Famous Meadow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Skeleton in Armor

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 
Comest to daunt me! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5 
But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 
Why dost thou haunt me?" 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 
As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December; 
And,...Read more of this...

The Way to know the Bobolink

by Emily Dickinson
 The Way to know the Bobolink
From every other Bird
Precisely as the Joy of him --
Obliged to be inferred.

Of impudent Habiliment
Attired to defy,
Impertinence subordinate
At times to Majesty.

Of Sentiments seditious
Amenable to Law --
As Heresies of Transport
Or Puck's Apostacy.

Extrinsic to Attention
Too intimate with Joy --
He compliments existence
Until allured away

By Seasons or his Children --
Adult and urgent grown --
Or unforeseen aggrandizement
Or, happily, Renown...Read more of this...

The Meadow Lark

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Though the winds be dank,
And the sky be sober,
And the grieving Day
In a mantle gray
Hath let her waiting maiden robe her,—
All the fields along
I can hear the song
Of the meadow lark,
As she flits and flutters,
And laughs at the thunder when it mutters.
O happy bird, of heart most gay
To sing when skies are gray!
When the clouds are full,
And the tempest master
Lets...Read more of this...

Woman In Love

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 That is my window. Just now
I have so softly wakened.
I thought that I would float.
How far does my life reach,
and where does the night begin

I could think that everything
was still me all around;
transparent like a crystal's
depths, darkened, mute.

I could keep even the stars
within me; so immense
my heart seems to me; so willingly
it let him go again.

whom I began perhaps...Read more of this...

The Gentlemen In The Meadow

by Russell Edson
 Some gentlemen are floating in the meadow over 
the yellow grass.

 They seem to hover by those wonderful blue 
little flowers that grow there by those rocks.

 Perhaps they have floated up from that nearby 
graveyard?

 They drift a little when the wind blows.

 Butterflies flutter through them . . ....Read more of this...

Parables And Riddles

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I.

A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.

Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.

It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be...Read more of this...

Lament for Eorl the Young

by J R R Tolkien
 Where now is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the...Read more of this...

In the Days of the Golden Rod

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Across the meadow in brooding shadow
I walk to drink of the autumn's wine­
The charm of story, the artist's glory,
To-day on these silvering hills is mine;
On height, in hollow, where'er I follow,
By mellow hillside and searing sod,
Its plumes uplifting, in light winds drifting,
I see the glimmer of golden-rod. 

In this latest comer the vanished summer
Has left its sunshine the world...Read more of this...

The Landrail

by John Clare
 How sweet and pleasant grows the way
Through summer time again
While Landrails call from day to day
Amid the grass and grain

We hear it in the weeding time
When knee deep waves the corn
We hear it in the summers prime
Through meadows night and morn

And now I hear it in the grass
That grows as sweet again
And let a minutes notice pass
And now tis...Read more of this...

The Breast

by Anne Sexton
 This is the key to it.
This is the key to everything.
Preciously.

I am worse than the gamekeeper's children
picking for dust and bread.
Here I am drumming up perfume.

Let me go down on your carpet,
your straw mattress -- whatever's at hand
because the child in me is dying, dying.

It is not that I am cattle to be eaten.
It is not that I am...Read more of this...

When Tulips Bloom

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

When tulips bloom in Union Aquare, 
And timid breaths of vernal air 
Go wandering down the dusty town, 
Like children lost in Vanity Fair; 

When every long, unlovely row 
Of westward houses stands aglow, 
And leads the eyes to sunset skies 
Beyond the hills where green trees grow; 

Then wearly seems the street parade, 
And weary books, and...Read more of this...

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

by Robert Duncan
 as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, 
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart, 
an eternal pasture folded in all thought 
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light 
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures...Read more of this...

Spring in the South

by Henry Van Dyke
 Now in the oak the sap of life is welling,
Tho' to the bough the rusty leafage clings;
Now on the elm the misty buds are swelling,
See how the pine-wood grows alive with wings;
Blue-jays fluttering, yodeling and crying,
Meadow-larks sailing low above the faded grass,
Red-birds whistling clear, silent robins flying,--
Who has waked the birds up? What has come to pass?

Last year's cotton-plants,...Read more of this...

Some Like Poetry

by Wislawa Szymborska
 Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?" Write: I don't know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read, 
air...Read more of this...

The Man And His Horse

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Within a Meadow, on the way, 
A sordid Churl resolv'd to stay, 
And give his Horse a Bite; 
Purloining so his Neighbours Hay, 
That at the Inn he might not pay 
For Forage all the Night. 

With Heart's content th' unloaded Steed 
Began to neigh, and frisk, and feed; 
For nothing more he car'd, 
Since none of all his...Read more of this...

To the maiden

by Stephen Crane
 To the maiden
The sea was blue meadow,
Alive with little froth-people
Singing.

To the sailor, wrecked,
The sea was dead grey walls
Superlative in vacancy,
Upon which nevertheless at fateful time
Was written
The grim hatred of nature....Read more of this...

The Beautiful Sun

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Sun! with thy golden rays,
To God, the wise Creator, be all praise;
For thou nourisheth all the creation,
Wherever there is found to be animation. 

Without thy heat we could not live,
Then praise to God we ought to give;
For thou makest the fruits and provisions to grow,
To nourish all creatures on earth below. 

Thou makest the hearts of the old...Read more of this...

Binsey Poplars

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 felled 1879


 My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
 Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
 All felled, felled, are all felled;
 Of a fresh and following folded rank
 Not spared, not one
 That dandled a sandalled
 Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank. 
 O if we but knew what we do
...Read more of this...

Pirate Story

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, 
Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea. 
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring, 
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. 

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat, 
Wary of the weather and steering by...Read more of this...

Portrait By A Neighbour

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!

It's long after midnight
Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Til past ten o'clock!

She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLVII. Una candida cerva sopra l' erba. THE VISION OF THE FAWN.  Beneath a laurel, two fair streams between,At early sunrise of the opening year,A milk-white fawn upon the meadow green,Of gold its either horn, I saw appear;[Pg 173]So mild, yet so majestic, was its mien,I...Read more of this...

Willy Boy

by Mother Goose
"Willy boy, Willy boy, where are you going?
I will go with you, if that I may."
"I'm going to the meadow to see them a-mowing,
I'm going to help them to make the hay."...Read more of this...

Redbud Trail - Winter

by James Lee Jobe
 It??™s two muddy miles from Highway 20,
just past the north fork of Cache Creek,
across the broad meadow, through 
blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge,
and back down to the creek bank,
the crossing point, me striding with
mud caking my old hiking boots.



For a millennia the Miwok people walked 
these canyons and ridges. Pomo, too.
Gathering acorns to trade, the sweetest...Read more of this...

Far from Love the Heavenly Father

by Emily Dickinson
 Far from Love the Heavenly Father
Leads the Chosen Child,
Oftener through Realm of Briar
Than the Meadow mild.

Oftener by the Claw of Dragon
Than the Hand of Friend
Guides the Little One predestined
To the Native Land....Read more of this...

Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee

by Henry Van Dyke
 Joyful, joyful we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love, 
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, hail Thee as the sun above. 
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away; 
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day. 

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heav'n reflect Thy...Read more of this...

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