Famous Poplars Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

At the Window

by D. H. Lawrence
 The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters 
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter; 
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters. 

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede, 
Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to...Read more of this...

In Memory Of My Mother

by Patrick Kavanagh
 I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday--
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle--'
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking...Read more of this...

Far In a Western Brookland

by A E Housman
 Far in a western brookland 
That bred me long ago 
The poplars stand and tremble 
By pools I used to know. 

There, in the windless night-time, 
The wanderer, marvelling why, 
Halts on the bridge to hearken 
How soft the poplars sigh. 

He hears: no more remembered 
In fields where I was known, 
Here I lie down in London 
And...Read more of this...

Battalion-Relief

by Siegfried Sassoon
 ‘FALL in! Now get a move on.’ (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village, 
Out to the flat rich country, green with June... 
And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage, 
Blazing with splendour-patches. (Harvest soon, 
Up in the Line.) ‘Perhaps the War’ll be done 
‘By Christmas-Day. Keep smiling then, old son.’ 

Here’s the Canal: it’s dusk;...Read more of this...

To Jose Mar?a Palacio

by Antonio Machado
 Palacio, good friend,
is spring there
showing itself on branches of black poplars
by the roads and river? On the steeps
of the high Duero, spring is late,
but so soft and lovely when it comes!
Are there a few new leaves
on the old elms?
The acacias must still be bare,
and the mountain peaks snow-filled.
Oh the massed pinks and whites
of Moncayo, massed up there,
beauty, in the...Read more of this...

Southern Mansion

by Arna Bontemps
 Poplars are standing there still as death
And ghosts of dead men
Meet their ladies walking
Two by two beneath the shade
And standing on the marble steps.

There is a sound of music echoing
Through the open door
And in the field there is
Another sound tinkling in the cotton:
Chains of bondmen dragging on the ground.

The years go back with an iron clank,
A hand is on...Read more of this...

Fields of Soria

by Antonio Machado
 Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red rocks
through which the Duero bends
its crossbow arc
round Soria, shadowed oaks,
stone dry-lands, naked mountains,
white roads and river poplars,
twilights of Soria, warlike and mystical,
today I feel, for you, 
in my hearts depths, sadness,
sadness of love! Fields of Soria,
where it seems the stones have dreams,
you go with me! Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red...Read more of this...

Night-Music

by Philip Larkin
 At one the wind rose,
And with it the noise
Of the black poplars.

Long since had the living
By a thin twine
Been led into their dreams
Where lanterns shine
Under a still veil
Of falling streams;
Long since had the dead
Become untroubled
In the light soil.
There were no mouths
To drink of the wind,
Nor any eyes
To sharpen on the stars'
Wide heaven-holding,
Only the sound
Long sibilant-muscled trees
Were lifting up, the...Read more of this...

Landscape

by Paul Celan
 tall poplars -- human beings of this earth!
black pounds of happiness -- you mirror them to death!

I saw you, sister, stand in that effulgence....Read more of this...

Harrow-on-the-Hill

by John Betjeman
 When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary's filling
With the sea.

Then Harrow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses...Read more of this...

The Deserted Cottage

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Who dwelt in yonder lonely Cot,
Why is it thus forsaken?
It seems, by all the world forgot,
Above its path the high grass grows,
And through its thatch the northwind blows
--Its thatch, by tempests shaken.

And yet, it tops a verdant hill
By Summer gales surrounded:
Beneath its door a shallow rill
Runs brawling to the vale below,
And near it sweetest flowrets grow
By banks of willow...Read more of this...

At Nightfall

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 The dark is coming o'er the world, my playmate,
And the fields where poplars stand are very still,
All our groves of green delight have been invaded,
There are voices quite unknown upon the hill; 

The wind has grown too weary for a comrade,
It is keening in the rushes spent and low,
Let us join our hands and hasten very softly
To the little,...Read more of this...

Binsey Poplars

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 felled 1879


 My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
 Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
 All felled, felled, are all felled;
 Of a fresh and following folded rank
 Not spared, not one
 That dandled a sandalled
 Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank. 
 O if we but knew what we do
...Read more of this...

Sonnet XII

by Alan Seeger
 Like as a dryad, from her native bole 
Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, 
To a slow river at whose silent verge 
Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, 
Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal 
Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, 
Bend till thine image from the pool beam up 
Arched with blue...Read more of this...

Dreams

by Amy Lowell
 I do not care to talk to you although
Your speech evokes a thousand sympathies,
And all my being's silent harmonies
Wake trembling into music. When you go
It is as if some sudden, dreadful blow
Had severed all the strings with savage ease.
No, do not talk; but let us rather seize
This intimate gift of silence which we know.
Others may guess your thoughts from...Read more of this...

For Osip Mandelstam

by Anna Akhmatova
 And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.
And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crows
there’s a pale green dome there that glows,
dim in the sun-shrouded dust.
The field of heroes lingers in my thought,
Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground.
The frozen poplars, like glasses for a...Read more of this...

Yes it's settled

by Sergei Yesenin
Yes! It"s settled! Now and for ever
I have left my dear old plain.
And the winged leaves of poplars will never
Ring and rustle above me again.
 
Our house will sag in my absence,
And my dog died a long time ago.
Me, I"m fated to die with  compassions
In the crooked streets of Moscow, I know.
 
I admire this city of elm-trees
With decrepit...Read more of this...

In a Wood

by Thomas Hardy
 Pale beech and pine-tree blue, 
Set in one clay, 
Bough to bough cannot you 
Bide out your day? 
When the rains skim and skip, 
Why mar sweet comradeship, 
Blighting with poison-drip 
Neighborly spray? 

Heart-halt and spirit-lame, 
City-opprest, 
Unto this wood I came 
As to a nest; 
Dreaming that sylvan peace 
Offered the harrowed ease— 
Nature a soft release 
From...Read more of this...

Night-Music

by Philip Larkin
 At one the wind rose,
And with it the noise
Of the black poplars.

Long since had the living
By a thin twine
Been led into their dreams
Where lanterns shine
Under a still veil
Of falling streams;
Long since had the dead
Become untroubled
In the light soil.
There were no mouths
To drink of the wind,
Nor any eyes
To sharpen on the stars'
Wide heaven-holding,
Only the sound
Long sibilant-muscled trees
Were lifting up, the...Read more of this...

My Lady Of Castle Grand

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Gray is the palace where she dwells,
Grimly the poplars stand
There by the window where she sits,
My Lady of Castle Grand.
There does she bide the livelong day,
Grim as the poplars are,
Ever her gaze goes reaching out,
Steady, but vague and far.
Bright burn the fires in the castle hall,
Brightly the fire-dogs stand;
But cold is the body and cold the heart
Of my Lady of...Read more of this...

Wherein Obscurely

by Charles Simic
 On the road with billowing poplars,
In a country flat and desolate
To the far-off gray horizon, wherein obscurely,
A man and a woman went on foot,

Each carrying a small suitcase.
They were tired and had taken off
Their shoes and were walking on
Their toes, staring straight ahead.

Every time a car passed fast,
As they're wont to on such a stretch of
Road, empty as the...Read more of this...

Last Hill In A Vista

by Louise Bogan
 Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches
How we are poor, who once had riches,
And lie out in the sparse and sodden
Pastures that the cows have trodden,
The while an autumn night seals down
The comforts of the wooden town.

Come, let us counsel some cold stranger
How we sought safety, but loved danger.
So, with stiff walls about us, we
Chose this more fragile...Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

Amphion

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 MY father left a park to me, 
But it is wild and barren, 
A garden too with scarce a tree, 
And waster than a warren: 
Yet say the neighbours when they call, 
It is not bad but good land, 
And in it is the germ of all 
That grows within the woodland. 

O had I lived when song was...Read more of this...

Telling the Bees

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Here is the place; right over the hill 
Runs the path I took; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
And the poplars tall; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

There...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Poplars 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