Famous Mellow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In Memory of Maggie

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 A pussy-cat who was the household pet for seventeen years.


Naught but a little cat, you say; 
Yet we remember her, 
A creature loving, loyal, kind, 
With merry, mellow purr; 
The faithful friend of many years, 
Shall we not give her meed of tears? 

Sleek-suited in her velvet coat, 
White-breasted and bright-eyed, 
Feeling when she was praised and stroked 
A...Read more of this...

Kelly Of The Legion

by Robert William Service
 Now Kelly was no fighter;
He loved his pipe and glass;
An easygoing blighter,
Who lived in Montparnasse.
But 'mid the tavern tattle
He heard some guinney say:
"When France goes forth to battle,
The Legion leads the way.

 "The scourings of creation,
 Of every sin and station,
 The men who've known damnation,
 Are picked to lead the way."

Well, Kelly joined the Legion;
They marched him day...Read more of this...

A Tree Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 (A. D. 1200)
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
 Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
 Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
 (All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
 In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!


Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
 Or ever AEneas began.
Ash...Read more of this...

Phoebus with Admetus

by George Meredith
 WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, 
 Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, 
Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, 
 Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod! 
Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe 
 Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, 
How the rustic flute drew the silver...Read more of this...

Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Soup should be heralded with a mellow horn, 
Blowing clear notes of gold against the stars; 
Strange entrees with a jangle of glass bars 
Fantastically alive with subtle scorn; 
Fish, by a plopping, gurgling rush of waters, 
Clear, vibrant waters, beautifully austere; 
Roast, with a thunder of drums to stun the ear, 
A screaming fife, a voice from ancient...Read more of this...

The Firemens Ball

by Vachel Lindsay
 SECTION ONE

"Give the engines room,
Give the engines room."
Louder, faster
The little band-master
Whips up the fluting,
Hurries up the tooting.
He thinks that he stands,
[*] The reins in his hands, 
In the fire-chief's place 
In the night alarm chase. 
The cymbals whang, 
The kettledrums bang: —
"Clear the street, 
Clear the street, 
Clear the street — Boom, boom. 
In the evening gloom, 
In the...Read more of this...

In The Forest

by Sarojini Naidu
 HERE, O my heart, let us burn the dear dreams that are dead, 
Here in this wood let us fashion a funeral pyre 
Of fallen white petals and leaves that are mellow and red, 
Here let us burn them in noon's flaming torches of fire. 


We are weary, my heart, we are weary, so long we have borne 
The...Read more of this...

Gloire de Dijon

by D. H. Lawrence
 When she rises in the morning 
I linger to watch her; 
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window 
And the sunbeams catch her 
Glistening white on the shoulders, 
While down her sides the mellow 
Golden shadow glows as 
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts 
Sway like full-blown yellow 
Gloire de Dijon roses. 

She drips herself with...Read more of this...

Burial of the Minnisink

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 On sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down,
The glory, that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its golden leaves.

Far upward in the mellow light
Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white,
Around a far uplifted cone,
In the warm blush of evening shone;
An image of the silver...Read more of this...

Unholy Trinity

by Robert William Service
 Though Virtue hurt you Vice is nice;
Aye, Parson says it's wrong,
Yet for my pleasing I'll suffice
With Women, Wine and Song.
But though it be with jocund glee
my tavern voice is ringing,
Had I to chuck on of the three,
By gad! I'd give up singing.

Bu not the vine. What draught divine
Could better souse my throttle?
God never meant that mellow wine
Should languish in...Read more of this...

The Bee

by Sidney Lanier
 What time I paced, at pleasant morn,
A deep and dewy wood,
I heard a mellow hunting-horn
Make dim report of Dian's lustihood
Far down a heavenly hollow.
Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow:
`Tara!' it twanged, `tara-tara!' it blew,
Yet wavered oft, and flew
Most ficklewise about, or here, or there,
A music now from earth and now from air.
But on a sudden, lo!
I marked...Read more of this...

To A Fallen Elm

by John Clare
 Old Elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root
How did I love to hear...Read more of this...

I am the autumnal sun

by Henry David Thoreau
 Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature 
-- not his Father but his Mother stirs 
within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims 
kindredship with us, and some globule 
from her veins steals up into our own.

I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its...Read more of this...

The Dove

by Sidney Lanier
 If haply thou, O Desdemona Morn,
Shouldst call along the curving sphere, "Remain,
Dear Night, sweet Moor; nay, leave me not in scorn!"
With soft halloos of heavenly love and pain; --

Shouldst thou, O Spring! a-cower in coverts dark,
'Gainst proud supplanting Summer sing thy plea,
And move the mighty woods through mailed bark
Till mortal heart-break throbbed in every tree; --

Or (grievous `if' that...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. HIn Memoriam A. H. H.: 56. So careful of the type? but no.: 55. The wish that of the living whol

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 "So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in...Read more of this...

Old Poets

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Robert Cortez Holliday)

If I should live in a forest
And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
Would make a home for me.
I'd go where the old oaks gather,
Serene and good and strong,
And they would not sigh and tremble
And vex me with a song.
The pleasantest sort of poet
Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an old white beard and...Read more of this...

Moon-Lover

by Robert William Service
 I

The Moon is like a ping-pong ball;
I lean against the orchard wall,
And see it soar into the void,
A silky sphere of celluloid.

Then fairy fire enkindles it,
Like gossamer by taper lit,
Until it glows above the trees
As mellow as a Cheddar cheese.

And up and up I watch it press
Into appalling loneliness;
Like realms of ice without a stain,
A corpse Moon come to...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

Bright Moments

by Dejan Stojanovic
There can be no forced inspiration, 
But there can be mergers with the world

There can be a flowing of feelings
Quiet, yet overwhelming

Flying outside to unite
Flying inside to find

The melody of the moment
When the yellow corona appears on the horizon

And blue light appears over the mountain
And the world becomes mellow

Hospitable and generous, 
And you fly into the heart of the mountain

To...Read more of this...

The Tables Turned

by William Wordsworth
An Evening Scene on the Same Subject

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet...Read more of this...

The Succession Of The Four Sweet Months

by Robert Herrick
 First, April, she with mellow showers
Opens the way for early flowers;
Then after her comes smiling May,
In a more rich and sweet array;
Next enters June, and brings us more
Gems than those two that went before;
Then, lastly, July comes, and she
More wealth brings in than all those three....Read more of this...

Merry Autumn

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
It's all a farce,—these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o'er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.
Such principles are most absurd,—
I care not who first taught 'em;
There's nothing known to beast or bird
To make a solemn autumn.
In solemn times, when grief holds sway
With countenance distressing,
You'll note the more of black and gray
Will then be used in dressing.
Now...Read more of this...

Perished

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I called to the summer sun, 
“Come over the hills to-day! 
Unlock the rivers, and tell them to run, 
And kiss the snow-drifts and melt them away.”
And the sun came over – a tardy lover –
And unlocked the river, and told it to glide, 
And kissed the snow-drift till it fainted and died.

I called to the robin, “Come back!...Read more of this...

The Tables Turned;

by William Wordsworth
An Evening Scene, on the same Subject,   Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,  Why all this toil and trouble?  Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,  Or surely you'll grow double.   The sun, above the mountain's head,  A freshening lustre mellow  Through all the long green fields has spread,  His first sweet evening yellow.   Books! 'tis dull and endless strife,  Come, here the woodland...Read more of this...

Wont And Done

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 I HAVE loved; for the first time with passion I rave!
I then was the servant, but now am the slave;

I then was the servant of 
all:
By this creature so charming I now am fast bound,
To love and love's guerdon she turns all around,

And her my sole mistress 
I call.

l've had faith; for the first time my faith is now...Read more of this...

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