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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Summer Dawn

by Spike Milligan
 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...

McCluskys Nell

by Robert William Service
 In Mike Maloney's Nugget bar the hooch was flowin' free,
An' One-eyed Mike was shakin' dice wi' Montreal Maree,
An roarin' rageful warning when the boys got overwild,
When peekin' through the double door he spied a tiny child.
Then Mike Maloney muttered: "Hell! Now ain't that jest too bad;
It's Dud McClusky's orphen Nell a-lookin' for her dad.
An' him in back, a-lushin' wine...Read more of this...

The Girl Of Otaheite

by Victor Hugo
 ("O! dis-moi, tu veux fuir?") 
 
 {Bk. IV, vii., Jan. 31, 1821.} 


 Forget? Can I forget the scented breath 
 Of breezes, sighing of thee, in mine ear; 
 The strange awaking from a dream of death, 
 The sudden thrill to find thee coming near? 
 Our huts were desolate, and far away 
 I heard...Read more of this...

Lucky

by Tony Hoagland
 If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.

Into the big enamel tub
half-filled with water
which I had made just right,
I lowered the childish skeleton
she had become.

Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorry ruin...Read more of this...

Dora Williams

by Edgar Lee Masters
 When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.
A year passed and one day they found him dead.
That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.
After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.
I moved on to New York....Read more of this...

My Calendar

by Robert William Service
 From off my calendar today
 A leaf I tear;
So swiftly passes smiling May
 Without a care.
And now the gentleness of June
 Will fleetly fly
And I will greet the glamour moon
 Of lush July.

Beloved months so soon to pass,
 Alas, I see
The slim sand silvering the glass
 Of Time for me;
As bodingly midwinter woe
 I wait with rue,
Oh how I...Read more of this...

The Question

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There...Read more of this...

The Clean Plater

by Ogden Nash
 Some singers sing of ladies' eyes,
And some of ladies 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...Read more of this...

A Familiar Letter

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.

Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems...Read more of this...

Bojangles And Jo

by James A Emanuel
 Stairstep music: ups,
downs, Bill Robinson smiling,
jazzdancing the rounds.

She raised 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...

A Dream of the Unknown

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I DREAM'D that as I wander'd by the way 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kiss'd it and...Read more of this...

Favrile

by Mark Doty
 Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that 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...Read more of this...

Notes For The Legend Of Salad Woman

by Michael Ondaatje
 Since 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...Read more of this...

The Cantaloupe

by Ogden Nash
 One cantaloupe is ripe and lush,
Another's green, another's mush.
I'd buy a lot more cantaloupe
If I possessed a fluoroscope....Read more of this...

The Moon

by David Berman
 A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others.

In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every...Read more of this...

A Green Stream

by Wang Wei
 I have sailed the River of Yellow Flowers, 
Borne by the channel of a green stream, 
Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains 
On a journey of less than thirty miles.... 
Rapids hum over heaped 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...Read more of this...

Buffalo Country

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Out where the grey streams glide, 
Sullen and deep and slow, 
And the alligators slide 
From the mud to the depths below 
Or drift on the stream like a floating death, 
Where the fever comes on the south wind's breath, 
There is the buffalo. 
Out of the big lagoons, 
Where the Regia lilies float, 
And the Nankin heron croons...Read more of this...

Ripe Fruit

by Robert William Service
 Through eyelet holes I watched the crowd
Rain of confetti fling;
Their joy is lush, their laughter loud,
For Carnival is King.
Behind his chariot I pace
To ean my petty pay;
They laugh to see my monster face:
"Ripe Fruit," I hear them say.

I do not laugh: my shoulders sag;
No heart have I for glee,
Because I hold aloft a hag
Who grins enough for me;
A hideous...Read more of this...

Julie Claire

by Robert William Service
 Oh Julie Claire was very fair,
Yet generous as well,
And many a lad of metal had
A saucy tale to tell
Of sultry squeeze beneath the trees
Or hugging in the hay . . .
Of love her share had Julie Claire
When life was lush and gay.

And then the village wealth to pillage
Came the Teuton horde;
The haughty Huns with mighty guns
And clattering of sword.
And...Read more of this...

Flanders

by Carl Sandburg
 FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.

“Where is Flanders?” was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.

“Where is Flanders?” was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.

A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On...Read more of this...

Panthea

by Oscar Wilde
 Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight, -
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse...Read more of this...

Ireland With Emily

by John Betjeman
 Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
Twisted trees of small green apple
Guard the decent whitewashed chapel,
Gilded gates and doorway grained,
Pointed windows richly stained
With many-coloured Munich glass.

See the black-shawled congregations
On the broidered vestment gaze
Murmer past the painted stations
As Thy Sacred Heart displays
Lush Kildare of scented meadows,
Roscommon,...Read more of this...

This Strangeness in My Life

by Ruth Stone
It is so hard to see where it is,
but it is there even in the morning
when the miracle of shapes
assemble and become familiar,
but not quite; and the echo
of a voice, now changed,
utterly dissociated, as though
all warmth and shared sweetness
had never been. It is this alien
space, not stark as the moon,
but lush and almost identical
to the space that was. But it...Read more of this...

The Peri

by Victor Hugo
 Beautiful spirit, come with me 
 Over the blue enchanted sea: 
 Morn and evening thou canst play 
 In my garden, where the breeze 
 Warbles through the fruity trees; 
 No shadow falls upon the day: 
 There thy mother's arms await 
 Her cherished infant at the gate. 
 Of Peris I the loveliest far— 
...Read more of this...

To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses

by John Keats
 As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its...Read more of this...

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