Famous Polar Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Joyful Song Of Five

by Katherine Mansfield
 Come, let us all sing very high
And all sing very loud
And keep on singing in the street
Until there's quite a crowd;

And keep on singing in the house
And up and down the stairs;
Then underneath the furniture
Let's all play Polar bears;

And crawl about with doormats on,
And growl and howl and squeak,
Then in the garden let us fly
And play at hid and...Read more of this...

Doom and She

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

 There dwells a mighty pair - 
 Slow, statuesque, intense - 
 Amid the vague Immense: 
None can their chronicle declare, 
 Nor why they be, nor whence. 

,h II 

 Mother of all things made, 
 Matchless in artistry, 
 Unlit with sight is she. - 
And though her ever well-obeyed 
 Vacant of feeling he....Read more of this...

Through the strait pass of suffering --

by Emily Dickinson
 Through the strait pass of suffering --
The Martyrs -- even -- trod.
Their feet -- upon Temptations --
Their faces -- upon God --

A stately -- shriven -- Company --
Convulsion -- playing round --
Harmless -- as streaks of Meteor --
Upon a Planet's Bond --

Their faith -- the everlasting troth --
Their Expectation -- fair --
The Needle -- to the North Degree --
Wades...Read more of this...

There is a solitude of space

by Emily Dickinson
 There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself --
Finite infinity....Read more of this...

To The Man Of The High North

by Robert William Service
 My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
 I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,
Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,
 Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
 From peak snow-diademed to regal star;
Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
 The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now,...Read more of this...

Rivers of Canada

by Bliss Carman
 O all the little rivers that run to Hudson's Bay,
They call me and call me to follow them away.
Missinaibi, Abitibi, Little Current--where they run
Dancing and sparkling I see them in the sun.
I hear the brawling rapid, the thunder of the fall,
And when I think upon them I cannot stay at all.
At the far end of the carry, where the...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

The Angle of a Landscape

by Emily Dickinson
 The Angle of a Landscape --
That every time I wake --
Between my Curtain and the Wall
Upon an ample Crack --

Like a Venetian -- waiting --
Accosts my open eye --
Is just a Bough of Apples --
Held slanting, in the Sky --

The Pattern of a Chimney --
The Forehead of a Hill --
Sometimes -- a Vane's Forefinger --
But that's -- Occasional --

The...Read more of this...

The Silence

by Emile Verhaeren
Ever since ending of the summer weather.
When last the thunder and the lightning broke,
Shatt'ring themselves upon it at one stroke,
The Silence has not stirred, there in the heather.


All round about stand steeples straight as stakes,
And each its bell between its fingers shakes;
All round about, with their three-storied loads,
The teams prowl down the roads;
All round about, where'er the pine woods end,
The...Read more of this...

Home After Three Months Away

by Robert Lowell
 Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind to bowknots of gauze—
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.

Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each...Read more of this...

Lucille

by Robert William Service
 Of course you've heard of the Nancy Lee, and how she sailed away
On her famous quest of the Arctic flea, to the wilds of Hudson's Bay?
For it was a foreign Prince's whim to collect this tiny cuss,
And a golden quid was no more to him than a copper to coves like us.
So we sailed away and our hearts were...Read more of this...

Daily Trials by a Sensitive Man

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Oh, there are times 
When all this fret and tumult that we hear 
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear 
His own dull chimes. 
Ding dong! ding dong! 
The world is in a simmer like a sea 
Over a pent volcano, -- woe is me 
All the day long! 
From crib to shroud! 
Nurse o'er our cradles...Read more of this...

Bear In There

by Shel Silverstein
 There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in...Read more of this...

Lachin Y Gair

by George (Lord) Byron
 Away, ye gay landscapes, ye garden of roses! 
In you let the minions of luxury rove; 
Restore me to the rocks, where the snowflake reposes, 
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love: 
Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains, 
Round their white summits though elements war; 
Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains, 
I sigh for the valley...Read more of this...

The Poet Pleads With The Elemental Powers

by William Butler Yeats
 The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows
Have pulled the Immortal Rose;
And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,
The Polar Dragon slept,
His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:
When will he wake from sleep?
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir
Encircle her I love and sing her into...Read more of this...

Primavera in the North

by Elinor Wylie
 She has danced for leagues and leagues, 
Over thorns and thistles, 
Prancing to a tune of Griegg's 
Performed on willow whistles.

Antelopes behold her, dazed, 
Velvet-eyed, and furry; 
Polar flowers, crackle-glazed, 
Snap beneath her hurry.

In a wig of copper wire, 
A gown of scalloped gauzes, 
She capers like a flame of fire 
Over Arctic mosses.

All her tears have turned to...Read more of this...

Robin Hood

by John Keats
 to a friend 

No! those days are gone away
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

 No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no...Read more of this...

Sonnet IV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET IV. La vita fugge, e non s' arresta un' ora. PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ARE NOW ALIKE PAINFUL TO HIM.  Life passes quick, nor will a moment stay,And death with hasty journeys still draws near;And all the present joins my soul to tear,With every past and every future day:And to...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

Ode to Winter

by Thomas Campbell
 When first the fiery-mantled sun 
His heavenly race begun to run; 
Round the earth and ocean blue, 
His children four the Seasons flew. 
First, in green apparel dancing, 
The young Spring smiled with angel grace; 
Rosy summer next advancing, 
Rushed into her sire's embrace:- 
Her blue-haired sire, who bade her keep 
For ever nearest to his smile, 
On Calpe's...Read more of this...

Sunshine

by Robert William Service
 I

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.
Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:
"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."

I have not slept for many, many days.
I close my eyes with weariness -- that's all.
I still have...Read more of this...

Stanzas To The Po

by George (Lord) Byron
 River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What...Read more of this...

In Faith

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When the soft sweet wind o' the south went by, 
I dwelt in the light of a dark brown eye; 
And out where the robin sang his song, 
We lived and loved, while the days were long.

In the sweet, sweet eves, when the moon swung high, 
We wandered under the starry sky; 
Or sat in the porch, and the...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

by Robert William Service
 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of...Read more of this...

A Polar Explorer

by Joseph Brodsky
All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen it...Read more of this...

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