Famous Lilies Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lalila, to the Ferengi Lover

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Kama the Indian Eros

   The daylight is dying,
   The Flying fox flying,
         Amber and amethyst burn in the sky.
   See, the sun throws a late,
   Lingering, roseate
         Kiss to the landscape to bid...Read more of this...

Enuff

by Ntozake Shange
at 4:30 AM
she rose
movin the arms & legs that trapped her
she sighed affirmin the sculptured man
& made herself a bath
of dark musk oil egyptian crystals
& florida water to remove his smell
to wash away the glitter
to watch the butterflies melt into
suds & the rhinestones fall beneath
her buttocks like smooth pebbles
in a missouri creek
layin in water
she became herself
ordinary
brown braided woman
with big legs...Read more of this...

Water Lilies

by Sara Teasdale
 If you have forgotten water lilies floating
On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever
To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,
There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies,
And the shadow...Read more of this...

No Lilies For Lisette

by Robert William Service
 Said the Door: "She came in
With no shadow of sin;
Turned the key in the lock,
Slipped out of her frock,
The robe she liked best
When for supper she dressed.
Then a letter she tore . . .
What a wan look she wore!"
 Said the Door.

Said the Chair: "She sat down
With a pitiful frown,
And then (oh, it's *****)
Just one lonely tear
Rolled down her...Read more of this...

Sez You

by Henry Lawson
 When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet, 
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat; 
When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide, 
And it's fifteen miles to water in the scrub the other side -- 
Don't give up, don't be down-hearted, to a man's strong heart...Read more of this...

Our Hero

by Robert William Service
 "Flowers, only flowers -- bring me dainty posies,
 Blossoms for forgetfulness," that was all he said;
So we sacked our gardens, violets and roses,
 Lilies white and bluebells laid we on his bed.
Soft his pale hands touched them, tenderly caressing;
 Soft into his tired eyes came a little light;
Such a wistful love-look, gentle as a blessing;
 There amid the flowers...Read more of this...

Reminiscence of Mahomed Akram

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   I shall never forget you, never.  Never escape
   Your memory woven about the beautiful things of life.

   The sudden Thought of your Face is like a Wound
             When it comes unsought
   On some scent of Jasmin, Lilies, or...Read more of this...

Under the Sea

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Under the sea, the great wide sea
  That sweeps the golden shore;
What treasures lie beneath the waves
  Forevermore!
Ask of the winds, the sobbing winds
  That toss the waves on high;
And fling the burden of their song
  Unto the sky.
Ask of the stars, the jeweled stars
  That sleep within the tide;
Like golden lilies floating far,
 ...Read more of this...

Lillies in the Fire

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Ah, you stack of white lilies, all white and gold,
I am adrift as a sunbeam, and without form
Or having, save I light on you to warm
Your pallor into radiance, flush your cold

White beauty into incandescence: you
Are not a stack of white lilies to-night, but a white
And clustered star transfigured by me to-night,
And lighting these ruddy leaves like a star dropped...Read more of this...

Power

by Aleister Crowley
 The mighty sound of forests murmuring 
In answer to the dread command; 
The stars that shudder when their king 
extends his hand, 

His awful hand to bless, to curse; or moves 
Toward the dimmest den 
In the thick leaves, not known of loves 
Or nymphs or men; 

(Only the sylph's frail gossamer may wave 
Their quiet frondage yet, 
Only...Read more of this...

Five Bells

by Kenneth Slessor
 Time that is moved by little fidget wheels 
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. 
Between the double and the single bell 
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells 
From the dark warship riding there below, 
I have lived many lives, and this one life 
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells....Read more of this...

The Way

by Amy Lowell
 At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted 
out by the grasses
Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses
Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on 
the water,
While hidden by bloom in a hawthorn a bird filled the morning with 
singing.
It widened a highway, majestic, stretching ever 
to distant horizons,
Where shadows of...Read more of this...

The Daguerreotype

by William Vaughn Moody
 This, then, is she, 
My mother as she looked at seventeen, 
When she first met my father. Young incredibly, 
Younger than spring, without the faintest trace 
Of disappointment, weariness, or tean 
Upon the childlike earnestness and grace 
Of the waiting face. 
Those close-wound ropes of pearl 
(Or common beads made precious by their use) 
Seem heavy for so slight...Read more of this...

Vivien

by Alan Seeger
 Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools 
Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled 
Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world. 
Her robes were gauzes -- gold and green and gules, 
All furry things flocked round her, from her hand 
Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet. 
Two peacocks watched her where she made her...Read more of this...

Chanson

by Oscar Wilde
 A ring of gold and a milk-white dove
Are goodly gifts for thee,
And a hempen rope for your own love
To hang upon a tree.

For you a House of Ivory,
(Roses are white in the rose-bower)!
A narrow bed for me to lie,
(White, O white, is the hemlock flower)!

Myrtle and jessamine for you,
(O the red rose is fair to see)!
For me the cypress...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Favored

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Ah! happy he, upon whose birth each god
Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright
Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod
Of eloquent Hermes kindles--to whose eyes,
Scarce wakened yet, Apollo steals in light,
While on imperial brows Jove sets the seal of might!
Godlike the lot ordained for him to share,
He wins the garland ere he runs the race;
He learns life's...Read more of this...

Twin Lilies

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Twin lilies in the river floating,
  Two lilies pure and white;
And one is pale and faintly drooping,
  The other glad and bright.
Twin lilies in the silvery waters,
  Two lilies white and frail;
And one is ever laughing gladly,
  The other, still and pale.
Upon the peaceful gleaming waters,
  They linger side by side;
And one, her head is...Read more of this...

Maud

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
COME into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, Night, has flown, 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate alone; 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 5 
And the musk of the roses blown. 

For a breeze of morning moves, 
And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint in the light that...Read more of this...

Nay Lord not thus! white lilies in the spring

by Oscar Wilde
 Seven stars in the still water,
And seven in the sky;
Seven sins on the King's daughter,
Deep in her soul to lie.

Red roses are at her feet,
(Roses are red in her red-gold hair)
And O where her bosom and girdle meet
Red roses are hidden there.

Fair is the knight who lieth slain
Amid the rush and reed,
See the lean fishes that are fain
Upon dead...Read more of this...

Although we saw this bright garden

by Emile Verhaeren
Although we saw this bright garden, wherein we pass silently, flower before our eyes, it is rather in us that grows the pleasantest and fairest garden in the world.
For we live all the flowers, all the plants and all the grasses in our laughter and our tears of pure and calm happiness.
For we live all the transparencies of the blue...Read more of this...

The White Lilies

by Louise Gluck
 As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to...Read more of this...

Mary and Gabriel

by Rupert Brooke
 Young Mary, loitering once her garden way,
Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day,
As wine that blushes water through. And soon,
Out of the gold air of the afternoon,
One knelt before her: hair he had, or fire,
Bound back above his ears with golden wire,
Baring the eager marble of his face.
Not man's nor woman's was the immortal grace
Rounding the limbs...Read more of this...

The Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three

by Tristan Tzara
 where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies 
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouth
our legs are stiff and knock together
our faces...Read more of this...

The Lilies

by Wendell Berry
 Amid the gray trunks of ancient trees we found
the gay woodland lilies nodding on their stems,
frail and fair, so delicately balanced the air
held or moved them as it stood or moved. 
The ground that slept beneath us woke in them
and made a music of the light, as it had waked
and sung in fragile things unnumbered years,
and left their kind...Read more of this...

The Star-Apple Kingdom

by Derek Walcott
 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the...Read more of this...

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