Famous Petals Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Salts And Oils

by Philip Levine
 In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived...Read more of this...

The Beauteous Flower

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 SONG OF THE IMPRISONED COUNT.

COUNT.

I KNOW a flower of beauty rare,

Ah, how I hold it dear!
To seek it I would fain repair,

Were I not prison'd here.
My sorrow sore oppresses me,
For when I was at liberty,

I had it close beside me.

Though from this castle's walls so steep

I cast mine eyes around,
And gaze oft from the lofty keep,

The flower can not...Read more of this...

Putting in the Seed

by Robert Frost
 You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea);
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave...Read more of this...

Starlight

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Stars await, serene and white,
     The unarisen moon;
   Oh, come and stay with me to-night,
     Beside the salt Lagoon!

   My hut is small, but as you lie,
     You see the lighted shore,
   And hear the rippling water sigh
...Read more of this...

Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry I Walk Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite The Insects To Join Me

by James Wright
 Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are...Read more of this...

Les Lauriers Sont Coupée

by Elinor Wylie
 Ah, love, within the shadow of the wood 
The laurels are cut down; some other brows 
May bear the classic wreath which Fame allows 
And find the burden honorable and good. 
Have we not passed the laurels as they stood-- 
Soft in the veil with which Spring endows 
The wintry glitter of their woven boughs-- 
Nor stopped to break...Read more of this...

Flower of Love

by Claude McKay
 The perfume of your body dulls my sense. 
I want nor wine nor weed; your breath alone 
Suffices. In this moment rare and tense 
I worship at your breast. The flower is blown, 
The saffron petals tempt my amorous mouth, 
The yellow heart is radiant now with dew 
Soft-scented, redolent of my loved South; 
O flower of love! I...Read more of this...

Stravinskys Three Pieces

by Amy Lowell
 First Movement
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
Drawing sound out and out
Until it is a screeching thread,
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
It hurts.
Whee-e-e!
Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!
There are drums here,
Banging,
And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
Of the market-place.
Whee-e-e!
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones;
Clumsy and hard they are,
And uneven,
Losing half a beat
Because the stones are slippery.
Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong!
The...Read more of this...

What I Will Not Tell You

by Lam Quang My
The night is ill
	The moon nurses
Drunken cloud
	Wanders ahead
Wind pretends
	Great busyness 
Rain cries his eyes out
	In a worried night

Crowd in your door
	Doubt if to go: in or out.
Far road
	Moon grants wings to me

I collect dry petals
	of last year’s flowers
to bury under them
	the distance of my longing...Read more of this...

Edge

by Sylvia Plath
 The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the...Read more of this...

Petals

by Amy Lowell
 Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.
Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into...Read more of this...

El Nudo (The Knot)

by Delmira Agustini
Spanish    Su idilio fue una larga sonrisa a cuatro labios…En el regazo cálido de rubia primaveraAmáronse talmente que entre sus dedos sabiosPalpitó la divina forma de la Quimera.    En los palacios fúlgidos de las tardes en calmaHablábanse un lenguaje sentido como un lloro,Y se besaban hondo hasta morderse el alma!…Las horas deshojáronse como flores de oro,    Y el Destino interpuso sus dos manos...Read more of this...

The Beginning

by Rabindranath Tagore
 "Where have I come from, where did you pick me up?" the baby asked
its mother.
She answered, half crying, half laughing, and clasping the
baby to her breast-
"You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.
You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with
clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made the...Read more of this...

Round-Pond

by Richard Aldington
 Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind 
Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breaks 
Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight. 
The shining of the sun upon the water 
Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals 
In a long wavering irregular flight. 

The water is cold to the eye 
As the wind to the cheek. 

In the budding chestnuts...Read more of this...

August

by Elinor Wylie
 When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a...Read more of this...

In A Station Of The Metro

by Ezra Pound
 The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough....Read more of this...

The pleasant task

by Emile Verhaeren
The pleasant task with the window open and the shadow of the green leaves and the passage of the sun on the ruddy paper, maintains the gentle violence of its silence in our good and pensive house.
And the flowers bend nimbly and the large fruits shine from branch to branch, and the blackbirds, the bullfinches and the chaffinches sing and...Read more of this...

"Lost Delight"

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   After the Hazara War

   I lie alone beneath the Almond blossoms,
        Where we two lay together in the spring,
   And now, as then, the mountain snows are melting,
        This year, as last, the water-courses sing.

   That was...Read more of this...

Daisies

by Connie Wanek
 In the democracy of daisies
every blossom has one vote.
The question on the ballot is
Does he love me?

If the answer's wrong I try another,
a little sorry about the petals
piling up around my shoes.

Bees are loose in the fields
where daisies wait and hope,
dreaming of the kiss of a proboscis.
We can't possibly understand

what makes us such fools.
I blame the June heat
and everything...Read more of this...

The Disputants

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Upon the table in their bowl 
in violent disarray 
of yellow sprays, green spikes 
of leaves, red pointed petals 
and curled heads of blue 
and white among the litter 
of the forks and crumbs and plates 
the flowers remain composed. 
Coolly their colloquy continues 
above the coffee and loud talk 
grown frail as vaudeville....Read more of this...

Campo di Fiori

by Czeslaw Milosz
 In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the...Read more of this...

She sped as Petals of a Rose

by Emily Dickinson
 She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind --
A frail Aristocrat of Time
Indemnity to find --
Leaving on nature -- a Default
As Cricket or as Bee --
But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie --...Read more of this...

Dirge

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Place this bunch of mignonette
In her cold, dead hand;
When the golden sun is set,
Where the poplars stand,
Bury her from sun and day,
Lay my little love away
From my sight.
She was like a modest flower
Blown in sunny June,
Warm as sun at noon's high hour,
Chaster than the moon.
Ah, her day was brief and bright,
Earth has lost a star of light;
She is dead.
Softly breathe...Read more of this...

The Poet VIII

by Kahlil Gibran
 He is a link between this and the coming world. 
He is 
A pure spring from which all thirsty souls may drink. 


He is a tree watered by the River of Beauty, bearing 
Fruit which the hungry heart craves; 
He is a nightingale, soothing the depressed 
Spirit with his beautiful melodies; 
He is a white cloud appearing over the...Read more of this...

The Seasons of Her Year

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

Winter is white on turf and tree, 
 And birds are fled; 
But summer songsters pipe to me, 
 And petals spread, 
For what I dreamt of secretly 
 His lips have said! 

II 

O 'tis a fine May morn, they say, 
 And blooms have blown; 
But wild and wintry is my day, 
 My birds make...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Petals 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