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Famous Short Song Poems

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


by William Shakespeare
 Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.



by Oscar Wilde
 Out of the mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."

by Rainer Maria Rilke
When my soul touches yours a great chord sings!
How shall I tune it then to other things?
O! That some spot in darkness could be found
That does not vibrate when’er your depth sound.
But everything that touches you and me
Welds us as played strings sound one melody.
Where is the instrument whence the sounds flow?
And whose the master-hand that holds the bow?
O! Sweet song—

by Ameen Rihani
Grieve not, for I am near thee;
Sigh not, for I can hear thee;
Wash from thy heart all memory of past wrong;
Doubt not that doubts besmear thee;
Speak not, for I do fear thee;
Let thine eyes whisper love’s conciling song.



by Robert Louis Stevenson
 In the other gardens 
And all up the vale, 
From the autumn bonfires 
See the smoke trail! 

Pleasant summer over 
And all the summer flowers, 
The red fire blazes, 
The grey smoke towers. 

Sing a song of seasons! 
Something bright in all! 
Flowers in the summer, 
Fires in the fall!

by Carol Ann Duffy
 Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say 
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

by Alexander Pushkin
 Not long ago, in a charming dream,
I saw myself -- a king with crown's treasure;
I was in love with you, it seemed,
And heart was beating with a pleasure.
I sang my passion's song by your enchanting knees.
Why, dreams, you didn't prolong my happiness forever?
But gods deprived me not of whole their favor:
I only lost the kingdom of my dreams.

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I must launch out my boat. 
The languid hours pass by on the 
shore---Alas for me! 

The spring has done its flowering and taken leave. 
And now with the burden of faded futile flowers I wait and linger. 

The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane 
the yellow leaves flutter and fall. 

What emptiness do you gaze upon! 
Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air 
with the notes of the far-away song 
floating from the other shore?

by Geoffrey Hill
 born 19.6.32 - deported 24.9.42

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.

As estimated, you died. Things marched,
sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented
terror, so many routine cries.

(I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)

September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.

This is plenty. This is more than enough.

by Mark Twain
 These annual bills! these annual bills!
How many a song their discord trills
Of "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
Since I was skinned by last year's lot!

Those joyous beans are passed away;
Those onions blithe, O where are they?
Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS
Your shades troop back in annual bills!

And so 'twill be when I'm aground
These yearly duns will still go round,
While other bards, with frantic quills,
Shall damn and damn these annual bills!

Teeth  Create an image from this poem
by Spike Milligan
 English Teeth, English Teeth! 
Shining in the sun 
A part of British heritage 
Aye, each and every one. 
English Teeth, Happy Teeth! 
Always having fun 
Clamping down on bits of fish 
And sausages half done. 
English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth! 
Hear them click! and clack! 
Let's sing a song of praise to them - 
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

by Stevie Smith
 Happiness is silent, or speaks equivocally for friends,
Grief is explicit and her song never ends,
Happiness is like England, and will not state a case,
Grief, like Guilt, rushes in and talks apace.

by Langston Hughes
 I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

by Dorothy Parker
 Roses, rooted warm in earth,
Bud in rhyme, another age;
Lilies know a ghostly birth
Strewn along a patterned page;
Golden lad and chimbley sweep
Die; and so their song shall keep.

Wind that in Arcadia starts
In and out a couplet plays;
And the drums of bitter hearts
Beat the measure of a phrase.
Sweets and woes but come to print
Quae cum ita sint.

by Kobayashi Issa
 Napping at midday
I hear the song of rice planters
and feel ashamed of myself.

by Langston Hughes
 Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song, 
You do not think 
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?

Because my mouth 
Is wide with laughter, 
You do not hear
My inner cry? 
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing, 
You do not know 
I die?

by Robert Frost
 I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

by Christina Rossetti
 She sat and sang alway
By the green margin of a stream,
Watching the fishes leap and play
Beneath the glad sunbeam.

I sat and wept alway
Beneath the moon's most shadowy beam,
Watching the blossoms of the May
Weep leaves into the stream.

I wept for memory;
She sang for hope that is so fair:
My tears were swallowed by the sea;
Her songs died on the air.

by Sarojini Naidu
 Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
 The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
 The wild wind blows in a cloud.

Hark to a voice that is calling
 To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
 And why should I stay behind?

by Sara Teasdale
 Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending
And rising again,
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain;

So would I softly,
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.

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.

by Wang Wei
In the slant of the sun on the country-side, 
Cattle and sheep trail home along the lane; 
And a rugged old man in a thatch door 
Leans on a staff and thinks of his son, the herdboy. 
There are whirring pheasants? full wheat-ears, 
Silk-worms asleep, pared mulberry-leaves. 
And the farmers, returning with hoes on their shoulders, 
Hail one another familiarly. 
...No wonder I long for the simple life 
And am sighing the old song, Oh, to go Back Again! 

by George Herbert
 I Got me flowers to straw Thy way, 
I got me boughs off many a tree; 
But Thou wast up by break of day, 
And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee. 

The sunne arising in the East, 
Though he give light, and th’ East perfume, 
If they should offer to contest 
With Thy arising, they presume. 

Can there be any day but this, 
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour? 
We count three hundred, but we misse: 
There is but one, and that one ever.

by Robert Burns
 FROM thee, Eliza, I must go,
 And from my native shore;
The cruel fates between us throw
 A boundless ocean’s roar:
But boundless oceans, roaring wide,
 Between my love and me,
They never, never can divide
 My heart and soul from thee.


Farewell, farewell, Eliza dear,
 The maid that I adore!
A boding voice is in mine ear,
 We part to meet no more!
But the latest throb that leaves my heart,
 While Death stands victor by,—
That throb, Eliza, is thy part,
 And thine that latest sigh!


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry