
You were glowing like a queen in this world till yesterday..
And today you are lying on the ground…
When I see your plight, I am sure that success is not permanent in this world…
The plant that gave birth to you would have pampered
when you were infant.
It helped you to blossom.
The wind would have swung you to its tune.
You had...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
'Twas on a Mountain, near the Western Main
An ALIEN dwelt. A solitary Hut
Built on a jutting crag, o'erhung with weeds,
Mark'd the poor Exile's home. Full ten long years
The melancholy wretch had liv'd unseen
By all, save HENRY, a lov'd, little Son
The partner of his sorrows. On the day
When Persecution, in the sainted guise
Of Liberty, spread wide its venom'd pow'r,
The brave,...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Let your work be, bride. Listen, the
guest has come.
Do you hear, he is gently shaking
the chain which fastens the door?
See that your anklets make no loud
noise, and that your step is not over-
hurried at meeting him.
Let your work be, bride, the guest
had come in the evening.
No, it is not the ghostly wind, bride,
do not be frightened.
It is the...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
An unbelieving smile flits on your
eyes when I come to you to take my
leave.
I have done it so often that you
think I will soon return.
To tell you the truth I have the
same doubt in my mind.
For the spring days come again
time after time; the full moon takes
leave and comes on another visit,
the flowers come again and blush
upon their...Read more of this...
by
Jerome Rothenberg
I am not a native of this palce.(Yosimasu G.)
nor yet a stranger.
With the rst of you
I hunt for shade
my boots half off
to let the air through.
My head is on my shoulders
& is real.
I plant cucumbers
twice a year
& count the bounty.
Often I read
the papers
standing.
I am clean & pure.
I carry buckets
from the pond
more than my arms can bear.
Under a full moon
fish...Read more of this...
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...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Goethe relates that a remarkable situation
he was in one bright moonlight night led to the composition of this
sweet song, which was "the dearer to him because he could not say
whence it came and whither it would."]
AT midnight hour I went, not willingly,
A little, little boy, yon churchyard past,
To Father Vicar's house; the stars on high
On all...Read more of this...
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