Famous Starry Night Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Invocation

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
RARELY rarely comest thou  
Spirit of Delight! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 
Many a day and night? 
Many a weary night and day 5 
'Tis since thou art fled away. 

How shall ever one like me 
Win thee back again? 
With the joyous and the free 
Thou wilt scoff at pain. 10 
Spirit false! thou hast forgot 
All...Read more of this...

Post Office Romance

by Robert William Service
 The lady at the corner wicket
Sold me a stamp, I stooped to lick it,
And on the envelope to stick it;
A spinster lacking girlish grace,
Yet sweetly sensitive, her face
Seemed to en-star that stodgy place. 

Said I: "I've come from o'er the sea
To ask you if you'll marry me -
That is to say, if you are free.
I see your gentle features...Read more of this...

The Geate a-Vallen to

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 In the zunsheen of our zummers
Wi’ the hay time now a-come,
How busy wer we out a-vield
Wi’ vew a-left at hwome,
When waggons rumbled out ov yard
Red wheeled, wi’ body blue,
And back behind ‘em loudly slamm’d
The geate a’vallen to.

Drough daysheen ov how many years
The geate ha’ now a-swung
Behind the veet o’ vull-grown men
And vootsteps of the young.
Drough years o’ days it...Read more of this...

Tact

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Observant of the way she told
 So much of what was true,
No vanity could long withhold
 Regard that was her due:
She spared him the familiar guide,
 So easily achieved,
That only made a man to smile
 And left him undeceived.

Aware that all imagining
 Of more than what she meant
Would urge an end of everything,
 He stayed; and when he went,
They...Read more of this...

Song on the End of the World

by Czeslaw Milosz
 On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in...Read more of this...

Alexander

by Walter de la Mare
 It was the Great Alexander, 
Capped with a golden helm, 
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship, 
In a dead calm. 

Voices of sea-maids singing 
Wandered across the deep: 
The sailors labouring on their oars 
Rowed as in sleep. 

All the high pomp of Asia, 
Charmed by that siren lay, 
Out of their weary and dreaming minds 
Faded...Read more of this...

A Starry Night

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A cloud fell down from the heavens,
And broke on the mountain's brow;
It scattered the dusky fragments
All over the vale below.
The moon and the stars were anxious
To know what its fate might be;
So they rushed to the azure op'ning,
And all peered down to see.
...Read more of this...

Chattanooga

by Herman Melville
 (November, 1863)

A kindling impulse seized the host
Inspired by heaven's elastic air;
Their hearts outran their General's plan,
Though Grant commanded there - 
Grant, who without reserve can dare;
And, "Well, go on and do your will,"
He said, and measured the mountain then:
So master-riders fling the rein - 
But you must know your men.

On yester-morn in grayish mist,
Armies like ghosts on hills had...Read more of this...

The Geate a-Vallen to

by William Barnes
 In the zunsheen of our zummers
Wi’ the hay time now a-come,
How busy wer we out a-vield
Wi’ vew a-left at hwome,
When waggons rumbled out ov yard
Red wheeled, wi’ body blue,
And back behind ‘em loudly slamm’d
The geate a’vallen to.

Drough daysheen ov how many years
The geate ha’ now a-swung
Behind the veet o’ vull-grown men
And vootsteps of the young.
Drough years o’ days it...Read more of this...

The Starry Night

by Anne Sexton
 That does not keep me from having a terrible need of -- shall I say the word -- religion. Then
I go out at night to paint the stars.

--Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils...Read more of this...

Song: Rarely rarely comest thou

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou are fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade
Of a...Read more of this...

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