Famous Pillow Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pillow poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pillow poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pillow poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
Who is it seeks my Pillow Nights --
With plain inspecting face --
"Did you" or "Did you not," to ask --
'Tis "Conscience" -- Childhood's Nurse --
With Martial Hand she strokes the Hair
Upon my wincing Head --
"All" Rogues "shall have their part in" what --
The Phosphorous of God --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I have a King, who does not speak --
So -- wondering -- thro' the hours meek
I trudge the day away --
Half glad when it is night, and sleep,
If, haply, thro' a dream, to peep
In parlors, shut by day.
And if I do -- when morning comes --
It is as if a hundred drums
Did round my pillow roll,
And shouts fill all...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Patchen
I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a
temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest.
For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the
world. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I
cover her against any hurt.
Using the pen of rivers and mountaintops I store her
pillow with singing.
Upon her hair I...Read more of this...
by
Hermann Hesse
My Pillow gazes upon me at night
Empty as a gravestone;
I never thought it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Not to lie down asleep in your hair.
I lie alone in a silent house,
The hanging lamp darkened,
And gently stretch out my hands
To gather in yours,
And softly press my warm mouth
Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak-
Then suddenly I'm awake
And all...Read more of this...
by
Diane Wakoski
Photograph negative
her black arm: a diving porpoise,
sprawled across the ice-banked pillow.
Head: a sheet of falling water.
Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light.
This woman,
photographed sleeping.
The man,
making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain.
Sleep stain them both,
as if cloudy semen
rubbed shiningly over the surface
will be used to develop their images.
on the desert
the porpoises curl up,
their...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Anna who was mad,
I have a knife in my armpit.
When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages.
Am I some sort of infection?
Did I make you go insane?
Did I make the sounds go sour?
Did I tell you to climb out the window?
Forgive. Forgive.
Say not I did.
Say not.
Say.
Speak Mary-words into our pillow.
Take me the gangling twelve-year-old
into your sunken lap.
Whisper like...Read more of this...
by
Louise Gluck
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also,...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
The melancholy gift Aurora gained
From Jove, that her sad lover should not see
The face of death, no goddess asked for thee,
My Keats! But when the crimson blood-drop stained
Thy pillow, thou didst read the fate ordained, --
Brief life, wild love, a flight of poesy!
And then, -- a shadow fell on Italy:
Thy star went down before its brightness waned,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
When daylight was yet sleeping under the pillow,
And stars in the heavens still lingering shone,
Young Kitty, all blushing, rose up from her pillow,
The last time she e'er was to press it alone.
For the youth whom she treasured her heart and her soul in
Had promised to link the last tie before noon;
And when once...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, O'er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft by the pillow.
Oh, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, no shark shall overtake thee
Asleep...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
I crave, dear Lord,
No boundless hoard
Of gold and gear,
Nor jewels fine,
Nor lands, nor kine,
Nor treasure-heaps of anything.-
Let but a little hut be mine
Where at the hearthstore I may hear
The cricket sing,
And have the shine
Of one glad woman's eyes to make,
For my poor sake,
Our simple home a place...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I said,—for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,—
"I'll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in
bed;
But I'll never leave my pillow, though there be some
As would let him in—and take him in with tears!" I said.
I lay,—for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn,—
I lay and...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The...Read more of this...
by
Louise Bogan
I WOKE to find my pillow wet
With the tears for deeds deep hid in sleep.
I knew no sorrow here, but yet
The tears fell softly through the deep.
Your eyes, your other eyes of dream,
Looked at me through the veil of blank;
I saw their joyous, starlit gleam
Like one who watches rank on rank.
His victor airy legions wind
...Read more of this...
by
Yosa Buson
My arm for a pillow,
I really like myself
under the hazy moon....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
On that specific Pillow
Our projects flit away --
The Night's tremendous Morrow
And whether sleep will stay
Or usher us -- a stranger --
To situations new
The effort to comprise it
Is all the soul can do....Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I TELL them where the wind comes from,
Where the music goes when the fiddle is in the box.
Kids—I saw one with a proud chin, a sleepyhead,
And the moonline creeping white on her pillow.
I have seen their heads in the starlight
And their proud chins marching in a mist of stars.
They are the only people I never lie to.
...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE BRASS medallion profile of your face I keep always.
It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.
It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.
I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day
And it is under my pillow at night.
The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
If the muse were mine to tempt it
And my feeble voice were strong,
If my tongue were trained to measures,
I would sing a stirring song.
I would sing a song heroic
Of those noble sons of Ham,
Of the gallant colored soldiers
Who fought for Uncle Sam!
In the early days you scorned them,
And with many a flip and flout
Said "These battles are the white man's,
And...Read more of this...
by
Peter Orlovsky
Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower be free aired
& handsome felt,
Grave root pillow, tung up from grave & wigle at
blown up clowd.
Ear turnes close to underlayer of green felt moss & sound
of rain dribble thru this layer
down to the roots that will tickle my ear.
Hay grave, my toes need cutting so...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Where I have lost, I softer tread --
I sow sweet flower from garden bed --
I pause above that vanished head
And mourn.
Whom I have lost, I pious guard
From accent harsh, or ruthless word --
Feeling as if their pillow heard,
Though stone!
When I have lost, you'll know by this --
A Bonnet black -- A dusk surplice --
A little tremor in my voice...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lilacs blossom just as sweet
Now my heart is shattered.
If I bowled it down the street,
Who's to say it mattered?
If there's one that rode away
What would I be missing?
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.
Eyes that watch the morning star
Seem a little brighter;
Arms held out to darkness are
Usually whiter.
Shall I bar the strolling guest,
Bind my brow...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
AN old man bending, I come, among new faces,
Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children,
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love me;
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again—paint the...Read more of this...
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