Famous Midwinter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Song of Brave Men

...k of the Indian Chief! 

Lashed to their seats, and crouching, to the spray that froze as it flew, 
Twenty-six hours in midwinter! That was the lifeboat's crew. 
Twice she was swamped, and she righted, in the rush of the heavy seas, 
And her tug was mostly buried; but these were common things, these. 
And the luggers go out whenever there's a hope to get them afloat, 
And these things they do for nothing, and those fishermen say, "Oh! it's nowt!" 

(Enemy, Friend or Stranger!...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry


All The Things You Are Not Yet

...b out their rubble 
and plastic oozes its sweat.
All the things you are, you are not yet.

Not yet the lonely window in midwinter
with the whine of tea on an empty stomach,
not yet the heating you can't afford and must wait for,
tamping a coin in on each hour.
Not the gorgeous shush of restaurant doors
and their interiors, always so much smaller.
Not the smell of the newsprint, the blur
on your fingertips — your fame. Not yet

the love you will have for Winter Pearmains
and C...Read more of this...
by Dunmore, Helen

Avons Harvest

...ever bear, 
Fate waits a little while to see what happens; 
And this time it was only for the season 
Between the swift midwinter holidays 
And the long progress into weeks and months
Of all the days that followed—with him there 
To make them longer. I would have given an eye, 
Before the summer came, to know for certain 
That I should never be condemned again 
To see him with the other; and all the while
There was a battle going on within me 
Of hate that fought remorse—if y...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Custer

...barbarians warred. Yet unfraid, 
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.

II.

Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart, 
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part, 

III.

The natural impul...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

...I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow m...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)


Icicles Round A Tree In Dumfriesshire

...housand 

*

Kilometres per second. Still, even lightning has its moments of panic.

You don't get icicles catching the midwinter sun 

In a perfect double helix in Dumfriesshire every day. 

And can they be good for each other,

Lightning and tree? It'd make anyone,

Wouldn't it, afraid? That rowan would adore

To sleep and wake up in your arms 

*

But's scared of getting burnt. And the lightning might ask, touching wood,

"What do you want of me, now we're in the same 

At...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth

Lincoln

...but to him who has given all." 

IV 

The clamour of cannon dies down, the furnace-mouth of the battle is silent. 
The midwinter sun dips and descends, the earth takes on afresh 
 its bright colours. 
But he whom we mocked and obeyed not, he whom we scorned and mistrusted, 
He has descended, like a god, to his rest. 

Over the uproar of cities, 
Over the million intricate threads of life wavering and crossing, 
In the midst of problems we know not, tangling, perplexing, ensn...Read more of this...
by Fletcher, John Gould

My Calendar

...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 grudge the days to go!
 They are so few.

A Calendar's a gayful thing
 To grace a room;
And though with joy of life I sing,
 With secret gloom
I add this merry month of May
 To eighty past,
Thinking each page I tear away
 May be my last....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Song of Taj Mahomed

...ls arise
        Soft from the misty plain,
   A lone enchanted hollow lies
        Where I at last drew rein.

   Midwinter grips this lonely land,
        This stony, treeless waste,
   Where East, due East, across the sand,
        We fly in fevered haste.

   Pull up! the East will soon be red,
        The wild duck westward fly,
   And make above my anxious head,
        Triangles in the sky.

   Like wind we go; we both are still
        So young; all th...Read more of this...
by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory

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