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Famous Lush Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...with heaven-collected tears, 15 
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colour'd may, 
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 
Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; 20 
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine 
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; 
And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold, 
Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold. 

And ne...Read more of this...



by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...
There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother
That boarding-school flavor of which we're afraid,
There is "lush"is a good one, and "swirl" is another,--
Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.

With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes
You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell
You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses, 
And we cry with delight, "Oh, how sweet they do smell!"

Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions
For winning the la...Read more of this...

by Wei, Wang
...d rocks; 
But where light grows dim in the thick pines, 
The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns 
And weeds are lush along the banks. 
...Down in my heart I have always been as pure 
As this limpid water is.... 
Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock 
And to cast a fishing-line forever! ...Read more of this...

by Emanuel, James A
...ed champagne lips,
danced inside banana hips.
All Paris wooed Jo.

Banana panties,
perfumed belt, Jazz tatooing
lush ecstasies felt.

Josephine, royal,
jewelling her dance, flushing
the bosom of France....Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...Purple as tulips in May, mauve 
into lush velvet, purple 
as the stain blackberries leave 
on the lips, on the hands, 
the purple of ripe grapes 
sunlit and warm as flesh. 
Every day I will give you a color, 
like a new flower in a bud vase 
on your desk. Every day 
I will paint you, as women 
color each other with henna 
on hands and on feet. 

Red as henna, as cinnamon, 
as coals ...Read more of this...



by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...Say, does that stupid earth 
Where they have laid her, 
Bind still her sullen mirth, 
Mirth which betrayed her? 
Do the lush grasses hold, 
Greenly and glad, 
That brittle-perfect gold 
She alone had? 

Smugly the common crew, 
Over their knitting, 
Mourn her -- as butchers do 
Sheep-throats they're slitting! 
She was my enemy, 
One of the best of them. 
Would she come back to me, 
God damn the rest of them! 

Damn them, the flabby, fat, 
Sleek little darlings! 
We gave t...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ks;
Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes
Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill.
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,
And elbow-deep with feverous fingering
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree
Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;
And, in the middle, there is softly pi...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term

for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized

atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,

fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,

copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;

surfaces burnished
like a tidal stream
on which an excitation

of minnows boils
and blooms, artifice
made to show us

the lavish wardrobe
of things,...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...lack-shawled congregations
On the broidered vestment gaze
Murmer past the painted stations
As Thy Sacred Heart displays
Lush Kildare of scented meadows,
Roscommon, thin in ash-tree shadows,
And Westmeath the lake-reflected,
Spreading Leix the hill-protected,
Kneeling all in silver haze?

In yews and woodbine, walls and guelder,
Nettle-deep the faithful rest,
Winding leagues of flowering elder,
Sycamore with ivy dressed,
Ruins in demesnes deserted,
Bog-surrounded bramble-skirt...Read more of this...

by Hoagland, Tony
...open in my lap
while I listened to the air
move thickly in and out of her dark lungs,
my mind filled up with praise
as lush as music,

amazed at the symmetry and luck
that would offer me the chance to pay
my heavy debt of punishment and love
with love and punishment.

And once I held her dripping wet
in the uncomfortable air
between the wheelchair and the tub,
until she begged me like a child

to stop,
an act of cruelty which we both understood
was the ancient irresistib...Read more of this...

by Ondaatje, Michael
...my wife was born
she must have eaten
the equivalent of two-thirds
of the original garden of Eden.
Not the dripping lush fruit
or the meat in the ribs of animals
but the green salad gardens of that place.
The whole arena of green
would have been eradicated
as if the right filter had been removed
leaving only the skeleton of coarse brightness.

All green ends up eventually
churning in her left cheek.
Her mouth is a laundromat of spinning drowning herbs.
She...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...arden close
Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,
Her warm soft body like the briar rose
Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,
Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis
Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

There never does that dreary north-wind blow
Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,
Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,
Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare
To wake them in the silver-fretted ni...Read more of this...

by Milligan, Spike
...My sleeping children are still flying dreams 
in their goose-down heads. 
The lush of the river singing morning songs 
Fish watch their ceilings turn sun-white. 
The grey-green pike lances upstream 
Kale, like mermaid's hair 
points the water's drift. 
All is morning hush 
and bird beautiful. 

I only, 
I didn't have flu....Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...lips,
Refined ones praise their ladylike ways,
And course ones hymn their hips.
The Oxford Book of English Verse
Is lush with lyrics tender;
A poet, I guess, is more or less
Preoccupied with gender.
Yet I, though custom call me crude,
Prefer to sing in praise of food.
Food,
Yes, food,
Just any old kind of food.
Pheasant is pleasant, of course,
And terrapin, too, is tasty,
Lobster I freely endorse,
In pate or patty or pasty.
But there's nothing the matter w...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...er date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the
molded steering wheel.

They park and walk into the lush starlit gardens behind the disco
just as the band is striking up.

Their keen eyes and ears twitch. The other couples
look beautiful tonight. They stroll around listening
to the brilliant conversation. The passionate speeches.

Clouds drift across the silverware. There is red larkspur,
blue gum, and ivy. A boy kneels before h...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...s fire 
And ice -- and fire and ice were one 
In one vast hunger of desire. 
A dim desire, of pleasant places, 
And lush fields in the summer sun, 
And logs aflame, and walls, and faces, 
-- And wine, and old ambrosial talk, 
A golden ball in fountains dancing, 
And unforgotten hands. (Ah, God, 
I trod them down where I have trod, 
And they remain, and they remain, 
Etched in unutterable pain, 
Loved lips and faces now apart, 
That once were closer than my heart -- 
I...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...bright floor they danced the pavon 
But I turned to the garden and her from the lighted candles. 
Softly I trod the lush grass between the black hedges of box. 
Softly, for I should take her unawares and catch her arms, 
And embrace her, dear and startled. 

By the arbor all the moonlight flowed in silver 
And her head was on his breast. 
She did not scream or shudder 
When my sword was where her head had lain 
In the quiet moonlight; 
But turned to me with on...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...substantial up the flue.

Listening to Lulu, in our hearth we burn,
As we hear the high Cs rise in stereo,
what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern
at least 300 million years ago.

Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D
lifted from a source that bears your name,
the one we hear decay, the one we see,
the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.

This world, with far too many people in,
starts on the TV logo as a taw,
then ping-pong, tennis, football; then on...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...cene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis' image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief

 III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon these maxims meditate:
All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate;
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children's gratitude or woman'...Read more of this...

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