Famous Shadowy Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shadowy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shadowy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shadowy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Amy Lowell
Written after reading Trevelyan's "Garibaldi
and the making of Italy"
Poor foolish monarch, vacillating, vain,
Decaying victim of a race of kings,
Swift Destiny shook out her purple wings
And caught him in their shadow; not again
Could furtive plotting smear another stain
Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings
Of sacrificial fires burst their rings
And blotted out in smoke his lost domain.
Bereft of courtiers, only with his...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?
Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields....Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHEN in my shadowy hours I pierce the hidden heart of hopes and fears,
They change into immortal joys or end in immemorial tears.
Moytura’s battle still endures and in this human heart of mine
The golden sun powers with the might of demon darkness intertwine.
I think that every teardrop shed still flows from Balor’s eye of doom,
And gazing on his ageless...Read more of this...
by
Shel Silverstein
One picture puzzle piece
Lyin' on the sidewalk,
One picture puzzle piece
Soakin' in the rain.
It might be a button of blue
On the coat of the woman
Who lived in a shoe.
It might be a magical bean,
Or a fold in the red
Velvet robe of a queen.
It might be the one little bite
Of the apple her stepmother
Gave to Snow White.
It might be the veil...Read more of this...
by
Lisa Zaran
Pale scrapings of people
with lipstick ringed glasses
and cigarettes burning,
and laughter trickling up and down
their knotty throats.
What is this,
a gathering of henhouse critics?
My father's voice in the back of my head,
saying, forget that I'm dead and if you
can not do that than pretend.
I am standing
just outside the gallery
beneath...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
I dedicate to your tears, to your smile, my gentlest thoughts, those I tell you, those also that remain undefined and too deep to tell.
I dedicate to your tears, to your smile, to your whole soul, my soul, with its tears and its smiles and its kiss.
See, the dawn whitens the ground that is the colour of lees of wine;...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I walked among the seven woods of Coole:
Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond
Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;
Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-no,
Where many hundred squirrels are as happy
As though they had been hidden hy green houghs
Where old age cannot find them; Paire-na-lee,
Where hazel and ash and privet hlind the paths:
Dim Pairc-na-carraig, where the wild bees fling
Their sudden fragrances on...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Edain came out of Midhir's hill, and lay
Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass,
Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds
And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,
And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made
Of opal and ruhy and pale chrysolite
Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,
Sweet with all music, out of his long hair,
Because her hands had been made...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
Wisdom -- the truth! -- "All day the good...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I
Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair
With flowers beneath, above with starry lights,
And set thine altars everywhere,--
On mountain heights,
In woodlands dim with many a dream,
In valleys bright with springs,
And on the curving capes of every stream:
Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings
Of morning, to abide
Upon the secret places of the sea,
And on far islands, where the tide
Visits the...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
He lay within a warm, soft world
Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled,
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red,
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled
To vanish in the grey-green gloom,
Perspectiveless and shadowy.
A bulging world that had no walls,
A flowing world, most like the sea,
Compassing all infinity
Within a shapeless, ebbing room,
An endless tide...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
ITS edges foamed with amethyst and rose,
Withers once more the old blue flower of day:
There where the ether like a diamond glows
Its petals fade away.
A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air;
Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows;
The great deep thrills, for through it everywhere
The breath of Beauty blows.
I saw how all the trembling ages past,
Moulded to her...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
To outer senses there is peace,
A dreamy peace on either hand
Deep silence in the shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows cease.
Save for a cry that echoes shrill
From some lone bird disconsolate;
A corncrake calling to its mate;
The answer from the misty hill.
And suddenly the moon withdraws
Her sickle from the lightening skies,
And to her sombre cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Vous eûtes donc hier un an.")
{September, 1870.}
You've lived a year, then, yesterday, sweet child,
Prattling thus happily! So fledglings wild,
New-hatched in warmer nest 'neath sheltering bough,
Chirp merrily to feel their feathers grow.
Your mouth's a rose, Jeanne! In these volumes grand
Whose pictures please you—while I trembling...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THROUGH the blue shadowy valley I hastened in a dream:
Flower rich the night, flower soft the air, a blue flower the stream
I hurried over before I came to the cabin door,
Where the orange flame-glow danced within on the beaten floor.
And the lovely mother who drooped by the sleeping child arose:
And I see how with love her eyes are glad,...Read more of this...
by
Bliss Carman
Lord of my heart's elation,
Spirit of things unseen,
Be thou my aspiration
Consuming and serene!
Bear up, bear out, bear onward
This mortal soul alone,
To selfhood or oblivion,
Incredibly thine own,—
As the foamheads are loosened
And blown along the sea,
Or sink and merge forever
In that which bids them be.
I, too, must climb in wonder,
Uplift at thy command,—
Be one with my frail fellows
Beneath the wind's strong...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE BLUE dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind,
It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run
Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;
And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelm
The fields that round us lie.
But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near;
And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.
I...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ON my northwest coast in the midst of the night, a fishermen’s group stands watching;
Out on the lake, that expands before them, others are spearing salmon;
The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,
Bearing a Torch a-blaze at the prow....Read more of this...
by
John McCrae
Beneath her window in the fragrant night
I half forget how truant years have flown
Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,
Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrown
Upon the casement; but the nodding leaves
Sweep lazily across the unlit pane,
And to and fro beneath the shadowy eaves,
Like restless birds, the breath of coming rain
Creeps, lilac-laden, up the village street
When all is...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Beyond yon dim old mountain's shadowy height,
The restless sun droops low his grand old face;
While downward sweeps the trembling veil of night,
To hide the earth; the frost king's filmy lace
Rests on the mountain's hoary snow-crowned head,
And adds to it a softened grace; the light
Which dies afar in faint and fading red
In purple...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.
The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.
Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
I WOULD I could weave in
The colour, the wonder,
The song I conceive in
My heart while I ponder,
And show how it came like
The magi of old
Whose chant was a flame like
The dawn’s voice of gold;
Whose dreams followed near them
A murmur of birds,
And ear still could hear them
Unchanted in words.
...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shadowy poems.