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Famous Moonshine Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...when the new-light billies see them,
 I think they’ll crouch!


Sae, ye observe that a’ this clatter
Is naething but a “moonshine matter”;
But tho’ dull prose-folk Latin splatter
 In logic tulyie,
I hope we bardies ken some better
 Than mind sic brulyie....Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work ark and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multiudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move
Like wooden islands, hill ...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...ee from fear,
They crossed the court: right glad they were.

Outside her kennel the mastiff old
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
The mastiff old did not awake,
Yet she an angry moan did make.
And what can ail the mastiff *****?
Never till now she uttered yell
Beneath the eye of Christabel.
Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
For what can aid the mastiff *****?

They passed the hall, that echoes still,
Pass as lightly as you will.
The brands were flat, the bra...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...w you digress!”

And I then: “Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine; music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity.”
She then: “Does this refer to me?”
“Oh no, it is I who am inane.”

“You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—”
And—“Are we then so serious?...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Down home to-night the moonshine falls
Across a hill with daisies pied,
The pear tree by the garden gate
Beckons with white arms like a bride. 

A savor as of trampled fern
Along the whispering meadow stirs,
And, beacon of immortal love,
A light is shining through the firs. 

To my old gable window creeps
The night wind with a sigh and song,
And, weaving ancient sorceries,
Thereto...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud



...k eyes had yet discern'd
This beauty in its birth--Despair! despair!
He saw her body fading gaunt and spare
In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz'd her wrist;
It melted from his grasp: her hand he kiss'd,
And, horror! kiss'd his own--he was alone.
Her steed a little higher soar'd, and then
Dropt hawkwise to the earth. There lies a den,
Beyond the seeming confines of the space
Made for the soul to wander in and trace
Its own existence, of remotest glooms.
Dark regions are ar...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...one life 
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells. 

Deep and dissolving verticals of light 
Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells 
Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water 
Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats 
In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water. 

Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve 
These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought 
Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth, 
Gone even from the meaning of a ...Read more of this...
by Slessor, Kenneth
...waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She leant against the arméd man,
The statue of the arméd knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene’er...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...hour,  When midway on the Mount I lay    Beside the Ruin'd Tower.   The Moonshine stealing o'er the scene  Had blended with the Lights of Eve;  And she was there, my Hope, my Joy,    My own dear Genevieve!   She lean'd against the Armed Man,  The Statue of the Armed Knight:  She stood and listen'd to my Harp    Amid the ling'ring Lig...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...s, when the winds are wailing loud; 

Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines, 
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens. 

Underneath these regal ridges - underneath the gnarly trees, 
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze! 
Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look 
Out across the hazy gloaming - out beyond the brawling brook! 
Over pathways leading skyward - over crag an...Read more of this...
by Kendall, Henry
...h fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with ra...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...
Senses, and man a spirit in love
 Tangling through this spun slime
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come
 And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves
 Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh,
 And this last blessing most,

 That the closer I move
To death, one man through his sundered hulks,
 The louder the sun blooms
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;
 And every wave of the way
And gale I tackle, the whole wor...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...ht.”

Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.

A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.

A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.

The wind never bothers … a bar of steel.
The wind pic...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...nshine above.

Dew and rain fall everywhere,
Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,
And the whole round earth is bare
To the moonshine and the sun;
And the live air, fanned with wings,
Bright with breeze and sunshine, brings
Into contact distant things,
And makes all the countries one.

Let us wander where we will,
Something kindred greets us still;
Something seen on vale or hill
Falls familiar on the heart;
So, at scent or sound or sight,
Severed souls by day and night
Tremble wi...Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...he stranger stayed,
And Lotta in her currants watched, dismayed.
He seemed a proper fellow standing there
In the bright moonshine. His cocked hat was laced
With silver, and he wore his own brown hair
Tied, but unpowdered. His whole bearing graced
A fine cloth coat, and ruffled shirt, and chased
Sword-hilt. Charlotta looked, but her position
Was hardly easy. When would his volition
Suggest his walking on? And then that 
tune!
A half-a-dozen bars from `Orfeo'
Gone over and over...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
..., she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled.

 Out went the taper as she hurried in;
 Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:
 She clos'd the door, she panted, all akin
 To spirits of the air, and visions wide:
 No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!
 But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
 Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
 As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

 A casement high and triple-arc...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...drops 
Which look like honey, 
Translucent and sunny, 
From clover-tops.

Here's an elfin girl 
Of mother-of-pearl 
And moonshine made, 
With tortise-shell hair 
Both dusky and fair 
In its light and shade.

Here's lacquer laid thin, 
Like a scarlet skin 
On an ivory fruit; 
And a filigree frost 
Of frail notes lost 
From a fairy lute.

Here's a turquoise chain 
Of sun-shower rain 
To wear if you wish; 
And glittering green 
With aquamarine, 
A silvery fish.

Here are pearls ...Read more of this...
by Wylie, Elinor
...u cannot love me at all, if you love not my good name.' 

XIII.
And he turn'd, and I saw his eyes all wet, in the sweet moonshine:
Sweetheart, I love you so well that your good name is mine.
And what do I care for Jane, let her speak of you well of ill;
But marry me out of hand: we two shall be happy still.' 

XIV.
`Marry you, Willy!' said I, `but I needs must speak my mind,
And I fear you'll listen to tales, be jealous and hard and unkind.'
But he turn'd and claspt me in his...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ight upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
Of calm and liquid moonshine. From inside
Come shouts and streams of laughter, and a snatch
Of song, soon drowned and lost again in mirth,
The clip of tankards on a table top,
And stir of booted heels. Against the patch
Of candle-light a shadow falls, its girth
Proclaims the host himself, and master of his shop.

2
This is the tavern of one Hilverdink,
Jan Hilverdink, whose wi...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...ong,
     Rushed, chasing countless thoughts along,
     Until, the giddy whirl to cure,
     He rose and sought the moonshine pure.
     XXXV.

     The wild rose, eglantine, and broom
     Wasted around their rich perfume;
     The birch-trees wept in fragrant balm;
     The aspens slept beneath the calm;
     The silver light, with quivering glance,
     Played on the water's still expanse,—
     Wild were the heart whose passion's sway
     Could rage beneath...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things