Famous Holiday Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Holiday poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous holiday poems. These examples illustrate what a famous holiday poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Butler Yeats
I lived among great houses,
Riches drove out rank,
Base drove out the better blood,
And mind and body shrank.
No Oscar ruled the table,
But I'd a troop of friends
That knowing better talk had gone
Talked of odds and ends.
Some knew what ailed the world
But never said a thing,
So I have picked a better trade
And night and morning sing:
Tall dames go walking in grass-green...Read more of this...
by
Jennifer Reeser
Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
not knowing it entices into tears
this woman never once disposed to travel
the holiday before. My children squander
unleavened bread brought forth from Taco Bell.
What sacrifice of mine could be worth mention?
Enshroud it. Christ's...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I love the cheery bustle
Of children round the house,
The tidy maids a-hustle,
The chatter of my spouse;
The laughter and the singing,
The joy on every face:
With frequent laughter ringing,
O, Home's a happy place!
Aye, Home's a bit of heaven;
I love it every day;
My line-up of eleven
Combine to make it gay;
Yet when in June they're leaving
For Sandport by the sea,
By rights I should...Read more of this...
by
Jane Taylor
"Ah! don't you remember, 'tis almost December,
And soon will the holidays come;
Oh, 'twill be so funny, I've plenty of money,
I'll buy me a sword and a drum. "
Thus said little Harry, unwilling to tarry,
Impatient from school to depart;
But we shall discover, this holiday lover
Knew little what was in his heart.
For when on returning, he gave up...Read more of this...
by
Sir Walter Raleigh
Now what is Love, I pray thee, tell?
It is that fountain and that well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is, perhaps, the sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell;
And this is Love, as I hear tell.
Yet what is Love, I prithee, say?
It is a work on holiday,
It is December matched with May,
When lusty bloods in fresh array
Hear ten months...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I
When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?
Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
(Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
When my mam had to go
Up north to look after gran,
Margaret’s mam said I could
Stop with them; while they were
Sorting it out Margaret looked
Away, pretending to go all shy
But there was a gleam in her eye,
Anyway it was the six weeks’
Holiday and six weeks with
Margaret night and day was a
Sun and blue sky heaven to my
Ten-year old heart.. the...Read more of this...
by
Jane Taylor
In tears to her mother poor Harriet came,
Let us listen to hear what she says:
"O see, dear mamma, it is pouring with rain,
We cannot go out in the chaise.
"All the week I have long'd for this holiday so,
And fancied the minutes were hours;
And now that I'm dress'd and all ready to go,
Do look...Read more of this...
by
Judy Grahn
When she goes to Hollywood
she is an angel.
She writes in red red lipstick
on the window of her body,
long for me, oh need me!
Parts her lips like a lotus.
Opening night she stands, poised
on her carpet, luminescent,
young men humming
all around her. She is flying.
Her high heels are wands, her
furs electric. Her bracelets
flashing. How completely
dazzling her complexion,
how vibrant her hair and eyes,
how...Read more of this...
by
Maggie Estep
My first job was when I was about 15. I had met
a girl named Hope who became my best friend. Hope and I were flunking math
class so we became speed freaks. This honed our algebra skills and we quickly
became whiz kids. For about 5 minutes. Then, our brains started to fry
and we were just teenage speed freaks.
Then, we decided...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
It was the pleasant season yet,
When the stones at cottage doors
Dry quickly, while the roads are wet,
After the silver showers.
The green leaves they looked greener still,
And the thrush, renewing his tune,
Shook a loud note from his gladsome bill
Into the bright blue noon.
Robin Hood's mother looked out, and said
"It were a shame and a sin
For fear of getting a wet...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more!
Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore!
And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me,
I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly
That I might eat again, and met thy sneers
With deprecations, and thy blows with tears,—
Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
As if spent...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I...Read more of this...
by
Anna Akhmatova
I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice,
And the rich summer's welcome loss I hear
In the sickle's serpentine hiss
Cutting the corn's ear tightly pressed to ear.
And the short skirts of the slim reapers
Fly in the wind like holiday pennants,
The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping
From under dusty lashes, the long glance.
I don't expect...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Me! Come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me! Hear! My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!
The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.
My holiday shall be
That they remember me;
My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Me! Come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me! Hear! My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!
The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.
My holiday shall be
That they remember me;
My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name....Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
When the sun shouts and people abound
One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of
bronze
And the iron age; iron the unstable metal;
Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-
ered-up cities
Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.
Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains
will cure them,
Then nothing...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Bird did prance -- the Bee did play --
The Sun ran miles away
So blind with joy he could not choose
Between his Holiday
The morn was up -- the meadows out
The Fences all but ran,
Republic of Delight, I thought
Where each is Citizen --
From Heavy laden Lands to thee
Were seas to cross to come
A Caspian were crowded --
Too near thou...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
In Paris on a morn of May
I sent a radio transalantic
To catch a steamer on the way,
But oh the postal fuss was frantic;
They sent me here, they sent me there,
They were so courteous yet so canny;
Then as I wilted in despair
A Frenchman flipped me on the fanny.
'Twas only juts a gentle pat,
Yet oh what sympathy behind it!
I don't let...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
He took the grade in second - quite a climb,
Dizzy and dangerous, yet how sublime!
The road went up and up; it curved around
The mountain and the gorge grew more profound.
He drove serenely, with no hint of haste;
And then she felt his arm go round her waist.
She shrank: she did not know him very well,
Being like her a guest at...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas sorry, that we were --
For where the Holiday should be
There publishes a Tear --
Nor how Ourselves be justified --
Since Grief and Joy are done
So similar -- An Optizan
Could not decide between --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead
Came the Darker Way --
Carriages -- Be Sure -- and Guests -- too --
But for Holiday
'Tis more pitiful Endeavor
Than did Loaded Sea
O'er the Curls attempt to caper
It had cast away --
Never Bride had such Assembling --
Never kinsmen kneeled
To salute so fair a Forehead --
Garland be indeed --
Fitter Feet -- of Her before us...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I sat on a low stone wall
Watching the blue blood of the azaleas
Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles.
A seamless transparency of rain
Lowering over the turning trees
My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s
‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker
To the swathes of heather.
I stood on the moor top
Where the tracks cross
The fellside green
The fellside ochre,
Shifting reflections
Of C?zanne’s last winter....Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The Wife
The house is like a garden,
The children are the flowers,
The gardener should come methinks
And walk among his bowers,
Oh! lock the door on worry
And shut your cares away,
Not time of year, but love and cheer,
Will make a holiday.
The Husband
Impossible! You women do not know
The toil it takes to make a business grow.
I cannot join you until very late,
So hurry...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Lest any doubt that we are glad that they were born Today
Whose having lived is held by us in noble Holiday
Without the date, like Consciousness or Immortality --...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Holiday poems.