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Famous Meadows Poems by Famous Poets

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

Early Spring

by Rainer Maria Rilke

 Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees....Read more of this...

Form: Free verse

The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit

by Vachel Lindsay

 A BROADSIDE DISTRIBUTED IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS


Censers are swinging,
Over the town;
Censers are swinging,
Look overhead!
Censers are swinging,
Heaven comes down.
City, dead city,
Awake from the dead!

Censers, tremendous,
Gleam overhead.
Wind-harps are ringing,
Wind-harps unseen—
Calling and calling:—
"Wake from the dead.
Rise, little city,
Shine like a queen."

Soldiers of Christ
For battle grow keen.
Heaven-sent winds
Haunt alley and lane.
Singing of life
In town-meadows green
After the toil
And battle and pain.

Incense is pouring
Like the spring...Read more of this...

Modern Love XI: Out in the Yellow Meadows

by George Meredith

 Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee 
Hums by us with the honey of the Spring, 
And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing, 
Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we. 
Or is it now? or was it then? for now, 
As then, the larks from running rings pour showers: 
The golden foot of May is...Read more of this...

Spirits

by Robert Seymour Bridges

 Angel spirits of sleep, 
White-robed, with silver hair, 
In your meadows fair, 
Where the willows weep, 
And the sad moonbeam 
On the gliding stream 
Writes her scatter'd dream: 

Angel spirits of sleep, 
Dancing to the weir 
In the hollow roar 
Of its waters deep; 
Know ye how men say 
That ye haunt no more 
Isle and grassy shore 
With...Read more of this...

Old Song

by Edward Fitzgerald

 TIS a dull sight
 To see the year dying,
When winter winds
 Set the yellow wood sighing:
 Sighing, O sighing!

When such a time cometh
 I do retire
Into an old room
 Beside a bright fire:
 O, pile a bright fire!

And there I sit
 Reading old things,
Of knights and lorn damsels,
 While the wind sings--
 O, drearily sings!

I never look out
 Nor...Read more of this...

Form: Quintain

My Strawberry

by Helen Hunt Jackson

 O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause 
To reckon thee. I ask what cause 
Set free so much of red from heats 
At core of earth, and mixed such sweets 
With sour and spice: what was that strength 
Which out of darkness, length by length, 
Spun all thy shining thread of vine, 
Netting the fields in bond as thine....Read more of this...

The Flight

by Rudyard Kipling

 1930

When the grey geese heard the Fool's tread
 Too near to where they lay,
They lifted neither voice nor head,
 But took themselves away.

No water broke, no pinion whirred-
 There went no warning call.
The steely, sheltering rushes stirred
 A little--that was all.

Only the osiers understood,
 And the drowned meadows spied
What else than wreckage of a flood
 Stole outward on that...Read more of this...

The Buried Life

by Matthew Arnold

 Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush...Read more of this...

Mischievous Joy

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 AS a butterfly renew'd,

When in life I breath'd my last,

To the spots my flight I wing,

Scenes of heav'nly rapture past,

Over meadows, to the spring,
Round the hill, and through the wood.

Soon a tender pair I spy,

And I look down from my seat

On the beauteous maiden's head--

When embodied there I meet

All I lost as soon as dead,
Happy as before am I.

Him...Read more of this...

Sonnet IX

by Francesco Petrarch

SONNET IX. Quando 'l pianeta che distingue l' ore. WITH A PRESENT OF FRUIT IN SPRING.  When the great planet which directs the hoursTo dwell with Taurus from the North is borne,Such virtue rays from each enkindled horn,Rare beauty instantly all nature dowers;Nor this alone, which meets our sight, that flowersRead more of this...

Damon The Mower

by Andrew Marvell

 Heark how the Mower Damon Sung,
With love of Juliana stung!
While ev'ry thing did seem to paint
The Scene more fit for his complaint.
Like her fair Eyes the day was fair;
But scorching like his am'rous Care.
Sharp like his Sythe his Sorrow was,
And wither'd like his Hopes the Grass.

Oh what unusual Heats are here,
Which thus our Sun-burn'd Meadows sear!
The Grass-hopper its pipe...Read more of this...

Come From The Daisied Meadows

by Robert Louis Stevenson

 HOME from the daisied meadows, where you linger yet -
Home, golden-headed playmate, ere the sun is set;
For the dews are falling fast
And the night has come at last.
Home with you, home and lay your little head at rest,
Safe, safe, my little darling, on your mother's breast.
Lullaby, darling; your mother is watching you;
she'll be your guardian and shield.
Lullaby, slumber, my...Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson

 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

To Meadows

by Robert Herrick

 Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been fill'd with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.

You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come,
To kiss and bear away
The richer cowslips home.

You've heard them sweetly sing,
And seen them in a round;
Each virgin, like a spring,
With honeysuckles crown'd.

But now, we see none here,
Whose silvery feet did...Read more of this...

The Buzzards

by Martin Armstrong

When evening came and the warm glow grew deeper
And every tree that bordered the green meadows
And in the yellow cornfields every reaper
And every corn-shock stood above their shadows
Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure,
Serenely far there swam in the sunny height
A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure
Swirling and poising idly in golden light.
On great pied motionless moth-wings...Read more of this...

Seed

by Kathleen Raine

 From star to star, from sun and spring and leaf,
And almost audible flowers whose sound is silence,
And in the common meadows, springs the seed of life.

Now the lilies open, and the rose
Released by summer from the harmless graves
That, centuries deep, are in the air we breathe,
And in our earth, and in our daily bread.

External and innate dimensions hold
The living...Read more of this...

Within my reach!

by Emily Dickinson

 Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered thro' the village --
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected Violets
Within the meadows go --
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago!...Read more of this...

The Mowers Song

by Andrew Marvell

 My Mind was once the true survey
Of all these Medows fresh and gay;
And in the greenness of the Grass
Did see its Hopes as in a Glass;
When Juliana came, and she
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.

But these, while I with Sorrow pine,
Grew more luxuriant still and fine;
That not one Blade of Grass you spy'd,
But...Read more of this...

The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road

by Rabindranath Tagore

 I was walking by the road, I do not
know why, when the noonday was past
and bamboo branches rustled in the
wind.
The prone shadows with their out-
stretched arms clung to the feet of
the hurrying light.
The koels were weary of their
songs.
I was walking by the road, I do not 
know why.
The hut by the side of the water is
shaded by an overhanging...Read more of this...

The Flower

by Alexander Pushkin

 A flower - shrivelled, bare of fragrance,
Forgotten on a page - I see,
And instantly my soul awakens,
Filled with an aimless reverie:

When did it bloom? the last spring? earlier?
How long? Where was it plucked? By whom?
By foreign hands? or by familiar?
And why put here, as in a tomb?

To mark a tender meeting by it?
A parting with a precious one?
Or just...Read more of this...

Ode to the Muse

by Mary Darby Robinson

 O, let me seize thy pen sublime
That paints, in melting dulcet rhyme, 
The glowing pow'r, the magic art, 
Th' extatic raptures of the Heart; 
Soft Beauty's timid smile serene,
The dimples of Love's sportive mien; 
The sweet descriptive tale to trace; 
To picture Nature's winning grace;
To steal the tear from Pity's eye; 
To catch the sympathetic sigh; 
O teach me,...Read more of this...

Introduction To The Song Of Hiawatha

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 Should you ask me, 
whence these stories? 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest 
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great...Read more of this...

Dryads

by Siegfried Sassoon

 When meadows are grey with the morn 
In the dusk of the woods it is night: 
The oak and the birch and the pine 
War with the glimmer of light. 

Dryads brown as the leaf 
Move in the gloom of the glade; 
When meadows are grey with the morn 
Dim night in the wood has delayed. 

The cocks that...Read more of this...

The Meadows In Spring