Famous Snows Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Snow and Ice

by Quincy Troupe
 ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place
space as keys that turn in tight, trigger
pain of situations
where we move ever so slowly
so gently into time — traced agony
the bright turning of imagination
so slowly
grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter
mountains where spirits walk voices, ever so slowly
swept by cold, breathing fire
as these elliptical moments of illusion
link fragile loves sunk...Read more of this...

Hard is the Journey

by Li Po
 Gold vessels of fine wines,
thousands a gallon,
Jade dishes of rare meats,
costing more thousands,

I lay my chopsticks down,
no more can banquet,
I draw my sword and stare
wildly about me:

Ice bars my way to cross
the Yellow River,
Snows from dark skies to climb
the T'ai-hang mountains!

At peace I drop a hook
into a brooklet,
At once I'm in a boat
but sailing sunward...

(Hard is the journey,
Hard is...Read more of this...

Daddy

by Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal 

And a head in the freakish...Read more of this...

The Garden of Proserpine

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days...Read more of this...

Om

by George William Russell
 FAINT grew the yellow buds of light
Far flickering beyond the snows,
As leaning o’er the shadowy white
Morn glimmered like a pale primrose.


Within an Indian vale below
A child said “OM” with tender heart,
Watching with loving eyes the glow
In dayshine fade and night depart.


The word which Brahma at his dawn
Outbreathes and endeth at his night,
Whose tide of sound so rolling on
Gives birth...Read more of this...

Earths Immortalities

by Robert Browning
 FAME.

See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute grey lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!

LOVE.

So, the year's done with
(_Love me for ever!_)
All...Read more of this...

Athanasia

by Oscar Wilde
 To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught
Of all the great things men have saved from Time,
The withered body of a girl was brought
Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime,
And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the Egyptian's body,...Read more of this...

144. A Winter Night

by Robert Burns
 WHEN biting Boreas, fell and dour,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;
When Phoebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r,
 Far south the lift,
Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r,
 Or whirling drift:


Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,
While burns, wi’ snawy wreaths up-choked,
 Wild-eddying swirl;
Or, thro’ the mining outlet bocked,
 Down headlong hurl:


List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,
I...Read more of this...

The Road to Gundagai

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The mountain road goes up and down 
From Gundagai to Tumut Town 
And, branching off, there runs a track 
Across the foothills grim and black, 

Across the plains and ranges grey 
To Sydney city far away. 

It came by chance one day that I 
From Tumut rode to Gundagai, 

And reached about the evening tide 
The crossing where the...Read more of this...

Sestina III

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA III. L' aere gravato, e l' importuna nebbia. HE COMPARES LAURA TO WINTER, AND FORESEES THAT SHE WILL ALWAYS BE THE SAME.  The overcharged air, the impending cloud,Compress'd together by impetuous winds,Must presently discharge themselves in rain;Already as of crystal are the streams,And, for the fine grass late that clothed...Read more of this...

The Transparent Man

by Anthony Hecht
 I'm mighty glad to see you, Mrs. Curtis,
And thank you very kindly for this visit--
Especially now when all the others here
Are having holiday visitors, and I feel
A little conspicuous and in the way.
It's mainly because of Thanksgiving. All these mothers
And wives and husbands gaze at me soulfully
And feel they should break up their box of chocolates
For a donation, or...Read more of this...

The City Planners

by Margaret Atwood
 Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being...Read more of this...

Mountain Life

by Henrik Ibsen
 IN summer dusk the valley lies 
With far-flung shadow veil; 
A cloud-sea laps the precipice 
Before the evening gale: 
The welter of the cloud-waves grey 
Cuts off from keenest sight 
The glacier, looking out by day 
O'er all the district, far away, 
And crowned with golden light. 

But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow, 
Where gold and amber kiss, 
Stands...Read more of this...

Sonnet 02: Time Does Not Bring Relief; You All Have Lied

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
 Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
 I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
 And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
 But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on...Read more of this...

Sunshine

by Robert William Service
 I

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.
Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:
"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."

I have not slept for many, many days.
I close my eyes with weariness -- that's all.
I still have...Read more of this...

Villonaud for This Yule

by Ezra Pound
 Towards the Noel that morte saison 
(Christ make the shepherds' homage dear!)
Then when the grey wolves everychone 
Drink of the winds their chill small-beer 
And lap o' the snows food's gueredon 
Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer 
(Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!)
Wineing the ghosts of yester-year.

Ask ye what ghost I dream upon? 
(What of...Read more of this...

To Leonardo

by Mary Darby Robinson
 "Yes, LAURA, yes, pure as the virgin snow's 
"That on the bosom of the whirlwind move,,
"For thee my faithful endless passion glows." 

- LEONARDO TO LAURA.


COLD blows the wind upon the mountain's brow;
In murmuring cadence wave the leafless woods;
The feath'ry tribe mope on the frozen bough,
And icy fetters hold the silent floods;
But endless spring the POET'S breast shall prove,
Whose...Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen (excerpts)

by William Blake
 CHAPTER 1 

Lo, a shadow of horror is risen 
In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific,
Self-clos'd, all-repelling: what demon
Hath form'd this abominable void,
This soul-shudd'ring vacuum? Some said
"It is Urizen." But unknown, abstracted,
Brooding, secret, the dark power hid. 

CHAPTER 2 

Times on times he divided and measur'd
Space by space in his ninefold darkness,
Unseen, unknown; changes appear'd
Like desolate mountains, rifted furious
By the black winds...Read more of this...

I Now O Friend Whom Noiselessly The Snows

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I NOW, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows
Settle around, and whose small chamber grows
Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:

* * * * *

The kindly hill, as to complete our hap,
Has ta'en us in the shelter of her lap;
Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees
And ring of walls, we sit between her knees;
A disused quarry, paved with...Read more of this...

Santa Claus

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 "HALT! Who goes there?” The sentry’s call 
Rose on the midnight air 
Above the noises of the camp, 
The roll of wheels, the horses’ tramp. 
The challenge echoed over all— 
“Halt! Who goes there?” 
A quaint old figure clothed in white, 
He bore a staff of pine, 
An ivy-wreath was on his head. 
“Advance, oh friend,” the sentry said,...Read more of this...

November

by William Cullen Bryant
 The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.
For days the shepherds in the fields may be,
Nor mark a patch of sky— blindfold they trace,
The plains, that seem...Read more of this...

A Ballad of Dreamland

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed then the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still,...Read more of this...

I Remember the Snows in the Summers Light

by Dejan Stojanovic
I remember the snows in the summer's light 
Thinking of winter in summer; 
When I see the blue, I see white; 

I see the fume over roofs so bright, 
Feel the warm air caressed by azure, 
I remember the snows in the summer's light. 

Summers are lazy in my inner sight, 
Winters, lazy on the outside, are sure to secure...Read more of this...

A Child of the Snows

by G K Chesterton
 There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, 
And never before or again, 
When the nights are strong with a darkness long, 
And the dark is alive with rain. 

Never we know but in sleet and in snow, 
The place where the great fires are, 
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth 
And the...Read more of this...

The Aisne

by Alan Seeger
 We first saw fire on the tragic slopes 
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, 
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, 
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. 


The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, 
What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, 
In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, 
Winter came down on us, but no...Read more of this...

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