Famous Silver Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Ballad of John Silver

by John Masefield
 We were schooner-rigged and rakish, 
with a long and lissome hull, 
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; 
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, 
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. 

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, 
We had each...Read more of this...

An Electric Sign Goes Dark

by Carl Sandburg
 POLAND, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle’s cork.

“Won’t you come and play wiz me” she sang … and “I just can’t make my eyes behave.”
“Higgeldy-Piggeldy,” “Papa’s Wife,” “Follow Me” were plays.

Did she wash her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand...Read more of this...

Silver

by Walter de la Mare
 Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes...Read more of this...

Silver Wedding

by Vernon Scannell
 Silver Wedding

The party is over and I sit among
The flotsam that its passing leaves,
The dirty glasses and ***-ends:
Outside, a black wind grieves.

Two decades and a half of marriage;
It does not really seem as long,
Of youth's ebullient song.

David, my son, my loved rival,
And Julia, my tapering daughter,
Now grant me one achievement only;
I turn their wine to water.

And Helen, partner of...Read more of this...

The Silver Jubilee

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 To James First Bishop of Shrewsbury on the 
25th Year of his Episcopate July 28. 1876


1

THOUGH no high-hung bells or din
Of braggart bugles cry it in— 
 What is sound? Nature's round
Makes the Silver Jubilee. 

2

Five and twenty years have run
Since sacred fountains to the sun
 Sprang, that but now were shut,
Showering Silver Jubilee. 

3

Feasts, when we shall fall...Read more of this...

230. The Fête Champêtre

by Robert Burns
 O WHA will to Saint Stephen’s House,
 To do our errands there, man?
O wha will to Saint Stephen’s House
 O’ th’ merry lads of Ayr, man?
Or will we send a man o’ law?
 Or will we send a sodger?
Or him wha led o’er Scotland a’
 The meikle Ursa-Major? 1


Come, will ye court a noble lord,
 Or buy a score...Read more of this...

Words

by Robert William Service
 If on isle of the sea
 I have to tarry,
With one book, let it be
 A Dictionary.
For though I love life's scene,
 It seems absurd,
My greatest joy has been
 The printed word.

Though painter with delight
 May colours blend,
They are but in his sight
 Means to an end.
Yet while I harmonise
 Or pattern them,
A precious word I prize
 Like to...Read more of this...

Silver Nails

by Carl Sandburg
 A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger,
was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging.
Laughed at the crowd. "The nails are iron," he
said, "You are cheap. In my country when we crucify
we use silver nails. . ." So he went jeering. They
did not understand him at first. Later they talked about
him in changed voices...Read more of this...

Silver Filigree

by Elinor Wylie
 The icicles wreathing 
On trees in festoon 
Swing, swayed to our breathing: 
They're made of the moon.

She's a pale, waxen taper; 
And these seem to drip 
Transparent as paper 
From the flame of her tip.

Molten, smoking a little, 
Into crystal they pass; 
Falling, freezing, to brittle 
And delicate glass.

Each a sharp-pointed flower, 
Each a brief stalactite 
Which hangs for...Read more of this...

The Spider holds a Silver Ball

by Emily Dickinson
 The Spider holds a Silver Ball
In unperceived Hands --
And dancing softly to Himself
His Yarn of Pearl -- unwinds --

He plies from Nought to Nought --
In unsubstantial Trade --
Supplants our Tapestries with His --
In half the period --

An Hour to rear supreme
His Continents of Light --
Then dangle from the Housewife's Broom --
His Boundaries -- forgot --...Read more of this...

When dawn doth silver the dark firmament,

by Omar Khayyam
When dawn doth silver the dark firmament,
Why shrills the bird of dawning his lament?
It is to show in dawn's bright looking-glass
How of thy careless life a night is spent....Read more of this...

Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker The

by William Allingham
 Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath's green mound?
Only the plaintive yellow bird
Sighing in sultry fields around,
Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee! -
Only the grasshopper and the bee? -
"Tip-tap, rip-rap,
Tick-a-tack-too!
Scarlet leather, sewn together,
This will make a shoe.
Left, right, pull it tight;
Summer days are warm;
Underground in winter,
Laughing at the storm!"
Lay your ear close to the hill.
Do you not catch...Read more of this...

Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you;
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain—
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the...Read more of this...

Gift Silver Poem

by Odysseus Elytis
Translation from Greek: Marios Dikaiakos

I know that all this is worthless and that the language
I speak doesn't have an alphabet

Since the sun and the waves are a syllabic script
which can be deciphered only in the years of sorrow and exile

And the motherland a fresco with successive overlays
frankish or slavic which, should you try to restore,
you are immediately sent to prison...Read more of this...

The Silver Lily

by Louise Gluck
 The nights have grown cool again, like the nights
Of early spring, and quiet again. Will
Speech disturb you? We're
Alone now; we have no reason for silence.

Can you see, over the garden-the full moon rises.
I won't see the next full moon.

In spring, when the moon rose, it meant
Time was endless. Snowdrops
Opened and closed, the clustered
Seeds of the maples fell in pale...Read more of this...

As Everywhere of Silver

by Emily Dickinson
 As Everywhere of Silver
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land....Read more of this...

The King

by J R R Tolkien
 The King beneath the mountains,
The King of carven stone,
The lord of silver fountains,
Shall come into his own!

His crown shall be upholden,
His harp shall be restrung,
His halls shall echo golden,
To songs of yore re-sung.

The woods shall wave on mountains,
And grass beneath the sun;
His wealth shall flow in fountains,
And the rivers golden run.

The streams shall run in gladness,
The lakes shall shine...Read more of this...

The Children of Lir

by Katharine Tynan
 Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses;
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool;
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, 
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; 
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early: 
And the day's a...Read more of this...

Inscription for my little sons silver plate

by Eugene Field
 When thou dost eat from off this plate,
I charge thee be thou temperate;
Unto thine elders at the board
Do thou sweet reverence accord;
And, though to dignity inclined,
Unto the serving-folk be kind;
Be ever mindful of the poor,
Nor turn them hungry from the door;
And unto God, for health and food
And all that in thy life is good,
Give thou thy heart in gratitude....Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 08: The Box With Silver Handles

by Conrad Aiken
 Well,—it was two days after my husband died—
Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number four—the room with the red wall-paper—
Some chorus girls and men were singing that song
'They'll soon be lighting candles
Round a box with silver handles'—and hearing them sing it
I started to cry. Just then he came...Read more of this...

U was a silver urn

by Edward Lear
U  was a silver urn,Full of hot scalding water; Papa said, "If that Urn were mine,I'd give it to my daughter!" ...Read more of this...

Autobiography (polish It Like A Piece Of Silver)

by Richard Brautigan
 I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? "God-forsaken is beautiful, too."
A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
manner as to almost (polish it like a piece of silver.

An old dog stands beside him. It's a hot day: 105.
What am I...Read more of this...

Mr. Dana of the New York Sun

by Eugene Field
 Thar showed up out'n Denver in the spring uv '81
A man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun.
His name wuz Cantell Whoppers, 'nd he wuz a sight ter view
Ez he walked inter the orfice 'nd inquired fer work ter do.
Thar warn't no places vacant then,--fer be it understood,
That wuz the time when talent flourished at that altitood;
But...Read more of this...

Silver Wind

by Carl Sandburg
 DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer—
Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change to low contralto singing mornings when the green corn leaves first break through the black loam—
And another long breath for the silver soprano melody of the...Read more of this...

Hero and Leander: The First Sestiad

by Christopher Marlowe
 1 On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
2 In view and opposite two cities stood,
3 Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might;
4 The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
5 At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
6 Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
7 And offer'd as a dower his burning throne,
8 Where she could sit for men to gaze upon.
9 The...Read more of this...

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