Famous Smiles Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Smiles poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous smiles poems. These examples illustrate what a famous smiles poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Joseph Brodsky
The stone-built villages of England.
A cathedral bottled in a pub window.
Cows dispersed across fields.
Monuments to kings.
A man in a moth-eaten suit
sees a train off heading like everything here
for the sea
smiles at his daughter leaving for the East.
A whistle blows.
And the endless sky over the tiles
grows bluer as swelling birdsong fills.
And the clearer the song is heard
the smaller...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Smile a little, smile a little,
As you go along,
Not alone when life is pleasant,
But when things go wrong.
Care delights to see you frowning,
Loves to hear you sigh;
Turn a smiling face upon her –
Quick the dame will fly.
Smile a little, smile a little,
All along the road;
Every life must have its burden,
Every heart...Read more of this...
by
Walter de la Mare
Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And Love -- a lad with broken wing;
Apnd Pity, too;
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.
Ay, music hath small sense,
And a tune's soon told,
And Earth is old,
And my poor wits are dense;
Yet have I secrets, -- dar,...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple,
Two lovers blow together like music blowing:
And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea.
Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them,
They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree.
'Well, am I late?' Upward they look and laugh,
They look at the great clock's golden hands,
They laugh and talk, not knowing...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair,
Swimming in the pure quiet air!
Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below
Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow;
Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train
As cool it comes along the grain.
Beautiful cloud! I would I were with thee
In thy calm way o'er land and sea:
To rest on thy unrolling skirts, and look
On...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
.
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
.
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
.
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
.
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
.
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
.
The loud vociferations of the street
.
Become an undistinguishable roar.
.
So, as I...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Dame Fortune's smiles are full of guile, beware!
Her scimitar is sharp to smite, take care!
If e'er she drop a sweetmeat in thy mouth,
'Tis poisonous,—to swallow it forbear!...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
WHEN fragrant gales and summer show'rs
Call'd forth the sweetly scented flow'rs;
When ripen'd sheaves of golden grain,
Strew'd their rich treasures o'er the plain;
When the full grape did nectar yield,
In tepid drops of purple hue;
When the thick grove, and thirsty field,
Drank the soft show'r and bloom'd a-new;
O then my joyful heart did say,
"Sure this is Nature's Holy-day!"
But...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
"Lo I, the man who erst the Muse did ask
Her deepest notes to swell the Patriot's meeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter task
For cap and gown to leave my minstrel weeds,"
For yon dull noise that tinkles on the air
Bids me lay by the lyre and go to morning prayer.
Oh how I hate the sound! it is the Knell,
That still...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
To-day the season smiles; 'tis neither hot nor cold. The
clouds have washed away the dust which dimmed the
roses; and nightingales seem whispering to the yellow
flowers that wine is balm for all....Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
The smiles of the bathers fade as they leave the water,
And the lover feels sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love.
The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clock strikes, is hollow
and old:
The pilot's relief on landing is no release.
These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and
public endings--
Water and wind and...Read more of this...
by
Edward Field
The monster has escaped from the dungeon
where he was kept by the Baron,
who made him with knobs sticking out from each side of his neck
where the head was attached to the body
and stitching all over
where parts of cadavers were sewed together.
He is pursued by the ignorant villagers,
who think he is evil and dangerous because he is ugly
and makes ugly...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Oh, come with me to the Happy Isles
In the golden haze off yonder,
Where the song of the sun-kissed breeze beguiles,
And the ocean loves to wander.
Fragrant the vines that mantle those hills,
Proudly the fig rejoices;
Merrily dance the virgin rills,
Blending their myriad voices.
Our herds shall fear no evil there,
But peacefully feed and rest them;
Neither shall serpent nor prowling bear
Ever come there...Read more of this...
by
Mark Van Doren
After long drought, commotion in the sky;
After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes,
The rain. It slashes leaves, and doubly drums
On tin and shingle; beats and bends awry
The flower heads; puddles dust, and with a sigh
Like love sinks into grasses, where it hums
As bees did once, among chrysanthemums
And asters when the summer thought...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
If Nature smiles -- the Mother must
I'm sure, at many a whim
Of Her eccentric Family --
Is She so much to blame?...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bronte
Why should such gloomy silence reign;
And why is all the house so drear,
When neither danger, sickness, pain,
Nor death, nor want have entered here?
We are as many as we were
That other night, when all were gay,
And full of hope, and free from care;
Yet, is there something gone away.
The moon without as pure and calm
Is shining as that night she...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Her smile was shaped like other smiles --
The Dimples ran along --
And still it hurt you, as some Bird
Did hoist herself, to sing,
Then recollect a Ball, she got --
And hold upon the Twig,
Convulsive, while the Music broke --
Like Beads -- among the Bog --...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Though with gods the world is cumbered,
Gods unnamed, and gods unnumbered,
Never god was known to be
Who had not his devotee.
So I dedicate to mine,
Here in verse, my temple-shrine.
‘Tis not Ares, - mighty Mars,
Who can give success in wars.
‘Tis not Morpheus, who doth keep
Guard above us while we sleep,
‘Tis not Venus, she whose duty
‘Tis to...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people
On a movie-screen. They
Are unreal, we say:
It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we
Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round
Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice
Under the meanest...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme-
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in-
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope- Oh God! I can-
Its fount is holier- more...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Not like a daring, bold, aggressive boy,
Is inspiration, eager to pursue,
But rather like a maiden, fond, yet coy,
Who gives herself to him who best doth woo.
Once she may smile, or thrice, thy soul to fire,
In passing by, but when she turns her face,
Thou must persist and seek her with desire,
If thou wouldst win...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
O'ER fallow plains and fertile meads,
AURORA lifts the torch of day;
The shad'wy brow of Night recedes,
Cold dew-drops fall from every spray;
Now o'er the thistle's rugged head,
Thin veils of filmy vapour fly,
On ev'ry violet's perfum'd bed
The sparkling gems of Nature lie.
The hill's tall brow is crown'd with gold,
The Milk-maid trills her jocund lay,
The Shepherd-boy unpens his fold,
The Lambs along...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
WHOE'ER thou art, whose soul-enchanting song
Steals on the sullen ear of pensive woe;
To whom the sounds of melody belong,
Sounds, that can more than human bliss bestow;
Like the wak'd God of day, whose rays pervade
The spangled veil of night, and fling their fires
O'er the cold bosom of the em'rald glade,
While bath'd in tears, the virgin orb retires.
Thy glowing...Read more of this...
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