Famous Shyly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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South Wind

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Where have you been, South Wind, this May-day morning,— 
With larks aloft, or skimming with the swallow, 
Or with blackbirds in a green, sun-glinted thicket? 

Oh, I heard you like a tyrant in the valley; 
Your ruffian haste shook the young, blossoming orchards;
You clapped rude hands, hallooing round the chimney, 
And white your pennons streamed along the river. 

You...Read more of this...

The Investiture

by Siegfried Sassoon
 GOD with a Roll of Honour in His hand 
Sits welcoming the heroes who have died, 
While sorrowless angels ranked on either side 
Stand easy in Elysium’s meadow-land. 
Then you come shyly through the garden gate,
Wearing a blood-soaked bandage on your head; 
And God says something kind because you’re dead, 
And homesick, discontented with your fate. 

If I were...Read more of this...

Improvisations: Light And Snow

by Conrad Aiken
 I

The girl in the room beneath 
Before going to bed 
Strums on a mandolin 
The three simple tunes she knows. 
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! 
When she has finished them several times 
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails 
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.

II

I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...

A Canvas For A Crust

by Robert William Service
 Aye, Montecelli, that's the name.
You may have heard of him perhaps.
Yet though he never savoured fame,
Of those impressionistic chaps,
Monet and Manet and Renoir
 He was the avatar.

He festered in a Marseilles slum,
A starving genius, god-inspired.
You'd take him for a lousy bum,
Tho' poetry of paint he lyred,
In dreamy pastels each a gem: . . .
 How people laughed at them!

He...Read more of this...

Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Desert is parched in the burning sun
   And the grass is scorched and white.
   But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
   We are camping here to-night.
        I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
     ...Read more of this...

The Wood Pool

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Here is a voice that soundeth low and far
And lyric­voice of wind among the pines,
Where the untroubled, glimmering waters are,
And sunlight seldom shines. 

Elusive shadows linger shyly here,
And wood-flowers blow, like pale, sweet spirit-bloom, 
And white, slim birches whisper, mirrored clear
In the pool's lucent gloom. 

Here Pan might pipe, or wandering dryad kneel
To view her loveliness beside the brim,
Or...Read more of this...

Sea Change

by Robert William Service
 I saw a Priest in beetle black
Come to our golden beach,
And I was taken sore aback
Lest he should choose to preach
And chide me for my only wear,
A "Gee" string and a brassière.

And then I saw him shyly doff
And fold his grim soutane,
And one by one his clothes take off,
Until like any man
He stood in bathing trunks, a sight
To thrill...Read more of this...

What Counsel Has the Hooded Moon

by James Joyce
 What counsel has the hooded moon 
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet, 
Of Love in ancient plenilune, 
Glory and stars beneath his feet -- - 
A sage that is but kith and kin 
With the comedian Capuchin? 

Believe me rather that am wise 
In disregard of the divine, 
A glory kindles in those eyes 
Trembles to starlight. Mine,...Read more of this...

The Planters Daughter

by Austin Clarke
 When night stirred at sea,
An the fire brought a crowd in
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went --
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly
And O she...Read more of this...

Again -- his voice is at the door --

by Emily Dickinson
 Again -- his voice is at the door --
I feel the old Degree --
I hear him ask the servant
For such an one -- as me --

I take a flower -- as I go --
My face to justify --
He never saw me -- in this life --
I might surprise his eye!

I cross the Hall with mingled steps --
I -- silent...Read more of this...

New Years Eve

by Robert William Service
 It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear;
 Only the black tide weltering, only the hissing snow;
And I, alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year,
 Shuffling along in the icy wind, ghastly and gaunt and slow.

They're playing a tune in McGuffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there
 (God!...Read more of this...

The Bonnie Lass o Ruily

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the village of Ruily there lived a bonnie lass
With red, pouting lips which few lasses could surpass,
And her eyes were as azure the blue sky,
Which caused Donald McNeill to heave many a love sigh 

Beyond the township of Ruily she never had been,
This pretty maid with tiny feet and aged eighteen;
And when Donald would ask her to...Read more of this...

Menses

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 (He speaks, but to himself, being aware how it is with her)
Think not I have not heard.
Well-fanged the double word
And well-directed flew.

I felt it. Down my side
Innocent as oil I see the ugly venom slide:
Poison enough to stiffen us both, and all our friends;
But I am not pierced, so there the mischief ends.

There is more to be said: I...Read more of this...

Love Came to Us

by James Joyce
  Love Came to Us


 Love came to us in time gone by 
When one at twilight shyly played 
And one in fear was standing nigh -- - 
For Love at first is all afraid. 

We were grave lovers. Love is past 
That had his sweet hours many a one; 
Welcome to us now at the last 
The ways...Read more of this...

Navels

by Robert William Service
 Men have navels more or less;
 Some are neat, some not
Being fat I must confess
 Mine is far from hot.
Woman's is a pearly ring,
 Lovely to my mind;
So of it to shyly sing
 I am inclined.

I believe in nudity.
 Female forms divine
Should be bared for all to see
 In colour and in line.
So dear ladies, recognise
 The dimpling of...Read more of this...

The Daisy follows soft the Sun

by Emily Dickinson
 The Daisy follows soft the Sun --
And when his golden walk is done --
Sits shyly at his feet --
He -- waking -- finds the flower there --
Wherefore -- Marauder -- art thou here?
Because, Sir, love is sweet!

We are the Flower -- Thou the Sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline --
We nearer steal to Thee!
Enamored of the parting West --
The...Read more of this...

A Little Budding Rose

by Emily Brontë
 It was a little budding rose,
Round like a fairy globe,
And shyly did its leaves unclose
Hid in their mossy robe,
But sweet was the slight and spicy smell
It breathed from its heart invisible. 

The rose is blasted, withered, blighted,
Its root has felt a worm,
And like a heart beloved and slighted,
Failed, faded, shrunk its form.
Bud of beauty, bonnie flower,
I stole thee from...Read more of this...

A Blessing

by James Wright
 Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have...Read more of this...

Were All Australians Now

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Australia takes her pen in hand 
To write a line to you, 
To let you fellows understand 
How proud we are of you. 
From shearing shed and cattle run, 
From Broome to Hobson's Bay, 
Each native-born Australian son 
Stands straighter up today. 

The man who used to "hump his drum", 
On far-out Queensland runs 
Is fighting side by side...Read more of this...

The Sliprails And The Spur

by Henry Lawson
 The colours of the setting sun
Withdrew across the Western land—
He raised the sliprails, one by one,
And shot them home with trembling hand;
Her brown hands clung—her face grew pale—
Ah! quivering chin and eyes that brim!—
One quick, fierce kiss across the rail,
And, 'Good-bye, Mary!' 'Good-bye, Jim!'

Oh, he rides hard to race the pain
Who rides from love, who rides from home;
But he...Read more of this...

Before Her Portrait In Youth

by Francis Thompson
 As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,
Fondly adore
Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,
A kerchief or a glove:
And at the lover's beck
Into the glove there fleets the hand,
Or at impetuous command
Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:
So I, in very lowlihead of love, -
Too shyly reverencing
To let one thought's...Read more of this...

Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 He felt the entrance's green darkness
wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak
that he was still accepting and arranging;
when at the opposite transparent end, far off,

through green sunlight, as through green window panes,
whitely a solitary shape
flared up, long remaining distant
and then finally, the downdriving light
boiling over it at every step,

bearing on itself a bright pulsation,
which in the blond ran...Read more of this...

Spanish Men

by Robert William Service
 The Men of Seville are, they say,
The laziest of Spain.
Consummate artists in delay,
Allergical to strain;
Fr if you have a job for them,
And beg them to be spry,
They only look at you with phlegm:
"Mañana," they reply.

The Men of gay Madrid, I'm told,
Siesta's law revere;
The custom is so ages old,
And to tradition dear;
So if you want a job done soon,
And shyly...Read more of this...

Something

by Robert Creeley
 I approach with such
a careful tremor, always
I feel the finally foolish

question of how it is,
then, supposed to be felt,
and by whom. I remember

once in a rented room on
27th street, the woman I loved
then, literally, after we

had made love on the large
bed sitting across from
a basin with two faucets, she

had to pee but was nervous,
embarrassed I suppose I
would watch her...Read more of this...

The Little House of Lost Play (Mar Vanwa Tyalieva)

by J R R Tolkien
 We knew that land once, You and I,
and once we wandered there
in the long days now long gone by,
a dark child and a fair.
Was it on the paths of firelight thought
in winter cold and white,
or in the blue-spun twilit hours
of little early tucked-up beds
in drowsy summer night,
that you and I in Sleep went down
to meet each other there,
your dark...Read more of this...

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