Famous Pleasant Poems by Famous Poets

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

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From Milton: And did those feet

by William Blake
 And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear:O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I...Read more of this...

The White Mans Foot

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All...Read more of this...

What Were They Like?

by Denise Levertov
 Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered...Read more of this...

Resolution And Independence

by William Wordsworth
 I 

There was a roaring in the wind all night; 
The rain came heavily and fell in floods; 
But now the sun is rising calm and bright; 
The birds are singing in the distant woods; 
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; 
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; 
And all the air is filled with pleasant...Read more of this...

A Gift

by Amy Lowell
 See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lustres
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.
When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book VI Canto X

by Edmund Spenser
Calidore sees the Graces daunce,
To Colins melody:
The whiles his Pastorell is led,
[I]nto captiuity.
 

W Ho now does follow the foule Blatant Beast,
Whilest Calidore does follow that faire Mayd,
Vnmyndfull of his vow and high beheast,
Which by the Faery Queene was on him layd,
That he should neuer leaue, nor be delayd
From chacing him, till he had it attchieued?
But now entrapt of loue,...Read more of this...

The Trumpeter an Old English Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 It was in the days of a gay British King
(In the old fashion'd custom of merry-making)
The Palace of Woodstock with revels did ring,
While they sang and carous'd--one and all:
For the monarch a plentiful treasury had,
And his Courtiers were pleas'd, and no visage was sad,
And the knavish and foolish with drinking were mad,
While they sat in the Banquetting hall.

Some talk'd...Read more of this...

Musings On A Landscape Of Gaspar Poussin

by Robert Southey
 Poussin! most pleasantly thy pictur'd scenes
Beguile the lonely hour; I sit and gaze
With lingering eye, till charmed FANCY makes
The lovely landscape live, and the rapt soul
From the foul haunts of herded humankind
Flies far away with spirit speed, and tastes
The untainted air, that with the lively hue
Of health and happiness illumes the cheek
Of mountain LIBERTY. My willing soul
All eager follows...Read more of this...

The Birds Bargain

by Katharine Tynan
 'O spare my cherries in the net,'
Brother Benignus prayed; 'and I 
Summer and winter, shine and wet,
Will pile the blackbirds' table high.' 

'O spare my youngling peas,' he prayed,
'That for the Abbot's table be; 
And every blackbird shall be fed;
Yea, they shall have their fill,' said he. 

His prayer, his vow, the blackbirds heard, 
And spared his shining garden-plot....Read more of this...

Pretty Halcyon Days

by Ogden Nash
 How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
 No letters to answer,
 No bills to be burned,
 No work to be shirked,
 No cash to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done!

How pleasant to...Read more of this...

Verses upon the Burning of our House July 18th

by Anne Bradstreet
 In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow near I did not look,
I waken'd was with thund'ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of 'fire' and 'fire,'
Let no man know is my Desire.
I starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To straighten me in my Distress
And not to leave me succourless.
Then coming...Read more of this...

The Road to Roundabout

by G K Chesterton
 Some say that Guy of Warwick 
The man that killed the Cow, 
And brake the mighty Boar alive 
Beyond the bridge at Slough; 
Went up against a Loathly Worm 
That wasted all the Downs, 
And so the roads they twist and squirm 
(If a may be allowed the term) 
From the writhing of the stricken Worm 
That died in...Read more of this...

Mary - A Ballad

by Robert Southey
 Author Note: The story of the following ballad was related to me, when a school boy, as a fact which had really happened in the North of England. I have
adopted the metre of Mr. Lewis's Alonzo and Imogene--a poem deservedly
popular.


I.

Who is she, the poor Maniac, whose wildly-fix'd eyes
Seem a heart overcharged to express?
She weeps not, yet often and deeply...Read more of this...

The Ride of Paul Venarez

by Eben E. Rexford
1. Paul Venarez heard them say, in the frontier town that day,
That a band of Red Plume's warriors was upon the trail of death;
Heard them tell of a murder done: Three men killed at Rocky Run.
"They're in danger up at Crawford's," said Venarez, under breath.

2. "Crawford's"—thirty miles away—was a settlement, that lay
In a green and pleasant valley of the mighty...Read more of this...

The Quality of Courage

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Black trees against an orange sky, 
Trees that the wind shook terribly, 
Like a harsh spume along the road, 
Quavering up like withered arms, 
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms 
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below 
The iron ice stung like a goad, 
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet, 
And all the air was bitter sleet. 

And...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear

by Edward Lear
 How pleasant to know Mr. Lear, 
Who has written such volumes of stuff. 
Some think him ill-tempered and *****, 
But a few find him pleasant enough. 

His mind is concrete and fastidious, 
His nose is remarkably big; 
His visage is more or less hideous, 
His beard it resembles a wig. 

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,...Read more of this...

Where She Told Her Love

by John Clare
 I saw her crop a rose
Right early in the day,
And I went to kiss the place
Where she broke the rose away
And I saw the patten rings
Where she o'er the stile had gone,
And I love all other things
Her bright eyes look upon.
If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree,
The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer...Read more of this...

The Grandmother

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I.
And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne?
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
And Willy's wife has written: she never was over-wise,
Never the wife for Willy: he would n't take my advice. 

II.
For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save,
Had n't a head to manage, and drank...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...

A Voice From The Dungeon

by Anne Bronte
 I'm buried now; I've done with life;
I've done with hate, revenge and strife;
I've done with joy, and hope and love
And all the bustling world above. 
Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb.

No hope, no pleasure can I find:
I am grown weary of my mind;
Often...Read more of this...

Sonnet CII

by William Shakespeare
 My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new and then but in the spring
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing
And stops her pipe in growth of...Read more of this...

Foreign Lands

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Up into the cherry tree 
Who should climb but little me? 
I held the trunk with both my hands 
And looked abroad in foreign lands. 

I saw the next door garden lie, 
Adorned with flowers, before my eye, 
And many pleasant places more 
That I had never seen before. 

I saw the dimpling river pass 
And be the sky's...Read more of this...

Our bright garden is health itself

by Emile Verhaeren
Our bright garden is health itself.
It is squandered in its brightness from the thousand hands of the branches and leaves as they wave to and fro.
And the pleasant shade that welcomes our feet after the long roads pours into our tired limbs a quickening strength, gentle as the garden's mosses.
When the pond plays with the wind and the sun, a...Read more of this...

We Are Seven

by William Wordsworth
  A simple child, dear brother Jim,  That lightly draws its breath,  And feels its life in every limb,  What should it know of death?   I met a little cottage girl,  She was eight years old, she said;  Her hair was thick with many a curl  That cluster'd round her head.   She had a rustic, woodland air,  And she was wildly clad;  Her eyes were fair, and very fair,  —Her...Read more of this...

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