Famous Shaded Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lilacs

by Amy Lowell
Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a...Read more of this...

La Solitude de St. Amant

by Katherine Philips
 1

O! Solitude, my sweetest choice
Places devoted to the night,
Remote from tumult, and from noise,
How you my restless thoughts delight!
O Heavens! what content is mine,
To see those trees which have appear'd
From the nativity of Time,
And which hall ages have rever'd,
To look to-day as fresh and green,
As when their beauties first were seen!


2

A cheerful wind does court them so,
And with such...Read more of this...

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

by Amy Lowell
 What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream
Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.
Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,
The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese
Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky
Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly
And...Read more of this...

Faces

by Walt Whitman
 1
SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces! 
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; 
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face, 
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad
 at
 the
 back-top; 
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces
 of
 orthodox...Read more of this...

The River of Leith

by William Topaz McGonagall
 As I stood upon the Dean Bridge and viewed the beautiful scenery,
I felt fascinated and my heart was full of glee,
And I exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight,
In all my travels I never saw such a sight. 

The scenery is so enchanting to look upon
That all tourists will say, "Dull care, be gone."
'Tis certainly a most lovely spot,
And once...Read more of this...

Portrait and Reality

by Henry Van Dyke
 If on the closed curtain of my sight
My fancy paints thy portrait far away,
I see thee still the same, by night or day;
Crossing the crowded street, or moving bright
'Mid festal throngs, or reading by the light
Of shaded lamp some friendly poet's lay,
Or shepherding the children at their play,--
The same sweet self, and my unchanged delight.

But when I see thee...Read more of this...

The Den o Fowlis

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Den o' Fowlis, most charming to be seen
In the summer season, when your trees are green;
Especially in the bright and clear month of June,
When your flowere and shrubberies are in full bloom. 

There visitors can enjoy themselves during the holidays,
And be shaded by the trees from the sun's rays,
And admire the beautiful primroses that grow there;
And inhale their...Read more of this...

Ode to W. H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent...Read more of this...

Song of the Wise Children

by Rudyard Kipling
 1902

When the darkened Fifties dip to the North,
 And frost and the fog divide the air,
And the day is dead at his breaking-forth,
 Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear!

Far to Southward they wheel and glance,
 The million molten spears of morn --
The spears of our deliverance
 That shine on the house where we were born.

Flying-fish about our bows,
...Read more of this...

Monadnock in Early Spring

by Amy Lowell
 Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
The little lesser hills which compass thee,
Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call
Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy
And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,
Above thy snowy crevices where fall
Pale shrivelled oak leaves, while the snow beneath
Melts at their phantom touch. Another...Read more of this...

Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded

by Thomas Moore
 Has sorrow thy young days shaded, 
As clouds o'er the morning fleet? 
Too fast have those young days faded 
That, even in sorrow, were sweet? 
Does Time with his cold wing wither 
Each feeling that once was dear? -- 
Then, child of misfortune, come hither, 
I'll weep with thee, tear for tear. 

Has love to that soul, so tender,...Read more of this...

On Receiving a Crown of Ivy from John Keats

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 It is a lofty feeling, yet a kind, 
Thus to be topped with leaves;--to have a sense 
Of honour-shaded thought,--an influence 
As from great nature's fingers, and be twined 
With her old, sacred, verdurous ivy-bind, 
As though she hallowed with that sylvan fence 
A head that bows to her benevolence, 
Midst pomp of fancied trumpets in the wind. 

It...Read more of this...

Conrad Siever

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Not in that wasted garden
Where bodies are drawn into grass
That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens
That bear no fruit --
There where along the shaded walks
Vain sighs are heard,
And vainer dreams are dreamed
Of close communion with departed souls --
But here under the apple tree
I loved and watched and pruned
With gnarled hands
In the long, long years;
Here under the roots of this...Read more of this...

A Sea-Side Walk

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory---like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, 'Ho! victory!'
And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale;
So runs the Arab tale.

The sky above us showed
An universal and unmoving cloud,
On which, the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds,...Read more of this...

Rimmon

by Rudyard Kipling
 1903

After Boer War


Duly with knees that feign to quake--
 Bent head and shaded brow,--
Yet once again, for my father's sake,
 In Rimmon's House I bow.

The curtains part, the trumpet blares,
 And the eunuchs howl aloud;
And the gilt, swag-bellied idol glares
 Insolent over the crowd.

"This is Rimmon, Lord of the Earth--
 "Fear Him and bow the knee!"
And I watch my...Read more of this...

In The Naked Bed In Platos Cave

by Delmore Schwartz
 In the naked bed, in Plato's cave, 
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
 Hearing the milkman's clop,
his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink,
I rose from bed, lit a...Read more of this...

Woodland Burial

by Pam Ayres
Don’t lay me in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall
Where the dust of ancient bones has spread a dryness over all,
Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold
Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.
There kindly and affectionately, plant a native tree
To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.
The roots will not disturb me...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...

Middlesex

by John Betjeman
 Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Dreen;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with...Read more of this...

An August Midnight

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

A shaded lamp and a waving blind, 
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: 
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined - 
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; 
While 'mid my page there idly stands 
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . . 

II 

Thus meet we five, in this still place,...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...

Alexander And Zenobia

by Anne Bronte
 Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above. 
It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.

One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.

The...Read more of this...

Ode To William H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blind worm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife.

Or who,...Read more of this...

The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I was walking by the road, I do not
know why, when the noonday was past
and bamboo branches rustled in the
wind.
The prone shadows with their out-
stretched arms clung to the feet of
the hurrying light.
The koels were weary of their
songs.
I was walking by the road, I do not 
know why.
The hut by the side of the water is
shaded by an overhanging...Read more of this...

"Lost Delight"

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   After the Hazara War

   I lie alone beneath the Almond blossoms,
        Where we two lay together in the spring,
   And now, as then, the mountain snows are melting,
        This year, as last, the water-courses sing.

   That was...Read more of this...

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