Famous Gentian Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Bavarian Gentians

...Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
 gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness,...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.


Closed Gentian Distances

...A nothing day full of
wild beauty and the
timer pings. Roll up
the silver off the bay
take down the clouds
sort the spruce and
send to laundry marked,
more starch. Goodbye
golden- and silver-
rod, asters, bayberry
crisp in elegance.
Little fish stream
by, a river in water....Read more of this...
by Schuyler, James

Distrustful of the Gentian

...Distrustful of the Gentian --
And just to turn away,
The fluttering of her fringes
Child my perfidy --
Weary for my ----------
I will singing go --
I shall not feel the sleet -- then --
I shall not fear the snow.

Flees so the phantom meadow
Before the breathless Bee --
So bubble brooks in deserts
On Ears that dying lie --
Burn so the Evening Spires
To Eyes that Closing go --
...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

God made a little gentian

...God made a little gentian;
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
"Creator! shall I bloom?"...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

November

...s bare. 
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees, 
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast, 
And the blue Gentian flower, that, in the breeze, 
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last. 
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee 
Shall murmur by the hedge that skim the way, 
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea, 
And man delight to linger in thy ray. 
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear 
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air....Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen


Obermann Once More

...-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass--

The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame;
Whence drops the path to Alli?re down,
And walls where Byron came,

By their green river, who doth change
His birth-name just below;
Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grange
Nursed by his pastoral flow.

But stop!--to fetch back thoughts that stray
Beyond this gracious bound,
The cone of Jaman, pa...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

Requiescat In Pace!

...hunder-rents and scars,
And the paradise of purple, and the golden slopes atween them,
  And fields, where grow God's gentian bells, and His crocus stars.
He wrote of frail gauzy clouds, that drop on them like fleeces,
  And make green their fir forests, and feed their mosses hoar;
Or come sailing up the valleys, and get wrecked and go to pieces,
  Like sloops against their cruel strength: then he wrote no more.
O the silence that came next, the patience and long achin...Read more of this...
by Ingelow, Jean

Syringa

...eam, the trailing grasses
Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action
No more than this. Then in the lowering gentian sky
Electric twitches are faintly apparent first, then burst forth
Into a shower of fixed, cream-colored flares. The horses
Have each seen a share of the truth, though each thinks, 
"I'm a maverick. Nothing of this is happening to me,
Though I can understand the language of birds, and
The itinerary of the lights caught in the storm is 
fully apparent...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

The Gentian has a parched Corolla --

...The Gentian has a parched Corolla --
Like azure dried
'Tis Nature's buoyant juices
Beatified --
Without a vaunt or sheen
As casual as Rain
And as benign --

When most is part -- it comes --
Nor isolate it seems
Its Bond its Friend --
To fill its Fringed career
And aid an aged Year
Abundant end --

Its lot -- were it forgot --
This Truth endear --
Fidelity is gai...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

The Gentian weaves her fringes

...The Gentian weaves her fringes --
The Maple's loom is red --
My departing blossoms
Obviate parade.

A brief, but patient illness --
An hour to prepare,
And one below this morning
Is where the angels are --
It was a short procession,
The Bobolink was there --
An aged Bee addressed us --
And then we knelt in prayer --
We trust that she was willing --
We ask that w...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

The Poem

...It's all in
the sound. A song.
Seldom a song. It should

be a song—made of
particulars, wasps,
a gentian—something
immediate, open

scissors, a lady's
eyes—waking
centrifugal, centripetal....Read more of this...
by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)

To Ellen At The South

...s glories and September's
Show our love and piety.

"Thou shalt command us all,
April's cowslip, summer's clover
To the gentian in the fall,
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

"O come, then, quickly come,
We are budding, we are blowing,
And the wind which we perfume
Sings a tune that's worth thy knowing."...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

To the Fringed Gentian

...Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night. 

Thou comest not when violets lean 
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 
Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late and com'st alone, 
When woods are...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen

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