Famous Red Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Red Moon-Rise

by D. H. Lawrence
The train in running across the weald has fallen into a steadier stroke
So even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one unbroke
Embrace of darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the loose
And littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and we
can use
The open book of landscape no more, for the covers of darkness have
shut...Read more of this...

Whole Gulfs -- of Red and Fleets -- of Red --

by Emily Dickinson
 Whole Gulfs -- of Red, and Fleets -- of Red --
And Crews -- of solid Blood --
Did place upon the West -- Tonight --
As 'twere specific Ground --

And They -- appointed Creatures --
In Authorized Arrays --
Due -- promptly -- as a Drama --
That bows -- and disappears --...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Red Earl

by Rudyard Kipling
 (It is not for them to criticize too minutely
the methods the Irish followed, though they might deplore some of
their results. During the past few years Ireland had been going
through what was tantamount to a revolution. -- EARL SPENCER)



Red Earl, and will ye take for guide
 The silly camel-birds,
That ye bury your head in an Irish thorn,
 On a desert...Read more of this...

Red Sea indeed! Talk not to me

by Emily Dickinson
 "Red Sea," indeed! Talk not to me
Of purple Pharaoh --
I have a Navy in the West
Would pierce his Columns thro' --
Guileless, yet of such Glory fine
That all along the Line
Is it, or is it not, divine --
The Eye inquires with a sigh
That Earth sh'd be so big --
What Exultation in the Woe --
What Wine in the fatigue!...Read more of this...

The Red Shirt

by Philip Levine
 "...his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing, 
like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die in." 
-Vargas Llosa



If I gave 5 birds 
each 4 eyes 
I would be blind 
unto the 3rd 
generation, if I 
gave no one a word 
for a day 
and let the day 
grow into a week 
and the week...Read more of this...

A Lady red -- amid the Hill

by Emily Dickinson
 A Lady red -- amid the Hill
Her annual secret keeps!
A Lady white, within the Field
In placid Lily sleeps!

The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms --
Sweep vale -- and hill -- and tree!
Prithee, My pretty Housewives!
Who may expected be?

The Neighbors do not yet suspect!
The Woods exchange a smile!
Orchard, and Buttercup, and Bird --
In such a little while!

And yet, how still the...Read more of this...

A Red, Red Rose

by Robert Burns
O, my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my Luve's like a melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair as thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will love thess...Read more of this...

The Blood-Red Fourragere

by Robert William Service
 What was the blackest sight to me
Of all that campaign?
A naked woman tied to a tree
With jagged holes where her breasts should be,
Rotting there in the rain.

On we pressed to the battle fray,
Dogged and dour and spent.
Sudden I heard my Captain say:
"Voilà! Kultur has passed this way,
And left us a monument."

So I looked and I saw our Colonel there,
And...Read more of this...

Red-headed Restaurant Cashier

by Carl Sandburg
 SHAKE back your hair, O red-headed girl.
Let go your laughter and keep your two proud freckles on your chin.
Somewhere is a man looking for a red-headed girl and some day maybe he will look into your eyes for a restaurant cashier and find a lover, maybe.
Around and around go ten thousand men hunting a red headed girl with two...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

The Red Dance

by Anne Sexton
 There was a girl
who danced in the city that night,
that April 22nd,
all along the Charles River.
It was as if one hundred men were watching
or do I mean the one hundred eyes of God?
The yellow patches in the sycamores
glowed like miniature flashlights.
The shadows, the skin of them
were ice cubes that flashed
from the red dress to the roof.
Mile by mile along...Read more of this...

Double Red Daisies

by Robert Graves
 Double red daisies, they’re my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow. 
In a big quarrelsome house like ours 
They try it sometimes—but no, 
I root them up because they’re my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow.

Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn’t plant it; 
Ben has an iris, but I don’t want it. 
Daisies, double red daisies for me, 
The beautifulest...Read more of this...

Red Dust

by Philip Levine
 This harpie with dry red curls 
talked openly of her husband, 
his impotence, his death, the death 
of her lover, the birth and death 
of her own beauty. She stared 
into the mirror next to 
our table littered with the wreck 
of her appetite and groaned: 
Look what you've done to me! 
as though only that moment 
she'd discovered...Read more of this...

Song of the Red War-Boat

by Rudyard Kipling
 Shove off from the wharf-edge! Steady!
Watch for a smooth! Give way!
If she feels the lop already 
She'll stand on her head in the bay.
It's ebb--it's dusk--it's blowing--
The shoals are a mile of white,
But ( snatch her along! ) we're going
To find our master to-night.

For we hold that in all disaster
Of shipwreck, storm, or sword,
A Man must stand by his...Read more of this...

The Red Dress

by Dorothy Parker
 I always saw, I always said
If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red
As fine as you could see,

To wear out walking, sleek and slow,
Upon a Summer day,
And there'd be one to see me so
And flip the world away.

And he would be a gallant one,
With stars behind his eyes,
And hair like metal in the sun,
And lips...Read more of this...

The White Ships and the Red

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Alden March)

With drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were...Read more of this...

The Vanishing Red

by Robert Frost
 He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
'Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
When it's just that...Read more of this...

Among the Red Guns

by Carl Sandburg
 After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang
low among dry leaves in an elm

AMONG the red guns,
In the hearts of soldiers
Running free blood
In the long, long campaign:
Dreams go on.

Among the leather saddles,
In the heads of soldiers
Heavy in the wracks and kills
Of all straight fighting:
Dreams go on.

Among the hot muzzles,
In the hands of soldiers
Brought from flesh-folds of women--
Soft...Read more of this...

There was a young person in red

by Edward Lear
There was a young person in red,Who carefully covered her head,With a bonnet of leather, and three lines of feather,Besides some long ribands of red. ...Read more of this...

Red Faces

by Gertrude Stein
 Red flags the reason for pretty flags.
And ribbons.
Ribbons of flags
And wearing material
Reason for wearing material.
Give pleasure.
Can you give me the regions.
The regions and the land.
The regions and wheels.
All wheels are perfect.
Enthusiasm....Read more of this...

The Red Retreat

by Robert William Service
 Tramp, tramp, the grim road, the road from Mons to Wipers
 (I've 'ammered out this ditty with me bruised and bleedin' feet);
Tramp, tramp, the dim road -- we didn't 'ave no pipers,
 And bellies that was 'oller was the drums we 'ad to beat.
Tramp, tramp, the bad road, the bits o' kiddies cryin' there,
 The fell birds a-flyin' there,...Read more of this...

I worship rose-red cheeks with heart and soul,

by Omar Khayyam
I worship rose-red cheeks with heart and soul,
I suffer not my hand to quit the bowl,
I make each part of me his function do,
Or e'er my parts be swallowed in the Whole....Read more of this...

A Red Wheelbarrow

by Jack Spicer
 Rest and look at this goddamned wheelbarrow. Whatever
It is. Dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not
For their significance.
For their significant. For being human
The signs escape you. You, who aren't very bright
Are a signal for them. Not,
I mean, the dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not
Their significance....Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 01: The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea

by Conrad Aiken
 The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea.
The walls and towers are warmed and gleam.
Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves.
The city stirs like one that is half in dream.

And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows,
Where one by one we wake and rise.
We gaze at the pale grey lustrous sea a moment,
We rub...Read more of this...

Many red devils ran from my heart

by Stephen Crane
 Many red devils ran from my heart
And out upon the page,
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart....Read more of this...

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