Famous Skylark Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Song of the Wheat

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We have sung the song of the droving days, 
Of the march of the travelling sheep; 
By silent stages and lonely ways 
Thin, white battalions creep. 
But the man who now by the land would thrive 
Must his spurs to a plough-share beat. 
Is there ever a man in the world alive 
To sing the song of the Wheat!...Read more of this...

Laws XIII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?" 

And he answered: 

You delight in laying down laws, 

Yet you delight more in breaking them. 

Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter. 

But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore, 

And when...Read more of this...

The Lost Heifer

by Austin Clarke
 When the black herds of the rain were grazing,
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.

Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning sliver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly...Read more of this...

To a Skylark

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher 
From the earth thou springest, 
Like a cloud of fire 
The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning 
Of the sunken sun, 
O'er...Read more of this...

Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)

by Thomas Hardy
 Somewhere afield here something lies 
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust 
That moved a poet to prophecies - 
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust 

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, 
And made immortal through times to be; - 
Though it only lived like another bird, 
And knew not its immortality. 

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell...Read more of this...

The Native-Born

by Rudyard Kipling
 We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
 We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
 (But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
 And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
 A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,
 But not their hearts that roam!
We...Read more of this...

Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude

by Thomas Gray
 Now the golden Morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing,
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She wooes the tardy Spring:
Till April starts, and calls around
The sleeping fragrance from the ground,
And lightly o'er the living scene
Scatters his freshest, tenderest green.

New-born flocks, in rustic dance,
Frisking ply their feeble feet;
Forgetful of their wintry trance
The birds his presence greet:
But chief, the skylark warbles high
His trembling thrilling...Read more of this...

The Caged Skylark

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
 Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
 That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. 
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
 Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
 Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers...Read more of this...

Three Things to Remember

by William Blake
 A Robin Redbreast in a cage,
Puts all Heaven in a rage. 

A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing. 

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men....Read more of this...

The Sea And The Skylark

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 On ear and ear two noises too old to end
 Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
 With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend. 
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
 His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
 In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and...Read more of this...

Auguries Of Innocence

by William Blake
 To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse...Read more of this...

The Woodlark

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Teevo cheevo cheevio chee:
O where, what can th?at be? 
Weedio-weedio: there again! 
So tiny a trickle of s?ng-strain; 
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or gr?en ground 
Before or behind or far or at hand 
Either left either right 
Anywhere in the s?nlight. 
Well, after all! Ah but hark—
‘I am the little w?odlark.
. . ....Read more of this...

Spring Carol

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 WHEN loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.

Straightway my olden heart returns
And dances with the dancing burns;
It sings with the sparrows;
To the rain and the (grimy) barrows
Sings my heart aloud...Read more of this...

To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses

by John Keats
 As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its...Read more of this...

Midfield

by Matsuo Basho
 Midfield,
attached to nothing,
 the skylark singing....Read more of this...

My Mother Would Be a Falconress

by Robert Duncan
 My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize, 
where I dream in my little hood with many bells 
jangling when I'd turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress, 
and she sends me as far as her will goes. 
She...Read more of this...

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