Famous Shelter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I do not know what truth the false untruth

by Fernando Pessoa
I do not know what truth the false untruth

Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,

Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit

Unto the true reality unknown.

But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,

Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,

A hope, not real yet not fancy's, lies

Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.

Somehow, since pain is...Read more of this...

You Remember Ellen

by Thomas Moore
 You remember Ellen, our hamlet's pride, 
How meekly she bless'd her humble lot, 
When the stranger, William, had made her his bride, 
And love was the light of their lowly cot. 
Together they toil'd through winds and rains, 
Till William, at length, in sadness said, 
"We must seek our fortune on other plains;" -- 
Then, sighing, she left her...Read more of this...

Oh Wert Thou In The Cauld Blast

by Robert Burns
 Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;
Or did misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

Or were I in the wildest waste,
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desart were a...Read more of this...

Morning News

by Marilyn Hacker
 Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread
and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,
repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.
A cinder-block wall shared by two houses
is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen
sink and a cupboard, on the other was
a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.

Glass is shattered across the photographs;
two half-circles of hardened pocket bread
sit...Read more of this...

Love and a Question

by Robert Frost
 A stranger came to the door at eve, 
And he spoke the bridegroom fair. 
He bore a green-white stick in his hand, 
And, for all burden, care. 
He asked with the eyes more than the lips 
For a shelter for the night, 
And he turned and looked at the road afar 
Without a window light. 

The bridegroom came forth...Read more of this...

The Legend of St. Austin and the Child

by Katharine Tynan
 St. Austin, going in thought 
Along the sea-sands gray, 
Into another world was caught,
And Carthage far away. 

He saw the City of God 
Hang in the saffron sky; 
And this was holy ground he trod, 
Where mortals come not nigh. 

He saw pale spires aglow, 
Houses of heavenly sheen; 
All in a world of rose and snow, 
A sea...Read more of this...

The Bombardment

by Amy Lowell
 Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the 
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping 
and trickling
over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit 
of a gargoyle,
and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square.
Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple...Read more of this...

83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

529. Song—How cruel are the parents

by Robert Burns
 HOW cruel are the parents
 Who riches only prize,
And to the wealthy booby
 Poor Woman sacrifice!
Meanwhile, the hapless Daughter
 Has but a choice of strife;
To shun a tyrant Father’s hate—
 Become a wretched Wife.


The ravening hawk pursuing,
 The trembling dove thus flies,
To shun impelling ruin,
 Awhile her pinions tries;
Till, of escape despairing,
 No shelter or retreat,
She trusts the ruthless...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXVIII. Nom d' atra e tempestosa onda marina. HE IS LED BY LOVE TO REASON.  No wearied mariner to port e'er fledFrom the dark billow, when some tempest's nigh,As from tumultuous gloomy thoughts I fly—Thoughts by the force of goading passion bred:Nor wrathful glance of heaven so surely spedDestruction...Read more of this...

South of my Days

by Judith Wright
 South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country, 
rises that tableland, high delicate outline 
of bony slopes wincing under the winter, 
low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite- 
clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced, 
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple 
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen; 
and the old...Read more of this...

Psalm 104

by Isaac Watts
 The glory of God in creation and providence.

My soul, thy great Creator praise:
When clothed in his celestial rays,
He in full majesty appears,
And, like a robe, his glory wears.

The heav'ns are for his curtains spread,
The unfathomed deep he makes his bed.
Clouds are his chariot when he flies
On winged storms across the skies.

Angels, whom his own breath inspires,
His ministers, are flaming...Read more of this...

Monolog From A Mattress

by Louis Untermeyer
Can that be you, la mouche? Wait till I lift
This palsied eye-lid and make sure... Ah, true.
Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay
In thus existing; I can promise you
Next time you come you'll find no dying poet—
Without sufficient spleen to see me through,
The joke becomes too tedious a jest.
I am afraid my mind is dull to-day;
I have that—something—heavier on...Read more of this...

The Hound of Heaven

by Francis Thompson
 I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed...Read more of this...

Closed Path

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I thought that my voyage had come to its end 
at the last limit of my power,---that the path before me was closed, 
that provisions were exhausted 
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. 

But I find that thy will knows no end in me. 
And when old words die out on the tongue, 
new...Read more of this...

Hatred and vengeance my eternal portion

by William Cowper
 Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,
Scarce can endure delay of execution,
Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas:more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master.
Twice betrayed Jesus me, this last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore hell keeps her ever hungry mouths...Read more of this...

Pibroch of Donail Dhu

by Sir Walter Scott
 Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,
Pibroch of Donuil,
Wake thy wild voice anew,
Summon Clan-Conuil.
Come away, come away,
Hark to the summons!
Come in your war array,
Gentles and commons.

Come from deep glen and
From mountain so rocky,
The war-pipe and pennon
Are at Inverlochy.
Come every hill-plaid and
True heart that wears one,
Come every steel blade and
Strong hand that bears one.

Leave untended the herd,
The flock without shelter;
Leave the corpse uninterr'd,
The...Read more of this...

Sonnet V

by William Shakespeare
 Not undelightful, friend, our rustic ease
To grateful hearts; for by especial hap,
Deep nested in the hill's enormous lap,
With its own ring of walls and grove of trees,
Sits, in deep shelter, our small cottage - nor
Far-off is seen, rose carpeted and hung
With clematis, the quarry whence she sprung,
O mater pulchra filia pulchrior,
Whither in early spring, unharnessed folk,
We join the pairing...Read more of this...

A Child Of Mine

by Edgar Albert Guest
I will lend you, for a little time,
A child of mine, He said.
For you to love the while he lives,
And mourn for when he's dead.
It may be six or seven years,
Or twenty-two or three.
But will you, till I call him back,
Take care of him for Me?
He'll bring his charms to gladden you,
And should his stay be brief.
You'll have his lovely...Read more of this...

Psalm 90 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-5 
C. M.
Man frail, and God eternal.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
To endless years the...Read more of this...

Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny

by Lisel Mueller
 Jenny, your mind commands
kingdoms of black and white:
you shoulder the crow on your left,
the snowbird on your right;
for you the cinders part
and let the lentils through,
and noise falls into place
as screech or sweet roo-coo,
while in my own, real, world
gray foxes and gray wolves
bargain eye to eye,
and the amazing dove
takes shelter under the wing
of the raven to keep dry.

Knowing that...Read more of this...

Conroys Gap

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 This was the way of it, don't you know -- 
Ryan was "wanted" for stealing sheep, 
And never a trooper, high or low, 
Could find him -- catch a weasel asleep! 
Till Trooper Scott, from the Stockman's Ford -- 
A bushman, too, as I've heard them tell -- 
Chanced to find him drunk as a lord 
Round at the...Read more of this...

To The Men Of England

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of...Read more of this...

Minstrelsy

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower...Read more of this...

Hero And Leander

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose...Read more of this...

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