Famous Lilacs Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lilacs poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lilacs poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lilacs poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Karl Shapiro
In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And...Read more of this...
by
Jerome Rothenberg
I kill for pleasure
not for gain.
A man much more
than you my hands
find knives
& flash them.
I am guilty
in my works
while in their eyes
I seek redemption.
I find myself
forgotten
angry at the thought
of bread. I will not
eat my poem(A. Artaud)
much less be raped
by it. I have a home
but sit with others
shirtless, waiting
for the moon to rise.
I am a warrior
grown old.
The number on my...Read more of this...
by
John Drinkwater
Persuasion
I At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again,...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
There's a place I know where the birds swing low,
And wayward vines go roaming,
Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god
Is pale, in scented gloaming.
And at sunset there comes a lady fair
Whose eyes are deep with yearning.
By an old, old gate does the lady wait
Her own true love's returning.
But the days...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are, ” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.
Other faces rise on the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day,
I never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play.
And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood,
And I am very happy, for I know that I've been good.
My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair,...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Koch
(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)
In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.
Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.
Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
It faces west, and round the back and sides
High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,
And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks
Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish
(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants)
To overtop the apple trees hard-by.
Red roses, lilacs, variegated box
Are there in plenty, and such...Read more of this...
by
Erin Moure
Unspeakable. The word that fills up the
poem, that the head
tries to excise.
At 6 a.m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face
on the porch rail in the rain.
Heavy rains later, & maybe a thunderstorm.
12 or 13 degrees.
Inside: an iris, candle, poster of the
many-breasted Artemis in a stone hat
from Anatolia
A little pedal steel guitar
A photograph of her at a table by...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Dear to my heart are the ancestral dwellings of America,
Dearer than if they were haunted by ghosts of royal splendour;
These are the homes that were built by the brave beginners of a nation,
They are simple enough to be great, and full of a friendly dignity.
I love the old white farmhouses nestled in New England valleys,
Ample and long and...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
(Note: — Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.)
"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May — did she wonder? does she remember — in the dust — in the cool tombs?"
CARL SANDBURG.
I
Powhatan was conqueror,
Powhatan was emperor.
He was akin to wolf and bee,
Brother of the hickory tree.
Son of...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane
shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,
the golden rooster claps his golden wings
and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,
the golden arrow in the southeast sings
and hears on the roof the Atlantic...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
TOMB of a millionaire,
A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen,
Place of the dead where they spend every year
The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars
For upkeep and flowers
To keep fresh the memory of the dead.
The merchant prince gone to dust
Commanded in his written will
Over the signed name of his last testament
Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside
For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips,
For perfume and color,...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lilacs blossom just as sweet
Now my heart is shattered.
If I bowled it down the street,
Who's to say it mattered?
If there's one that rode away
What would I be missing?
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.
Eyes that watch the morning star
Seem a little brighter;
Arms held out to darkness are
Usually whiter.
Shall I bar the strolling guest,
Bind my brow...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
At twenty-six, I was inexperienced;
Still, I knew much about love
In the waste land, reasoning,
It's not important when you start
Practicing, rather when you start searching;
And I committed myself to finding
It before others even knew it existed, 'breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing'
My thoughts, my longings, my love
For something that didn't need...Read more of this...
by
Lisel Mueller
All night the knot in the shoelace
waits for its liberation,
and the match on the table packs its head
with anticipation of light.
The faucet sweats out a bead of water,
which gathers strength for the free fall,
while the lettuce in the refrigerator
succumbs to its brown killer.
And in the novel I put down
before I...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I WAS a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets
for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—I asked
why men die for words.
I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
lilacs, told me the high golden words are:
Mother, Home, and Heaven—other older men with
face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality
—they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.
Years ticked off their say-so...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
O how...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no,
Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies,—I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.
Like...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many
years, or
stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE WEST window is a panel of marching onions.
Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards.
The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace.
(How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums?)...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Si je pouvais voir, O patrie!")
{Bk. III. xxxvii.}
Would I could see you, native land,
Where lilacs and the almond stand
Behind fields flowering to the strand—
But no!
Can I—oh, father, mother, crave
Another final blessing save
To rest my head upon your grave?—
But no!...Read more of this...
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