Famous Shade Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sunrise on the Hills

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I stood upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch
Was glorious with the sun's returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me; bathed in light,
They gathered mid-way round the wooded height,
And, in their fading glory, shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown.
As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance.
Through the gray mist...Read more of this...

Psalm 61

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-6 
S. M.
Safety in God.

When, overwhelm'd with grief,
My heart within me dies,
Helpless, and far from all relief,
To heav'n I lift mine eyes.

O lead me to the rock
That's high above my head,
And make the covert of thy wings
My shelter and my shade.

Within thy presence, Lord,
For ever I'll abide;
Thou art the tower of my defence,
The refuge where I hide.

Thou givest me...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...

Lucius Atherton

by Edgar Lee Masters
 When my moustache curled,
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight trousers
And a diamond stud,
I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.
But when the gray hairs began to appear--
Lo! a new generation of girls
Laughed at me, not fearing me,
And I had no more exciting adventures
Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
But only...Read more of this...

343. Address to the shade of Thomson

by Robert Burns
 WHILE virgin Spring by Eden’s flood,
 Unfolds her tender mantle green,
Or pranks the sod in frolic mood,
 Or tunes Eolian strains between.


While Summer, with a matron grace,
 Retreats to Dryburgh’s cooling shade,
Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace
 The progress of the spiky blade.


While Autumn, benefactor kind,
 By Tweed erects his aged head,
And sees, with self-approving mind,
 Each creature on...Read more of this...

Sonnet LIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LIX. Se al principio risponde il fine e 'l mezzo. IF HIS PASSION STILL INCREASE, HE MUST SOON DIE.  If, of this fourteenth year wherein I sigh,The end and middle with its opening vie,[Pg 82]Nor air nor shade can give me now release,I feel mine ardent passion so...Read more of this...

Iii

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
To-day my skies are bare and ashen,
And bend on me without a beam.
Since love is held the master-passion,
Its loss must be the pain supreme—
And grinning Fate has wrecked my dream.
But pardon, dear departed Guest,
I will not rant, I will not rail;
For good the grain must feel the flail;
There are whom love has never blessed.
I had and have a younger brother,
One...Read more of this...

In the thickets shade

by Kobayashi Issa
 In the thicket's shade
a woman by herself
singing the rice-planting song....Read more of this...

The Relapse

by Henry Vaughan
 My God, how gracious art thou! I had slipt 
Almost to hell, 
And on the verge of that dark, dreadful pit 
Did hear them yell, 
But O thy love! thy rich, almighty love 
That sav'd my soul, 
And checkt their fury, when I saw them move, 
And heard them howl; 
O my sole comfort, take no more these ways,...Read more of this...

On Gray Eyes

by William Strode
 Looke how the russet morne exceeds the night,
How sleekest Jett yields to the di'monds light,
So farr the glory of the gray-bright eye
Out-vyes the black in lovely majesty.
A morning mantl'd with a fleece of gray
Laughs from her brow and shewes a spotlesse day:
This di'mond-like doth not his lustre owe
To borrowed helpe, as black thinges cast a show,
It needs noe day...Read more of this...

The Hollow Men

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.




 A penny for the Old Guy




 I


We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes,...Read more of this...

A Prayer

by George William Russell
 O HOLY SPIRIT of the Hazel, hearken now:
Though shining suns and silver moons burn on the bough,
And though the fruit of stars by many myriads gleam,
Yet in the undergrowth below, still in thy dream,
Lighting the monstrous maze and labyrinthine gloom
Are many gem-winged flowers with gay and delicate bloom.
And in the shade, hearken, O Dreamer of the Tree,
One wild-rose blossom...Read more of this...

To A Shade

by William Butler Yeats
 If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their...Read more of this...

Girlhood

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Girlhood, the dearest time of joy and love,
The sunny spring of gladness and of peace,
The time that joins its links with heaven above,
And all that's pure below; a running ease
Of careless thought beguiles the murmuring stream
Of girlish life, and as some sweet, vague dream,
The fleeting days go by; fair womanhood
Comes oft to lure the girlish feet away,
But by the brooklet...Read more of this...

The Skeleton in Armor

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 
Comest to daunt me! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5 
But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 
Why dost thou haunt me?" 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 
As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December; 
And,...Read more of this...

Song of the Worm

by Eliza Cook
 THE worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart...Read more of this...

Harp of the North Farewell!

by Sir Walter Scott
 Harp of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark, 
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending; 
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark, 
The deer, half-seen, are to the covert wending. 
Resume thy wizard elm! the fountain lending, 
And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy; 
Thy numbers sweet with nature’s vespers blending, 
With distant echo from the fold...Read more of this...

Contentment

by Robert William Service
 An Ancient gaffer once I knew,
Who puffed a pipe and tossed a tankard;
He claimed a hundred years or two,
And for a dozen more he hankered;
So o'er a pint I asked how he
Had kept his timbers tight together;
He grinned and answered: "It maun be
Because I likes all kinds o' weather.

"Fore every morn when I get up
I lights my clay pipe...Read more of this...

The Dying Words Of Stonewall Jackson

by Sidney Lanier
 "Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle."
"Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train."
"Let us cross the river and rest in the shade."

The stars of Night contain the glittering Day
And rain his glory down with sweeter grace
Upon the dark World's grand, enchanted face --
All loth to turn away.

And so the Day, about to yield his breath,
Utters the stars...Read more of this...

To His Dying Brother Master William Herrick

by Robert Herrick
 Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight,
But stay the time till we have bade good-night.
Thou hast both wind and tide with thee; thy way
As soon dispatch'd is by the night as day.
Let us not then so rudely henceforth go
Till we have wept, kiss'd, sigh'd, shook hands, or so.
There's pain in parting, and a kind of hell
When...Read more of this...

Vegetation

by Kathleen Raine
 O never harm the dreaming world, 
the world of green, the world of leaves, 
but let its million palms unfold 
the adoration of the trees.

It is a love in darkness wrought
obedient to the unseen sun,
longer than memory, a thought
deeper than the graves of time.

The turning spindles of the cells
weave a slow forest over space,
the dance of love, creation,
out of...Read more of this...

In The Willow Shade

by Christina Rossetti
 I sat beneath a willow tree,
Where water falls and calls;
While fancies upon fancies solaced me,
Some true, and some were false.

Who set their heart upon a hope
That never comes to pass,
Droop in the end like fading heliotrope
The sun's wan looking-glass.

Who set their will upon a whim
Clung to through good and ill,
Are wrecked alike whether they sink or swim,
Or hit or...Read more of this...

Durin

by J R R Tolkien
 The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone,
When Durin woke and walked along.
He named the nameless hills and delles;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stopped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadow of his head.
The world...Read more of this...

Inscription 01 - For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery

by Robert Southey
 Here Stranger rest thee! from the neighbouring towers
Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark
Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here
Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense:
Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs
Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye
Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit
Is worthless, all is hollowness within,
For on the grave of ROSAMUND...Read more of this...

A Shade upon the mind there passes

by Emily Dickinson
 A Shade upon the mind there passes
As when on Noon
A Cloud the mighty Sun encloses
Remembering

That some there be too numb to notice
Oh God
Why give if Thou must take away
The Loved?...Read more of this...

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