Famous Innocence Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Auguries Of Innocence

by William Blake
 To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse...Read more of this...

Inscription 07 - For A Tablet On The Banks Of A Stream

by Robert Southey
 Stranger! awhile upon this mossy bank
Recline thee. If the Sun rides high, the breeze,
That loves to ripple o'er the rivulet,
Will play around thy brow, and the cool sound
Of running waters soothe thee. Mark how clear
It sparkles o'er the shallows, and behold
Where o'er its surface wheels with restless speed
Yon glossy insect, on the sand below
How the swift shadow flies. The...Read more of this...

Holy Thursday (Innocence)

by William Blake
 Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seemed these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their...Read more of this...

Content To My Dearest Lucasia

by Katherine Philips
 Content, the false World's best disguise, 
The search and faction of the Wise, 
Is so abstruse and hid in night, 
That, like that Fairy Red-cross Knight, 
Who trech'rous Falshood for clear Truth had got, 
Men think they have it when they have it not. 

For Courts Content would gladly own, 
But she ne're dwelt about a Throne: 
And to...Read more of this...

Nurses Song (Innocence)

by William Blake
 When voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still

Then come home my children the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies

No no let us play, for...Read more of this...

In Mind

by Denise Levertov
 There's in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation-

but she has
no imagination

And there's a
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind....Read more of this...

The Bonnie Lass o Dundee

by William Topaz McGonagall
 O' a' the toons that I've been in,
I dearly love Dundee,
It's there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lass I love to see. Her face is fair, broon is her hair,
And dark blue is her e'e,
And aboon a' the lasses e'er I saw,
There's nane like her to me
The bonnie broon-hair'd lassie o' Bonnie Dundee. 

I see her in my night dreams,
Wi'...Read more of this...

Ode to Winter

by Thomas Campbell
 When first the fiery-mantled sun 
His heavenly race begun to run; 
Round the earth and ocean blue, 
His children four the Seasons flew. 
First, in green apparel dancing, 
The young Spring smiled with angel grace; 
Rosy summer next advancing, 
Rushed into her sire's embrace:- 
Her blue-haired sire, who bade her keep 
For ever nearest to his smile, 
On Calpe's...Read more of this...

Early Poems

by Victor Hugo
 MOSES ON THE NILE. 
 
 ("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.") 
 
 {TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.} 


 "Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray 
 Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; 
 The river bank is lonely: come away! 
 The early murmurs of old Memphis creep 
 Faint on...Read more of this...

A Song to David (excerpt)

by Christopher Smart
 Sweet is the dew that falls betimes,
And drops upon the leafy limes;
Sweet Hermon's fragrant air:
Sweet is the lily's silver bell,
And sweet the wakeful tapers smell
That watch for early pray'r.

Sweet the young nurse with love intense,
Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence;
Sweet when the lost arrive:
Sweet the musician's ardour beats,
While his vague mind's in quest of sweets,
The choicest flow'rs to hive.

Sweeter in...Read more of this...

Encounter

by Robert Francis
 Those who have touched it or been touched by it
Or brushed by something that the vine has brushed,
Or burning it, have stood where the sly smoke
Has touched them-Know the meaning of its name.

The leaf is smooth. Its green is innocence.
A clean, unblemished leaf, glossy when young.
A leaf the unobserving might overlook
And the observing find too prosperous.

I've seen a vine...Read more of this...

On The Death Of A Fair Infant Dying Of A Cough

by John Milton
 I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;
For he being amorous on that lovely die
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss
But kill'd alas, and then bewayl'd his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioter
By boistrous rape th' Athenian damsel got,
He thought...Read more of this...

A Prayer For My Daughter

by William Butler Yeats
 Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for...Read more of this...

The Spirit Of The Unborn Babe

by Robert William Service
 The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all;
The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting...Read more of this...

Ode

by John Dryden
 To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew,
Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting

Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring...Read more of this...

Ballade at Thirty-five

by Dorothy Parker
 This, no song of an ingénue, 
This, no ballad of innocence; 
This, the rhyme of a lady who 
Followed ever her natural bents. 
This, a solo of sapience, 
This, a chantey of sophistry, 
This, the sum of experiments, -- 
I loved them until they loved me. 

Decked in garments of sable hue, 
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents, 
Wearing...Read more of this...

Songs Of Innocence: Introduction

by William Blake
 Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb:
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper, pipe that song again--
So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy...Read more of this...

Introduction to the Songs of Innocence

by William Blake
 Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again;'
So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer:!'
So I sang the same again,
While he wept with joy...Read more of this...

The Pretty Lady

by Robert William Service
 He asked the lady in the train
If he might smoke: she smiled consent.
So lighting his cigar and fain
To talk he puffed away content,
Reflecting: how delightful are
 Fair dame and fine cigar.

Then from his bulging wallet he
A photograph with pride displayed,
His charming wife and children three,
When suddenly he was dismayed
To hear her say: 'These notes you've got,--
 I want the...Read more of this...

Blood And The Moon

by William Butler Yeats
 I

Blessed be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages -
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.

II

Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the...Read more of this...

Mutation

by William Cullen Bryant
 They talk of short-lived pleasure--be it so-- 
Pain dies as quickly; stern, hard-featured pain 
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. 
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; 
And after dreams of horror, comes again 
The welcome morning with its rays of peace. 
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain, 
Makes the strong secret pangs of pain to cease:

Remorse is virtue's...Read more of this...

The Innocence

by Robert Creeley
 Looking to the sea, it is a line
of unbroken mountains.

It is the sky.
It is the ground. There
we live it, on it.

It is a mist
now tangent to another
quiet. Here the leaves
come, there
is the rock in evidence

or evidence.
What I come to do
is partial, partially kept....Read more of this...

Reeds of Innocence

by William Blake
PIPING down the valleys wild  
Piping songs of pleasant glee  
On a cloud I saw a child  
And he laughing said to me: 

'Pipe a song about a Lamb!' 5 
So I piped with merry cheer. 
'Piper pipe that song again;' 
So I piped: he wept to hear. 

'Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe; 
Sing thy songs...Read more of this...

The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)

by William Blake
 When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know...Read more of this...

Innocence

by Robert William Service
 The height of wisdom seems to me
 That of a child;
So let my ageing vision be
 Serene and mild.
The depth of folly, I aver,
 Is to fish deep
In that dark pool of science where
 Truth-demons sleep.

Let me not be a bearded sage
 Seeing too clear;
In issues of the atom age
 Man-doom I fear.
So long as living's outward show
 To...Read more of this...

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