Famous Squirrel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Nutting Song

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The November sun invites me,
And although the chill wind smites me,
I will wander to the woodland
Where the laden trees await;
And with loud and joyful singing
I will set the forest ringing,
As if I were king of Autumn,
And Dame Nature were my mate,—
While the squirrel in his gambols
Fearless round about me ambles,
As if he were bent on showing
In my kingdom he'd a...Read more of this...

I Remember Galileo

by Gerald Stern
 I remember Galileo describing the mind
as a piece of paper blown around by the wind,
and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree,
or jumping into the backseat of a car, 
and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;
but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing
Route 80 between the wheels of a giant...Read more of this...

The Wayfarer

by Patrick Pearse
The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would...Read more of this...

Expectation

by Victor Hugo
 ("Moune, écureuil.") 
 
 {xx.} 


 Squirrel, mount yon oak so high, 
 To its twig that next the sky 
 Bends and trembles as a flower! 
 Strain, O stork, thy pinion well,— 
 From thy nest 'neath old church-bell, 
 Mount to yon tall citadel, 
 And its tallest donjon tower! 
 To your mountain, eagle old,...Read more of this...

Nature -- the Gentlest Mother is

by Emily Dickinson
 Nature -- the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child --
The feeblest -- or the waywardest --
Her Admonition mild --

In Forest -- and the Hill --
By Traveller -- be heard --
Restraining Rampant Squirrel --
Or too impetuous Bird --

How fair Her Conversation --
A Summer Afternoon --
Her Household -- Her Assembly --
And when the Sun go down --

Her Voice among the Aisles
Incite...Read more of this...

De Erotio Puella

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 THIS girl was sweeter than the song of swans,
And daintier than the lamb upon the lawns
Or Curine oyster. She, the flower of girls,
Outshone the light of Erythraean pearls;
The teeth of India that with polish glow,
The untouched lilies or the morning snow.
Her tresses did gold-dust outshine
And fair hair of women of the Rhine.
Compared to her the peacock seemed not fair,
The...Read more of this...

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood

by William Cullen Bryant
 Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 
No school of long experience, that the world 
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 
And view the haunts of nature. The calm shade 
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the...Read more of this...

Small Game

by Philip Levine
 In borrowed boots which don't fit 
and an old olive greatcoat, 
I hunt the corn-fed rabbit, 
game fowl, squirrel, starved bobcat, 
anything small. I bring down 
young deer wandered from the doe's 
gaze, and reload, and move on 
leaving flesh to inform crows. 

At dusk they seem to suspect 
me, burrowed in a corn field 
verging their stream. The...Read more of this...

To A Squirrel At Kyle-Na-No

by William Butler Yeats
 Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I'd a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go....Read more of this...

Any Night

by Philip Levine
 Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine, 
the yellowing ash, all the trees 
are gone, and I was older than 
all of them. I am older than the moon, 
than the stars that fill my plate, 
than the unseen planets that huddle 
together here at the end of a year 
no one wanted. A year more than a year, 
in...Read more of this...

The Night was wide and furnished scant

by Emily Dickinson
 The Night was wide, and furnished scant
With but a single Star --
That often as a Cloud it met --
Blew out itself -- for fear --

The Wind pursued the little Bush --
And drove away the Leaves
November left -- then clambered up
And fretted in the Eaves --

No Squirrel went abroad --
A Dog's belated feet
Like intermittent Plush, he heard
Adown the empty Street...Read more of this...

The Song of Hiawatha: X

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 X. Hiawatha's Wooing

"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"

Thus the youthful Hiawatha
Said within himself and pondered,
Much perplexed by various feelings,
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing,
Dreaming still of Minnehaha,
Of the lovely Laughing Water,
In the land of the Dacotahs.

"Wed a maiden of...Read more of this...

I In My Intricate Image

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She...Read more of this...

Thinking Ahead To Possible Options And A Worst-Case Scenario

by Edward Taylor
 I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel
in the center of the road and that's when
the deer came charging out of the forest
and forced me to hit the brakes for all I
was worth and I careened back to the other
side of the road just as a skunk came toddling
out of Mrs. Bancroft's front yard and I swung
back perhaps just grazing...Read more of this...

The Two Kings

by William Butler Yeats
 King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height...Read more of this...

Light is sufficient to itself --

by Emily Dickinson
 Light is sufficient to itself --
If Others want to see
It can be had on Window Panes
Some Hours in the Day.

But not for Compensation --
It holds as large a Glow
To Squirrel in the Himmaleh
Precisely, as to you....Read more of this...

The Death of the Flowers

by William Cullen Bryant
THE MELANCHOLY days have come the saddest of the year  
Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sere; 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove the autumn leaves lie dead; 
They rustle to the eddying gust and to the rabbit's tread; 
The robin and the wren are flown and from the shrubs the jay 5 
And...Read more of this...

Britannias Pastorals

by William Browne
 Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch...Read more of this...

A Lost Dream

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, I have changed, I do not know
Why lonely hours affect me so.
In days of yore, this were not wont,
No loneliness my soul could daunt.
For me too serious for my age,
The weighty tome of hoary sage,
Until with puzzled heart astir,
One God-giv'n night, I dreamed of her.
I loved no woman, hardly knew
More of the sex that strong men woo
Than cloistered monk...Read more of this...

A Simile

by Matthew Prior
 Dear Thomas, didst thou never pop
Thy head into a tin-man's shop?
There, Thomas, didst thou never see
('Tis but by way of simile)
A squirrel spend his little rage
In jumping round a rolling cage?
The cage, as either side turn'd up,
Striking a ring of bells a-top?--

Mov'd in the orb, pleas'd with the chimes,
The foolish creature thinks he climbs:
But here or there, turn wood...Read more of this...

By my Window have I for Scenery

by Emily Dickinson
 By my Window have I for Scenery
Just a Sea -- with a Stem --
If the Bird and the Farmer -- deem it a "Pine" --
The Opinion will serve -- for them --

It has no Port, nor a "Line" -- but the Jays --
That split their route to the Sky --
Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula
May be easier reached --...Read more of this...

Fable

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
THE MOUNTAIN and the squirrel 
Had a quarrel; 
And the former called the latter "Little Prig." 
Bun replied  
You are doubtless very big; 5 
But all sorts of things and weather 
Must be taken in together, 
To make up a year 
And a sphere. 
And I think it no disgrace 10 
To occupy my place. 
If I'm not as...Read more of this...

Autumn

by Thomas Hood
 I Saw old Autumn in the misty morn 
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening 
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing 
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, 
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— 
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright 
With tangled gossamer that fell by night, 
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. 

Where are the songs of...Read more of this...

Love

by Robert Creeley
 The thing comes
of itself

 (Look up
to see
 the cat & the squirrel,
 the one
torn, a red thing,
 & the other
somehow immaculate...Read more of this...

Clementes Images

by Robert Creeley
 1)

Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me

inside this black room,
back of the white moon.

In the dark night
sight frightens me.


2)

Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round headed stare?

Who, perched on the skin,
body's float, is holding on?

What other one stares still,
plays still, on and on?


3)

Stand upright, prehensile,
squat, determined,

small guardians of the painful
outside coming in --

in stuck in vials with needles,
bleeding life...Read more of this...

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