Famous Rainbow Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Rainbow poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous rainbow poems. These examples illustrate what a famous rainbow poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Herbert
I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.
My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or star, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things or all of them in one?
My God, what is a heart?
That...Read more of this...
by
T Wignesan
for Eric Mottram
"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,
Dann ist die Erde schön."
Goethe.
I
An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.
Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious...Read more of this...
by
John Trumbull
In vain, fair Maid, you ask in vain,
My pen should try th' advent'rous strain,
And following truth's unalter'd law,
Attempt your character to draw.
I own indeed, that generous mind
That weeps the woes of human kind,
That heart by friendship's charms inspired,
That soul with sprightly fancy fired,
The air of life, the vivid eye,
The flowing wit, the keen reply--
To paint these beauties as they...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Souvent quand mon esprit riche.")
{VII., May 18, 1828.}
When my mind, on the ocean of poesy hurled,
Floats on in repose round this wonderful world,
Oft the sacred fire from heaven—
Mysterious sun, that gives light to the soul—
Strikes mine with its ray, and above the pole
Its upward...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.
The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows, and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.
Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Some Rainbow -- coming from the Fair!
Some Vision of the World Cashmere --
I confidently see!
Or else a Peacock's purple Train
Feather by feather -- on the plain
Fritters itself away!
The dreamy Butterflies bestir!
Lethargic pools resume the whir
Of last year's sundered tune!
From some old Fortress on the sun
Baronial Bees -- march -- one by one --
In murmuring platoon!
The Robins stand as thick...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.
Your name may flaunt a titled trail
Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;
To-day, old...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We shall find the Cube of the Rainbow.
Of that, there is no doubt.
But the Arc of a Lover's conjecture
Eludes the finding out....Read more of this...
by
Sarojini Naidu
Mens Voices:
LORD of the lotus, lord of the harvest,
Bright and munificent lord of the morn!
Thine is the bounty that prospered our sowing,
Thine is the bounty that nurtured our corn.
We bring thee our songs and our garlands for tribute,
The gold of our fields and the gold of our fruit;
O giver of mellowing radiance, we...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born
In secret pleasure - secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away
As friendless after eighteen years
As lone as on my natal day
There have been times I cannot hide
There have been times when...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of
the square
glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and
pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown
water
of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string
of galliots
piled with crimson cheeses. The little...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
There's a fabulous story
Full of splendor and glory,
That Arabian legends transcends;
Of the wealth without measure,
The coffers of treasure,
At the place where the rainbow ends.
Oh, many have sought it,
And all would have bought it,
With the blood we so recklessly spend;
But none has uncovered,
The gold, nor discovered
The spot at the rainbow's end.
They have sought it in battle,
And e'en where the rattle
Of dice...Read more of this...
by
Christopher Marlowe
1 On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
2 In view and opposite two cities stood,
3 Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might;
4 The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
5 At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
6 Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
7 And offer'd as a dower his burning throne,
8 Where she could sit for men to gaze upon.
9 The...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)
For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.
There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop...Read more of this...
by
Robert Lowell
(For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea)
Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and
the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth,
and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
I
A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket--
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
When the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The rainbow never tells me
That gust and storm are by,
Yet is she more convincing
Than Philosophy.
My flowers turn from Forums --
Yet eloquent declare
What Cato couldn't prove me
Except the birds were here!...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
The seafarers tell of the Eastern Isle of Bliss,
It is lost in a wilderness of misty sea waves.
But the Sky-land of the south, the Yueh-landers say,
May be seen through cracks of the glimmering cloud.
This land of the sky stretches across the leagues of heaven;
It rises above the Five Mountains and towers over the Scarlet Castle,
While, as if staggering before...Read more of this...
by
Walter Savage Landor
Why, why repine, my pensive friend,
At pleasures slipp'd away?
Some the stern Fates will never lend,
And all refuse to stay.
I see the rainbow in the sky,
The dew upon the grass,
I see them, and I ask not why
They glimmer or they pass.
With folded arms I linger not
To call them back; 'twere vain;...Read more of this...
by
W. E. B. Du Bois
O Truce of God!
And primal meeting of the Sons of Man,
Foreshadowing the union of the World!
From all the ends of earth we come!
Old Night, the elder sister of the Day,
Mother of Dawn in the golden East,
Meets in the misty twilight with her brood,
Pale and black, tawny, red and brown,
The mighty human rainbow of the world,
Spanning its wilderness of storm.
Softly in...Read more of this...
by
Kenn Nesbitt
I rode a rainbow unicorn.
We sailed across the sky.
(I’d fed him lots of Skittles,
since they always make him fly.)
We took off like a comet
on a long and graceful flight.
And everywhere the people stopped
and marveled at the sight.
His path was bright and colorful.
It sparkled, shimmered, shined,
as he arced across the heavens
shooting rainbows from behind.
--Kenn Nesbitt
Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2016. All...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
About me young careless feet
Linger along the garish street;
Above, a hundred shouting signs
Shed down their bright fantastic glow
Upon the merry crowd and lines
Of moving carriages below.
Oh wonderful is Broadway -- only
My heart, my heart is lonely.
Desire naked, linked with Passion,
Goes trutting by in brazen fashion;
From playhouse, cabaret and inn
The rainbow lights of Broadway blaze
All gay without, all glad within;
As...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song!
All the gulls are out, delighting
In a wild, uncharted quest
See the first red sunshine smiting
Silver sheen of wing and breast!
Ho, the sunrise rainbow-hearted
Steals athwart the misty brine,
And the sky where clouds have parted
Is a bowl of amber wine!
Sweet, its...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
On this long storm the Rainbow rose --
On this late Morn -- the Sun --
The clouds -- like listless Elephants --
Horizons -- straggled down --
The Birds rose smiling, in their nests --
The gales -- indeed -- were done --
Alas, how heedless were the eyes --
On whom the summer shone!
The quiet nonchalance of death --
No Daybreak -- can bestir --
The...Read more of this...
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