Famous Ice Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Three Children On The Ice

by Mother Goose
Three children sliding on the ice
    Upon a summer's day,
As it fell out, they all fell in,
    The rest they ran away.

Oh, had these children been at school,
    Or sliding on dry ground,
Ten thousand pounds to one penny
    They had not then been drowned.

Ye parents who have children...Read more of this...

No Sunday Chicken

by Robert William Service
 I could have sold him up because
 His rent was long past due;
And Grimes, my lawyer, said it was
 The proper thing to do:
But how could I be so inhuman?
 And me a gentle-woman.

Yet I am poor as chapel mouse,
 Pinching to make ends meet,
And have to let my little house
 To buy enough to eat:
Why, even now to...Read more of this...

Winter Flowers

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The summer queen has many flowers
  To deck her sunny hair,
And trailing grasses, pure and sweet,
  To scent the heavy air;
And upward through the misty sky
  There is a glory too,
Of floating clouds and rifts of gold
  And depths of smiling blue.
Yet winter, too, can boast a wealth
  Of flowers pure and white;
A kingly crown...Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen: Chapter IV

by William Blake
 a

1. Los smitten with astonishment
Frightend at the hurtling bones

2. And at the surging sulphureous
Perturbed Immortal mad raging

3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre 
Round the furious limbs of Los

4. And Los formed nets & gins 
And threw the nets round about

5. He watch'd in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change 
With rivets of iron & brass;

6. And...Read more of this...

I See The Boys Of Summer

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in...Read more of this...

Our Eyes

by Nazim Hikmet
 Our eyes
 are limpid
 drops of water.
In each drop exists
 a tiny sign
 of our genius
which has given life to cold iron.
Our eyes
 are limpid
 drops of water
merged absolutely in the Ocean
that you could hardly recognize
 the drop in a block of ice
 in a boiling pan.
The masterpiece of these eyes
 the fulfillment of their genius
 the living iron.
In...Read more of this...

A Calendar of Sonnets: December

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes 
Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed: 
Far fairer than when placidly it streamed, 
The brook its frozen architecture makes, 
And under bridges white its swift way takes. 
Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed 
Might linger on the road; or one who deemed 
His message hostile gently for...Read more of this...

Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost
 Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice....Read more of this...

Sonnet 30 (Fire And Ice)

by Edmund Spenser
 My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented...Read more of this...

The Last Word of a Blue Bird

by Robert Frost
 As told to a child


As I went out a Crow
In a low voice said, "Oh,
I was looking for you.
How do you do?
I just came to tell you
To tell Lesley (will you?)
That her little Bluebird
Wanted me to bring word
That the north wind last night
That made the stars bright
And made ice on the trough
Almost made him cough
His tail feathers off.
He just...Read more of this...

Ice Handler

by Carl Sandburg
 I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a...Read more of this...

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I
The everlasting universe of things 
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods...Read more of this...

Lucky

by Tony Hoagland
 If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.

Into the big enamel tub
half-filled with water
which I had made just right,
I lowered the childish skeleton
she had become.

Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorry ruin...Read more of this...

The Progress of Spring

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain...Read more of this...

August 17th

by Anne Sexton
 Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.

Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever...Read more of this...

Exposure

by Wilfred Owen
 I

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
 But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men...Read more of this...

Before the ice is in the pools

by Emily Dickinson
 Before the ice is in the pools --
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow --

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
On a summer's day --
What is only walking
Just a bridge away --

That which sings so -- speaks so --
When there's no one here...Read more of this...

The Last Chantey

by Rudyard Kipling
 "And there was no more sea."


Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
 Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
 "Lo! Earth has passed away
 On the smoke of Judgment Day.
 That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 "Plague upon the...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

by Robert William Service
 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of...Read more of this...

Miracle Ice Cream

by Adrienne Rich
 Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart....Read more of this...

I was some ice

by Edward Lear
I  was some iceSo white and so nice,But which nobody tasted;And so it was wasted. i All that good ice!...Read more of this...

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

by Wallace Stevens
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which...Read more of this...

Snow and Ice

by Quincy Troupe
 ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place
space as keys that turn in tight, trigger
pain of situations
where we move ever so slowly
so gently into time — traced agony
the bright turning of imagination
so slowly
grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter
mountains where spirits walk voices, ever so slowly
swept by cold, breathing fire
as these elliptical moments of illusion
link fragile loves sunk...Read more of this...

Bleezers Ice Cream

by Jack Prelutsky
 I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI
TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY
CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW
CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW
TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER...Read more of this...

Ice and Fire

by Edmund Spenser
 My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Ice poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace