Famous June Poems by Famous Poets

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

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June

by Carl Sandburg
 Paula is digging and shaping the loam of a salvia,
 Scarlet Chinese talker of summer.
Two petals of crabapple blossom blow fallen in Paula's
 hair,
 And fluff of white from a cottonwood....Read more of this...

The Planting of the Apple-Tree

by William Cullen Bryant
COME let us plant the apple-tree. 
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; 
Wide let its hollow bed be made; 
There gently lay the roots and there 
Sift the dark mould with kindly care 5 
And press it o'er them tenderly  
As round the sleeping infant's feet  
We softly fold the cradle sheet; 
So plant we the apple-tree....Read more of this...

June 6

by David Lehman
 No two are identical though
they begin from the same
point in time the same point in
the dream when the radio shuts
itself off in the middle of
"Just in Time" (Sinatra version)
the curtains are blowing in
and the driver of the hearse
outside looks up and says "Room
for one more" and now you
know what kind of hospital you're in
and you must escape from it
by...Read more of this...

June

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 SHE behind yon mountain lives,
Who my love's sweet guerdon gives.
Tell me, mount, how this can be!
Very glass thou seem'st to me,
And I seem to be close by,
For I see her drawing nigh;
Now, because I'm absent, sad,
Now, because she sees me, glad!

Soon between us rise to sight
Valleys cool, with bushes light,
Streams and meadows; next appear

Mills and wheels, the surest token
That...Read more of this...

The Universal Prayer

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ma fille, va prier!") 
 
 {XXXVII., June, 1830.} 


 I. 
 
 Come, child, to prayer; the busy day is done, 
 A golden star gleams through the dusk of night; 
 The hills are trembling in the rising mist, 
 The rumbling wain looms dim upon the sight; 
 All things wend home to rest; the roadside...Read more of this...

A Song: When June is Past the Fading Rose

by Thomas Carew
 Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose; 
For in your beauty's orient deep 
These flowers as in their causes, sleep. 

Ask me no more whither doth stray 
The golden atoms of the day; 
For in pure love heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

Ask me no more whither doth...Read more of this...

Knee-Deep in June

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Tell you what I like the best -- 
'Long about knee-deep in June, 
'Bout the time strawberries melts 
On the vine, -- some afternoon 
Like to jes' git out and rest, 
And not work at nothin' else! 

Orchard's where I'd ruther be -- 
Needn't fence it in fer me! -- 
Jes' the whole sky overhead, 
And the whole airth...Read more of this...

There is a June when Corn is cut

by Emily Dickinson
 There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed --
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed

As should a Face supposed the Grave's
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return --

Two Seasons, it is said, exist --
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost --

May not our...Read more of this...

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

by Anne Sexton
 If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Common
on speed and saltines,
pissing in the duck pond,
rapping with the street priest,
trading talk like blows,
another missing person,
would understand.

The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.

The...Read more of this...

Roses of June

by Emile Verhaeren
Roses of June, you the fairest with your hearts transfixed by the sun; violent and tranquil roses, like a delicate flock of birds settled on the branches;
Roses of June and July, upright and new, mouths and kisses that suddenly move or grow still with the coming and going of the wind, caress of shadow and gold on the restless garden;
Roses...Read more of this...

A June-Tide Echo

by Amy Levy
 (After a Richter Concert.)


In the long, sad time, when the sky was grey,
And the keen blast blew through the city drear,
When delight had fled from the night and the day,
My chill heart whispered, " June will be here!

" June with its roses a-sway in the sun,
Its glory of green on mead and tree."
Lo, now the sweet June-tide is nearly...Read more of this...

June Sick Room

by A S J Tessimond
 The birds' shrill fluting
Beats on the pink blind,
Pierces the pink blind
At whose edge fumble the sun's
Fingers till one obtrudes
And stirs the thick motes.
The room is a close box of pink warmth.
The minutes click.
A man picks across the street
With a metal-pointed stick.
Three clocks drop each twelve pennies
On the drom of noon.
The birds end.
A child's cry pricks the hush.
The wind plucks...Read more of this...

A Calendar of Sonnets: June

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 O month whose promise and fulfilment blend, 
And burst in one! it seems the earth can store 
In all her roomy house no treasure more; 
Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend 
On fruit, when once this stintless flowering end. 
And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before 
It hath made ready at its hidden core 
Its...Read more of this...

A Memory of June

by Claude McKay
 When June comes dancing o'er the death of May, 
With scarlet roses tinting her green breast, 
And mating thrushes ushering in her day, 
And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest, 

I always see the evening when we met-- 
The first of June baptized in tender rain-- 
And walked home through the wide streets, gleaming wet, 
Arms locked, our...Read more of this...

June 11

by David Lehman
 It's my birtday I've got an empty
stomach and the desire to be
lazy in the hammock and maybe
go for a cool swim on a hot day
with the trombone in Sinatra's
"I've Got You Under My Skin"
in my head and then to break for
lunch a corned-beef sandwich and Pepsi
with plenty of ice cubes unlike France
where they put one measly ice cube
in your...Read more of this...

De Gustibus---

by Robert Browning
 I.

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice---
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,---
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers' boon, 
And the...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Brand

by Robert William Service
 'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him...Read more of this...

June

by Amy Levy
 Last June I saw your face three times;
Three times I touched your hand;
Now, as before, May month is o'er,
And June is in the land.

O many Junes shall come and go,
Flow'r-footed o'er the mead;
O many Junes for me, to whom
Is length of days decreed.

There shall be sunlight, scent of rose;
Warm mist of summer rain;
Only this change--I shall not look
Upon your...Read more of this...

June Dreams In January

by Sidney Lanier
 "So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon
That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills,
In languid palpitation, half a-swoon
With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills;

"Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale
As kisses faint-blown from thy finger-tips
Up to the sun, that turn him passion-pale
And then as red as any virgin's lips.

"O tender Darkness, when June-day hath ceased,
-- Faint Odor from the day-flower's...Read more of this...

June Light

by Richard Wilbur
 Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me outside the window.You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire
As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face
As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,
Which promise always wine, by mottled...Read more of this...

June 19

by David Lehman
 What is it about the Abyss 
that tempts the young poet to kiss 
the air and head for the nearest cliff? This 
unreasonable attachment to the bliss 
of falling -- what accounts for it? Unlike the hiss 
announcing a reptilian presence, the word Abyss 
creates the object of our dread: it exists, it is, 
widening like the gulf between...Read more of this...

It was June in the garden

by Emile Verhaeren
It was June in the garden, our hour and our day, and our eyes looked upon all things with so great a love that the roses seemed to us to open gently, and to see and love us.
The sky was purer than it had ever been: the insects and birds floated in the gold and gladness of an air as...Read more of this...

All in June

by William Henry Davies
 A week ago I had a fire 
To warm my feet, my hands and face; 
Cold winds, that never make a friend, 
Crept in and out of every place. 

Today the fields are rich in grass, 
And buttercups in thousands grow; 
I'll show the world where I have been-- 
With gold-dust seen on either shoe. 

Till to my garden...Read more of this...

June

by William Cullen Bryant
I GAZED upon the glorious sky 
And the green mountains round  
And thought that when I came to lie 
At rest within the ground  
'T were pleasant that in flowery June 5 
When brooks send up a cheerful tune  
And groves a joyous sound  
The sexton's hand my grave to make  
The rich green mountain-turf...Read more of this...

Poem For South African Women

by June Jordan
Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the...Read more of this...

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