Famous Soothing Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Dreams Old

by D. H. Lawrence
 I have opened the window to warm my hands on the sill
Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon 
Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still 
In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone. 

The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,
Like savage music striking far off, and there 
On the great, uplifted...Read more of this...

New York at Night

by Amy Lowell
 A near horizon whose sharp jags
Cut brutally into a sky
Of leaden heaviness, and crags
Of houses lift their masonry
Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie
And snort, outlined against the gray
Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh
The goaded city gives, not day
Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay.
Below, straight streets, monotonous,
From north and south, from east and west,
Stretch glittering;...Read more of this...

Stanzas Inscribed to Lady William Russell

by Mary Darby Robinson
 NATURE, to prove her heav'n-taught pow'r, 
That gems the earth, and paints the flow'r; 
That bids the soft enchanting note 
Steal from the LINNET'S downy throat; 
That from young MAY'S ambrosial wings, 
The balmy dew of HYBLA flings; 
With partial hand, each charm combin'd, 
To deck THY Form, and grace THY Mind. 

She gave her ROSE, to tint thy...Read more of this...

Life

by Charlotte Bronte
 "What is this world?­thy school, O misery!
"Our only lesson is to learn to suffer." 

- YOUNG. 


LOVE, thou sportive fickle boy, 
Source of anguish, child of joy, 
Ever wounding­ever smiling, 
Soothing still, and still beguiling; 
What are all thy boasted treasures, 
Tender sorrows, transient pleasures? 
Anxious hopes, and jealous fears, 
LAUGHING HOURS, and MOURNING YEARS. 

What is FRIENDSHIP'S soothing...Read more of this...

Mohenjodaro Reviisited

by Omer Tarin
I. You are not dead

Why do they call you 
Mohen-jo-daro,
“ Mounds-of-the-Dead”?
You are not dead!
You have never been dead
Or buried
Or cremated
By the scorching banks of the Sindhu;

Historians have conspired against you

A thousand and one tales 
Have besmirched your name
Misguided fools have imagined 
Your obituary to be true;
Sentimental fools have sung elegies
By their own graves
Garlanded their own biers,
Cursed the stars and howled...Read more of this...

Dresser The

by Walt Whitman
 1
AN old man bending, I come, among new faces, 
Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children, 
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love me; 
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, 
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again—paint the...Read more of this...

Lullaby

by Louise Gluck
 Softly lie down
and close your eyes so blue
worry no more
for tonight I'll watch over you

Gently rest your head
against my soothing chest
for here in my arms
you've found a safe place to rest

Sleep sweet child
in peaceful undisturbed dreams
and don't awake
until the morning beams


June 25, 2006
©2006 Fenny...Read more of this...

Beautiful Old Age

by D. H. Lawrence
 It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.

The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.

Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing...Read more of this...

A Hymn

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Lead gently, Lord, and slow,
For oh, my steps are weak,
And ever as I go,
Some soothing sentence speak;
That I may turn my face
Through doubt's obscurity
Toward thine abiding-place,
E'en tho' I cannot see.
For lo, the way is dark;
Through mist and cloud I grope,
Save for that fitful spark,
The little flame of hope.
Lead gently, Lord, and slow,
For fear that I may fall;
I know not where...Read more of this...

Tomes

by Billy Collins
 There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.

I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note...Read more of this...

Kathleen

by Robert William Service
 It was the steamer Alice May that sailed the Yukon foam.
And touched in every river camp from Dawson down to Nome.
It was her builder, owner, pilot, Captain Silas Geer,
Who took her through the angry ice, the last boat of the year;
Who patched her cracks with gunny sacks and wound her pipes with wire,
And cut the spruce upon the banks...Read more of this...

The Shepherd And The Calm

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Soothing his Passions with a warb'ling Sound, 
A Shepherd-Swain lay stretch'd upon the Ground;
Whilst all were mov'd, who their Attention lent,
Or with the Harmony in Chorus went,
To something less than Joy, yet more than dull Content. 
(Between which two Extreams true Pleasure lies, 
O'er-run by Fools, unreach'd-at by the Wise )
But yet, a fatal Prospect to the Sea
Wou'd often...Read more of this...

The Bankrupt Peace-Maker

by Vachel Lindsay
 I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.
The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.
His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.
He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.
He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.
He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.
Like a black-mailer hating his victim...Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

The three tailors

by Eugene Field
 I shall tell you in rhyme how, once on a time,
Three tailors tramped up to the inn Ingleheim,
On the Rhine, lovely Rhine;
They were broke, but the worst of it all, they were curst
With that malady common to tailors--a thirst
For wine, lots of wine.

"Sweet host," quoth the three, "we're hard up as can be,
Yet skilled in the practice of cunning...Read more of this...

The Peri

by Victor Hugo
 Beautiful spirit, come with me 
 Over the blue enchanted sea: 
 Morn and evening thou canst play 
 In my garden, where the breeze 
 Warbles through the fruity trees; 
 No shadow falls upon the day: 
 There thy mother's arms await 
 Her cherished infant at the gate. 
 Of Peris I the loveliest far— 
...Read more of this...

The Adieu to Love

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LOVE, I renounce thy tyrant sway,
I mock thy fascinating art,
MINE, be the calm unruffled day,
That brings no torment to the heart; 
The tranquil mind, the noiseless scene, 
Where FANCY, with enchanting mien, 
Shall in her right-hand lead along 
The graceful patroness of Song;
Where HARMONY shall softly fling 
Her light tones o'er the dulcet string; 
And with her magic LYRE...Read more of this...

The Shower

by Charles Bukowski
 we like to shower afterwards
(I like the water hotter than she)
and her face is always soft and peaceful
and she'll watch me first
spread the soap over my balls
lift the balls
squeeze them,
then wash the cock:
"hey, this thing is still hard!"
then get all the hair down there,-
the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,
I grin grin grin,
and then I wash her. ....Read more of this...

Epistle To My Brother George

by John Keats
 Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretched supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should...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...

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...

A New Years Message To Joseph Mazzini

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Send the stars light, but send not love to me.
Shelley.

I

Out of the dawning heavens that hear
Young wings and feet of the new year
Move through their twilight, and shed round
Soft showers of sound,
Soothing the season with sweet rain,
If greeting come to make me fain,
What is it I can send again?

2

I know not if the year shall send
Tidings to usward as...Read more of this...

My playmates

by Eugene Field
 The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool--
Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool;
It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill,
And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill;
So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know
Where the sassafras and snakeroot and checkerberries grow.

What has...Read more of this...

IV. To the River Wenbeck

by William Lisle Bowles
 AS slowly wanders thy forsaken stream, 
Wenbeck! the mossy-scatter'd rocks among, 
In fancy's ear still making plaintive song 
To the dark woods above: ah! sure I seem 
To meet some friendly Genius in the gloom, 
And in each breeze a pitying voice I hear 
Like sorrow's sighs upon misfortune's tomb. 
Ah! soothing are your quiet scenes -- the tear...Read more of this...

Dreams

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dream on, for dreams are sweet:
Do not awaken!
Dream on, and at thy feet
Pomegranates shall be shaken.
Who likeneth the youth
Of life to morning?
'Tis like the night in truth,
Rose-coloured dreams adorning.
The wind is soft above,
The shadows umber.
 (There is a dream called Love.) Take thou the fullest slumber!
In Lethe's soothing stream,
Thy thirst thou slakest.
Sleep, sleep; 't is sweet to dream.
Oh, weep when...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Soothing poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace