Famous Nests Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Any Night

by Philip Levine
 Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine, 
the yellowing ash, all the trees 
are gone, and I was older than 
all of them. I am older than the moon, 
than the stars that fill my plate, 
than the unseen planets that huddle 
together here at the end of a year 
no one wanted. A year more than a year, 
in...Read more of this...

The Chinese Nightingale

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Song in Chinese Tapestries


"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you...Read more of this...

Eastern River

by Peter Huchel
 Do not look for the stones
in water above the mud,
the boat is gone.
No longer with nets and baskets
the river is dotted.
The sun wick,
the marsh marigold flickered out in rain.

Only the willow still bears witness,
in its roots
the secrets of tramps lie hidden,
their paltry treasures,
a rusty fishhook,
a bottle full of sand,
a tine with no bottom,
in which to preserve
conversations long forgotten.

On the...Read more of this...

Walter Von Der Vogelweid

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Vogelweid the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Wurtzburg's minster towers.

And he gave the monks his treasures,
Gave them all with this behest:
They should feed the birds at noontide
Daily on his place of rest;

Saying, "From these wandering minstrels
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and...Read more of this...

Far Out

by Philip Larkin
 Beyond the dark cartoons 
Are darker spaces where 
Small cloudy nests of stars 
Seem to float on air. 

These have no proper names: 
Men out alone at night 
Never look up at them 
For guidance or delight, 

For such evasive dust 
Can make so little clear: 
Much less is known than not, 
More far than near....Read more of this...

Hiawathas Fishing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, 
On the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
With his fishing-line of cedar, 
Of the twisted bark of cedar, 
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, 
In his birch canoe exulting 
All alone went Hiawatha.
Through the clear, transparent water 
He could see the fishes swimming 
Far down in the depths below him; 
See the yellow...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts LVIII: Things Throng and Laugh

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Things throng and laugh loud in the sky; the sands and dust dance
and whirl like children. Man's mind is aroused by their shouts; his
thoughts long to be the playmates of things.
Our dreams, drifting in the stream of the vague, stretch their
arms to clutch the earth, -their efforts stiffen into bricks and
stones, and thus the city of man is built.
Voices...Read more of this...

There was an Old Man with a beard

by Edward Lear
There was an Old Man with a beard,Who said, "It is just as I feared!—Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,Have all built their nests in my beard." ...Read more of this...

November

by William Cullen Bryant
 The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.
For days the shepherds in the fields may be,
Nor mark a patch of sky— blindfold they trace,
The plains, that seem...Read more of this...

Singing

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Of speckled eggs the birdie sings 
And nests among the trees; 
The sailor sings of ropes and things 
In ships upon the seas. 

The children sing in far Japan, 
The children sing in Spain; 
The organ with the organ man 
Is singing in the rain....Read more of this...

The Gardener XXIV: Do Not Keep to Yourself

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Do not keep to yourself the secret of
your heart, my friend!
Say it to me, only to me, in secret.
You who smile so gently, softly
whisper, my heart will hear it, not my
ears.
The night is deep, the house is
silent, the birds' nests are shrouded
with sleep.
Speak to me through hesitating
tears, through faltering smiles, through
sweet shame and pain, the secret of
your heart!...Read more of this...

The Weeper

by Richard Crashaw
 HAIL, sister springs,
Parents of silver-footed rills!
 Ever bubbling things,
Thawing crystal, snowy hills!
 Still spending, never spent; I mean
 Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.

 Heavens thy fair eyes be;
Heavens of ever-falling stars;
 'Tis seed-time still with thee,
And stars thou sow'st whose harvest dares
 Promise the earth to countershine
 Whatever makes Heaven's forehead fine.

 Every morn from hence
A brisk cherub something...Read more of this...

The Hill Wife

by Robert Frost
 I. LONELINESS

 Her Word

One ought not to have to care
 So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
 To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
 With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
 Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the...Read more of this...

Cruelty and Love

by D. H. Lawrence
 What large, dark hands are those at the window 
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light 
Which makes its way through the curtain web 
At my heart to-night? 

Ah, only the leaves! So leave me at rest, 
In the west I see a redness come 
Over the evening's burning breast -- 
For now the pain is numb. 

The woodbine creeps...Read more of this...

This Compost

by Walt Whitman
 1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; 
I withdraw from the still woods I loved; 
I will not go now on the pastures to walk; 
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; 
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.

O how...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...

The Wind begun to rock the Grass

by Emily Dickinson
 The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low --
He threw a Menace at the Earth --
A Menace at the Sky.

The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees --
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And threw away the Road.

The Wagons quickened on the Streets
The Thunder hurried slow --
The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak
And then a livid...Read more of this...

Thaw

by Edward Thomas
 OVER the land half freckled with snow half-thawed 
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed, 
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as a flower of grass, 
What we below could not see, Winter pass....Read more of this...

There was an old man in a tree

by Edward Lear
There was an old man in a tree,Whose whiskers were lovely to see;But the birds of the air pluck'd them perfectly bare,To make themselves nests in that tree. ...Read more of this...

Craving for Spring

by D. H. Lawrence
 I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets...Read more of this...

The Sonnets To Orpheus: I

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.

Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,

but from just listening....Read more of this...

Snow Day

by Billy Collins
 Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out...Read more of this...

De Profundis

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I

The face, which, duly as the sun, 
Rose up for me with life begun, 
To mark all bright hours of the day 
With hourly love, is dimmed away—
And yet my days go on, go on.

II 

The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone, 
And every morning with ' Good day'
Make each day good, is...Read more of this...

Song of the Future

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Tis strange that in a land so strong 
So strong and bold in mighty youth, 
We have no poet's voice of truth 
To sing for us a wondrous song. 
Our chiefest singer yet has sung 
In wild, sweet notes a passing strain, 
All carelessly and sadly flung 
To that dull world he thought so vain. 

"I care for nothing,...Read more of this...

On this long storm the Rainbow rose

by Emily Dickinson
 On this long storm the Rainbow rose --
On this late Morn -- the Sun --
The clouds -- like listless Elephants --
Horizons -- straggled down --

The Birds rose smiling, in their nests --
The gales -- indeed -- were done --
Alas, how heedless were the eyes --
On whom the summer shone!

The quiet nonchalance of death --
No Daybreak -- can bestir --
The...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Nests poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace