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Famous Heather Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brontë, Emily
...and silvery lyres
Resounded far and near: 

Methought, the very breath I breathed
Was full of sparks divine,
And all my heather-couch was wreathed
By that celestial shine! 

And, while the wide earth echoing rung
To their strange minstrelsy,
The little glittering spirits sung,
Or seemed to sing, to me. 

"O mortal! mortal! let them die;
Let time and tears destroy,
That we may overflow the sky
With universal joy! 

Let grief distract the sufferer's breast,
And night obscur...Read more of this...



by Tolkien, J R R
...Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together!
The wind's in the tree-top, the wind's in the heather;
The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower,
And bright are the windows of night in her tower.

Dance all ye joyful, now dance all together!
Soft is the grass, and let foot be like feather!
The river is silver, the shadows are fleeting;
Merry is May-time, and merry our meeting.

Sigh no more pine, till the wind of the morn!
Fall Moon! Da...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...r reach.

Apologies especially to Emily Bronte’s ghost -

You are the mostest hostess that I could ever boast

Your heather moor and cobbled street’s allure

Are something I’ve put off until the braw New Year....Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together, 
Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather, 
Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued. 

Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook 
quoin, 
Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there, 
Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there - 
Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join....Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...beacon's glimmer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves quicken,
Under the heather the sundew hides.

Green land and red land,
Moorside and headland,
Are white as dead land,
Are all as one;
Nor honied heather,
Nor bells to gather,
Fair with fair weather
And faithful sun:
Fierce frost has eaten
All flowers that sweeten
The fells rain-beaten;
And winds their foes
Have made the snow's bed
Down in the rose-bed;
Deep in the snow's b...Read more of this...



by McHugh, Heather
...Too volatile, am I?too voluble?too much a word-person?
I blame the soup:I'm a primordially
stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy's:sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.

I need a hundred m...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...pper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather."
"You have much gold upon your head,"
They answered altogether:
"Buy from us with a golden curl."
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted s...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...vows,
Which flesh and blood perforce would violate:
For feel this arm of mine--the tide within
Red with free chase and heather-scented air,
Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me pure
As any maiden child? lock up my tongue
From uttering freely what I freely hear?
Bind me to one? The wide world laughs at it.
And worldling of the world am I, and know
The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour
Woos his own end; we are not angels here
Nor shall be: vows--I am woodman of the woods...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...d
"Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
"Comes from beyond the river to my bed:
"Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
"And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

XXXIX.
"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
"Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling
"Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,
"While little sounds of life are round me knelling,
"And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
"And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
"Paining me through: those sounds g...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
... 

I need a cottage in Haworth to go with the wife,

Companion or whatever, to see with me the changing

Seasons of heather from purple September glory

To the browns of winter and wisps of summer green

And meet with Michael Haslam, fellow poet,

Maestro of the moors and shape-shifter supreme.

I write these verses sitting in the marble hall

Of City Station’s restored art deco glory,

The rats and debris of decades swept away,

How much I need the kindness of strang...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the hue of hawthorn 

With the heather beginning to bud blue

Before September purple, yellow ragwort

Sways in the wind as distantly a plane hums

And a lazy bee bumbles by.

A day in Brenda’s flat, mostly play with Eydie,

My favourite of her seven cats, they soothe better

Than Diazepan for panic

Seroxat for grief

Zopiclone to make me sleep.

I smoke my pipe and sip blackcurr...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...buttercup's bright goblet fill
With all thy former power. 

For ever hang thy dreamy spell
Round mountain star and heather bell,
And do not pass away
From sparkling frost, or wreathed snow,
And whisper when the wild winds blow,
Or rippling waters play. 

Is childhood, then, so all divine?
Or Memory, is the glory thine,
That haloes thus the past?
Not all divine; its pangs of grief,
(Although, perchance, their stay be brief,)
Are bitter while they last. 

Nor is th...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...and Helen lived together
Thenceforth--changed in all else, yet friends again,
Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather
They wandered in their youth through sun and rain.
And after many years, for human things
Change even like the ocean and the wind, 
Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,
And in their circle thence some visitings
Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene.
A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
And motions which o'er things indifferent shed...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...s Hibernian Quartette.
Yet little recked the Piper, as he swung with head on high,
Lamenting with MacCrimmon on the heather hills of Skye.
With Highland passion in his heart he held the centre floor;
Aye, Jock MacPherson played as he had never played before.

Maloney's Irish melodists were sitting in their place,
And as Maloney waited, there was wonder in his face.
'Twas sure the gorgeous music - Golly! wouldn't it be grand
If he could get MacPherson as a memb...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...lamp
Over Guthrum in his tent.

By scrub and thorn in Ethandune 
That night the foe had lain;
Whence ran across the heather grey
The old stones of a Roman way; 
And in a wood not far away
The pale road split in twain.

He marked the wood and the cloven ways
With an old captain's eyes,
And he thought how many a time had he
Sought to see Doom he could not see;
How ruin had come and victory,
And both were a surprise.

Even so he had watched and wondered
Under Ashdown...Read more of this...

by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
in the time of oral
grave grave legalities of hate - all real
walks our prime registered reproach and seal.
Our successful moral.
The good man.

Watches our bogus roses, our rank wreath, our
love's unreliable cement, the gray
jubilees of our demondom.
Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly ex...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...warder call,
     'To arms! the foemen storm the wall,'
     The antlered monarch of the waste
     Sprung from his heathery couch in haste.
     But ere his fleet career he took,
     The dew-drops from his flanks he shook;
     Like crested leader proud and high
     Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky;
     A moment gazed adown the dale,
     A moment snuffed the tainted gale,
     A moment listened to the cry,
     That thickened as the chase drew nigh;
   ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ws, 
Which flesh and blood perforce would violate: 
For feel this arm of mine--the tide within 
Red with free chase and heather-scented air, 
Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me pure 
As any maiden child? lock up my tongue 
From uttering freely what I freely hear? 
Bind me to one? The wide world laughs at it. 
And worldling of the world am I, and know 
The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour 
Woos his own end; we are not angels here 
Nor shall be: vows--I am woodman of t...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...Hobsbaum said,

‘It was the place’s fault. If we’d made it to Haworth as we

Dreamed, standing on the moor top, the heather muffling your tears,

The wind sighing its threnody, crying its cradle-song, whispering

Promises of its care to come, its breath caressing the very stones

We sat on, lost beyond the ken of any guide, beyond the signatures

Of time and place, beyond, beyond...



II

There is no clock can measure what we both passed through,

The darker ...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...**** virago’

You’ve got to expect a few kicks back.

All this is but the dust

We must shake from our feet

Purple heather still with blossom

In Haworth and I shall gather armfuls

To toss them skywards and you,

Madonna mia, I shall bed you there

In blazing summer by High Wythens,

Artist unbroken from the highest peak

I raise my hands to heaven.

( II )

Sweet Anna, I do not know you from Eve

But your zany zine in the post

Is the best I’ve ever seen, inspiring...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things