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Famous Green Leaves Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose 
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, 
Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze, 
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow, 
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died 
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood, 
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark, 
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, 
These winding aisles, of human pomp and...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen



...wn 
Upon the naked earth and forthwith rose 
All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun  
Budded and shook their green leaves in thy breeze  
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow 30 
Whose birth was in their tops grew old and died 
Among their branches till at last they stood  
As now they stand massy and tall and dark  
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults 35 
These winding aisles of human pomp or prid...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen
...e at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spiri...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John
...ok out!--
O Tartarus! but some few days agone
Her soft arms were entwining me, and on
Her voice I hung like fruit among green leaves:
Her lips were all my own, and--ah, ripe sheaves
Of happiness! ye on the stubble droop,
But never may be garner'd. I must stoop
My head, and kiss death's foot. Love! love, farewel!
Is there no hope from thee? This horrid spell
Would melt at thy sweet breath.--By Dian's hind
Feeding from her white fingers, on the wind
I see thy streaming hair! an...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...om kissing cymbals made a merry din--
 'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came,
Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame;
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
 To scare thee, Melancholy!
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name!
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon:--
 I rush'd into the folly!

"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
Trifling...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...trip down the lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at
noon.

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,
And straggling traveller's-joy each hedge with yellow stars will
bind.

D...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...I. Sunrise.


In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,
Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting,
Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,
Came to the gates of sleep.
Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep
Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep,
Upstarted, ...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...stars of night, and thou the pale 
Moon, that o'ercame with the sick steam didst fail; 
Ye neighboring elms, that your green leaves did shed, 
And fawns that from the womb abortive fled; 
Not unprovoked, she tries forbidden arts, 
But in her soft breast love's hid cancer smarts, 
While she resoloves, at once, Sidney's disgrace 
And her self scorned for emulous Denham's face, 
And nightly hears the hated guards, away 
Galloping with the Duke to other prey. 

Paint Castlemaine...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...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 they thunder by,
I have no time for i...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...the azure time of June,
When the skies are deep in the stainless noon,
And the warm and fitful breezes shake
The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar; 
And there were odors then to make
The very breath we did respire
A liquid element, whereon
Our spirits, like delighted things
That walk the air on subtle wings,
Floated and mingled far away
'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.
And when the evening star came forth
Above the curve of the new bent moon,
And light and sound...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...The wind of the fall is here.
It is everywhere. It moves
every leaf of every 
tree. It is the only motion
of the river. Green leaves
grow weary of their color.
Now evening too is in the air.
The bright hawks of the day
subside. The owls waken.
Small creatures die because
larger creatures are hungry.
How superior to this
human confusion of greed
and creed, blood and fire.

VIII
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,...Read more of this...
by Berry, Wendell
...immaculate reflections; 
the whole region, from the highest heron 
down to the weightless mangrove island 
with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings 
like illumination in silver, 
and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots
and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture 
where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower 
in an ornamental spray of spray; 
this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope: 
it does look like heaven. 
But a skele...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth
...My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood
 and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and
 dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn; 
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies
 of the wind; 
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms; 
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag; 
The delight alone, or in the rush o...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ng cymbals made a merry din¡ª 
'Twas Bacchus and his kin! 
Like to a moving vintage down they came, 55 
Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame; 
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley, 
To scare thee, Melancholy! 
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name! 
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly 60 
By shepherds is forgotten, when in June 
Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon:¡ª 
I rush'd into the folly! 

Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...o scorn the men that muffled close 
For fear of wind, till all their neck was hid, 
Like Indian corn wrapped up in long green leaves; 
He knew no flowers but seaweeds brown and green, 
He knew no birds but those that followed ships. 
Full well he knew the water-world; he heard 
A grander music there than we on land, 
When organ shakes a church; swore he would make 
The sea his home, though it was always roused 
By such wild storms as never leave Cape Horn; 
Happy to hear the ...Read more of this...
by Davies, William Henry
...t them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.

'Pink,—to-day!'—Face turns to dream-bright face,
Green leaves rise round them, sunshine settles upon them,
Water, in drops of silver, falls from the rose.
She smiles at a face that smiles through leaves from the mirror.
She breathes the fragrance; her dark eyes close . . .

Time is dissolved, it blows like a little dust:
Time, like a flurry of rain,
Patters and passes, starring the window-pane.
Once, long ...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...pear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the
 mare, 
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves, 
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk—the lilacs bloom in the door-yards; 
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry! 
That the winds are really not infectious, 
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after
 me, 
That it is safe to allow ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Earth's exhausting avarice,
To Air's destructive inroads,
An antidote opposed.

See how it in springtime
Coins its pale green leaves!
Their orange-fragrance
Poisons each flyblow straight.

The caterpillar's tooth
Is blunted by them;
With silv'ry hues they gleam
In the bright sunshine,

Its twigs the maiden
Fain would twine in
Her bridal-garland;
Youths its fruit are seeking.

See, the autumn cometh!
The caterpillar
Sighs to the crafty spider,--
Sighs that the tree will not fa...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...n 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: 

Like a rose embower'd 
In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflower'd, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wing¨¨d thieves.

Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awaken'd flowers¡ª 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 
What sweet thoughts are thine: 
I have ne...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...orgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding
 the
 air; 
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific;
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and
 there; 
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows; 
And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, 
And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homewa...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry