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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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...

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...

"Golden Eyes"

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Oh Amber Eyes, oh Golden Eyes!
     Oh Eyes so softly gay!
   Wherein swift fancies fall and rise,
     Grow dark and fade away.
   Eyes like a little limpid pool
     That holds a sunset sky,
   While on its surface, calm and...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...

Light

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Light, my light, the world-filling light, 
the eye-kissing light, 
heart-sweetening light! 

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life; 
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; 
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth. 

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. 
Lilies and jasmines surge...Read more of this...

A Passing Hail

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Let us rest ourselves a bit! 
Worry?-- wave your hand to it -- 
Kiss your finger-tips and smile 
It farewell a little while.

Weary of the weary way 
We have come from Yesterday, 
Let us fret not, instead, 
Of the wary way ahead.

Let us pause and catch our breath 
On the hither side of death, 
While we see the tender...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...

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...

E.P. Ode Pour Lelection De Son Sepulchre

by Ezra Pound
 For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--

No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;

Idmen gar toi panth, hos eni troie
Caught in...Read more of this...

264. Song—On a Bank of Flowers

by Robert Burns
 ON a bank of flowers, in a summer day,
 For summer lightly drest,
The youthful, blooming Nelly lay,
 With love and sleep opprest;
When Willie, wand’ring thro’ the wood,
Who for her favour oft had sued;
 He gaz’d, he wish’d
 He fear’d, he blush’d,
And trembled where he stood.


Her closèd eyes, like weapons sheath’d,
 Were seal’d in soft repose;
Her lip, still as she...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...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 95. By night we lingerd on the lawn

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 By night we linger'd on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr'd:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk,...Read more of this...

Resurrection

by Sidney Lanier
 Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river
Where in the early fall long grasses wave,
Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver
And sigh as if just blown across a grave.

And then I pause and listen to this sighing.
I look with strange eyes on the well-known stream.
I hear wild birth-cries uttered by the dying.
I know men waking who appear to...Read more of this...

The Song of the Brook

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Oh, what would you have, you splendid sun,
  With your restless eyes of fire?
And why do you lean o'er the lilies pale?
  What more can your heart desire?
You've crimsoned the rays in the heart of the rose,
  You've drunk up the dewdrops all;
And down in the meadows your golden light
  Has gilded the daisies tall.
The thirsty...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...

He Remembers Forgotten Beauty

by William Butler Yeats
 When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through...Read more of this...

The Cross-Roads

by Amy Lowell
 A bullet through his heart at dawn. On 
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the 
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...

Sign-Post

by Robinson Jeffers
 Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the...Read more of this...

Lebennin

by J R R Tolkien
 Silver flow the streams from Colos to Erui
In the green fields of Lebennin!
Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea
The white lilies sway,
And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin
In the green fields of Lebennin,
In the wind from the Sea!...Read more of this...

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...

The Phantom of Love

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in...Read more of this...

Craving for Spring

by D. H. Lawrence
 I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets...Read more of this...

Debout Sur Mon Orgueil Je Veux Montrer Au Soir

by Delmira Agustini
SpanishDebout sur mon orgueil je veux montrer au soirL'envers de mon manteau endeuillé de tes charmes,Son mouchoir infini, son mouchoir noir et noir,Trait à trait, doucement, boira toutes mes larmes.Il donne des lys blancs à mes roses de flammeEt des bandeaux de calme à mon front délirant…Que le soir sera bon.. Il aura pour moi l'âmeClaire et le corps profond...Read more of this...

The Life of Love XVI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Spring


Come, my beloved; let us walk amidst the knolls, 
For the snow is water, and Life is alive from its 
Slumber and is roaming the hills and valleys. 
Let us follow the footprints of Spring into the 
Distant fields, and mount the hilltops to draw 
Inspiration high above the cool green plains. 


Dawn of Spring has unfolded her winter-kept...Read more of this...

The Old Swimmin-Hole

by James Whitcomb Riley
 OH! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth...Read more of this...

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