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Famous Short Clouds Poems

Famous Short Clouds Poems. Short Clouds Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Clouds short poems


by Matsuo Basho
From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon-beholders.



by Langston Hughes
I love to see the big white moon,
A-shining in the sky;
I love to see the little stars,
When the shadow clouds go by.

I love the rain drops falling
On my roof-top in the night;
I love the soft wind’s sighing,
Before the dawn’s gray light.

I love the deepness of the blue,
In my Lord’s heaven above;
But better than all these things I think,
I love my lady love.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.

by William Cullen Bryant
 There is wind where the rose was, 
Cold rain where sweet grass was, 
And clouds like sheep 
Stream o'er the steep 
Grey skies where the lark was. 

Nought warm where your hand was, 
Nought gold where your hair was, 
But phantom, forlorn, 
Beneath the thorn, 
Your ghost where your face was. 

Cold wind where your voice was, 
Tears, tears where my heart was, 
And ever with me, 
Child, ever with me, 
Silence where hope was.

by Federico García Lorca
 But like love
the archers
are blind

Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm
lily.

The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.

Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!



by Li Bai
A bright moon rising above Tian Shan Mountain,
Lost in a vast ocean of clouds.
The long wind, across thousands upon thousands of miles,
Blows past the Jade-gate Pass.
The army of Han has gone down the Baiteng Road,
As the barbarian hordes probe at Qinghai Bay.
It is known that from the battlefield
Few ever live to return.
Men at Garrison look on the border scene,
Home thoughts deepen sorrow on their faces.
In the towered chambers tonight,
Ceaseless are the women's sighs.

by William Henry Davies
 While joy gave clouds the light of stars, 
That beamed wher'er they looked; 
And calves and lambs had tottering knees, 
Excited, while they sucked; 
While every bird enjoyed his song, 
Without one thought of harm or wrong-- 
I turned my head and saw the wind, 
Not far from where I stood, 
Dragging the corn by her golden hair, 
Into a dark and lonely wood.

La Mer  Create an image from this poem
by Oscar Wilde
 A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom; -
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

by Wang Wei
 Down horse drink gentleman alcohol 
Ask gentleman what place go 
Gentleman say not achieve wish 
Return lie south mountain near 
Still go nothing more ask 
White cloud not exhaust time 


Dismounting, I offer my friend a cup of wine, 
I ask what place he is headed to. 
He says he has not achieved his aims, 
Is retiring to the southern hills. 
Now go, and ask me nothing more, 
White clouds will drift on for all time.

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon begins

a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals.

by Diane di Prima
 the weighing is done in autumn
and the sifting
what is to be threshed
is threshed in autumn
what is to be gathered is taken

the wind does not die in autumn
the moon
shifts endlessly thru flying clouds
in autumn the sea is high

& a golden light plays everywhere
making it harder
to go one's way.
all leavetaking is in autumn
where there is leavetaking
it is always autumn
& the sun is a crystal ball
on a golden stand
& the wind
cannont make the spruce scream
loud enough

by Wang Wei
 My heart in middle age found the Way. 
And I came to dwell at the foot of this mountain. 
When the spirit moves, I wander alone 
Amid beauty that is all for me.... 
I will walk till the water checks my path, 
Then sit and watch the rising clouds -- 
And some day meet an old wood-cutter 
And talk and laugh and never return.

by Li Po
 A bright moon rising above Tian Shan Mountain,
Lost in a vast ocean of clouds.
The long wind, across thousands upon thousands of miles,
Blows past the Jade-gate Pass.
The army of Han has gone down the Baiteng Road,
As the barbarian hordes probe at Qinghai Bay.
It is known that from the battlefield
Few ever live to return.
Men at Garrison look on the border scene,
Home thoughts deepen sorrow on their faces.
In the towered chambers tonight,
Ceaseless are the women's sighs.

by William Blake
 Why art thou silent & invisible 
Father of jealousy 
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds 
From every searching Eye

Why darkness & obscurity 
In all thy words & laws 
That none dare eat the fruit but from 
The wily serpents jaws 
Or is it because Secresy
gains females loud applause

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 FAR explore the mountain hollow,
High in air the clouds then follow!

To each brook and vale the Muse

Thousand times her call renews.

Soon as a flow'ret blooms in spring,
It wakens many a strain;

And when Time spreads his fleeting wing,

The seasons come again.

1820.*

by Philip Larkin
Talking in bed ought ot be easiest 
Lying together there goes back so far 
An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside the wind's incomplete unrest
builds and disperses clouds about the sky.

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind 
Or ont untrue and not unkind.

1964

by Dame Edith Sitwell
 Bells of gray crystal
Break on each bough--
The swans' breath will mist all
The cold airs now.
Like tall pagodas
Two people go,
Trail their long codas
Of talk through the snow.
Lonely are these
And lonely and I ....
The clouds, gray Chinese geese
Sleek through the sky.

by William Allingham
 Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond, 
A blue sky of spring, 
White clouds on the wing; 
What a little thing 
To remember for years- 
To remember with tears!

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I will be the gladdest thing
 Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
 And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
 With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
 And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
 Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
 And then start down!

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 The savour of fruits
still remains
in my mouth,
but the bitterness of words
demolishes the clouds
and wrings the snow
counting the pebbles.
But you never told me
why you deceived me,
why with pain
and injustice did you desire
to say that the end
always in tears
is cast to flames.

by George Meredith
 A wind sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.

by Robert Bly
All day I loved you in a fever holding on to the tail of the horse.
I overflowed whenever I reached out to touch you.
My hand moved over your body covered
With its dress 
Burning rough an animal's hand or foot moving over leaves.
The rainstorm retires clouds open sunlight
sliding over ocean water a thousand miles from land.

by Sylvia Plath
 Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

by Wang Wei
I dismount from my horse and I offer you wine, 
And I ask you where you are going and why. 
And you answer: "I am discontent 
And would rest at the foot of the southern mountain. 
So give me leave and ask me no questions. 
White clouds pass there without end." 

by Richard Aldington
 Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death. 

The fourth night every man,
Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
Slept, muttering and twitching,
While the shells crashed overhead.

The fifth day there came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry