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Famous Sultry Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld, 
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, 
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,
With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes, 
The race of Brahma comes! 

4
See, my cantabile! these, and more, are flashing to us from the procession; 
As it moves, changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves, changing, before us. 

For not the envoys, nor the tann’d Japanee from his isl...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d peaceable people!
Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!"
As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer,
Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones
Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows,
Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs,
Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures;
So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...s,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village, in the electric heat
Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light
Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.

 In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man an...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...r sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast.
Her locks streamed like the torch
Bor...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...and mill. 

Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding, 
His face a little whiter than the dusk. 
A drone of sultry wings flicker¡¯d in his head. 
The end of sunset burning thro¡¯ the boughs 10 
Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours 
Cumber¡¯d, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in. 

He thought: ¡®Somewhere there¡¯s thunder,¡¯ as he strove 
To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him, 
But stood, the sweat of horror on his face. 15 

He blunde...Read more of this...



by Soyinka, Wole
...of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.

D...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...y paints the mossy ground; 
For ah! the beauteous bud, too soon, 
Scorch'd by the burning eye of day; 
Shrinks from the sultry glare of noon, 
Droops its enamell'd brow, and blushing, dies away....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...prove,
Which at the still of evening's close,
Lulls the tir'd peasant to repose; 
Repose, whose balmy joys o'er-pay
The sultry labours of the day. 

And when the blue-ey'd dawn appears,
Just peeping thro' her veil of tears; 
Or blushing opes her silver gate, 
And on its threshold, stands elate,
And flings her rosy mantle far
O'er every loit'ring dewy star; 
And calls the wanton breezes forth,
And sprinkles diamonds o'er the earth; 
While in the green-wood's shade profound...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...the Surface ran; 
Forgetting, that you were design'd 
(Chiefly thou Zephyrus, thou softest Wind!) 
Only our Heats, when sultry, to allay, 
And chase the od'rous Gums by your dispersing Play. 
Now, by new Orders and Decrees, 
For our Chastisement issu'd forth, 
You on his Confines the alarmed North 
With equal Fury sees, 
And summons swiftly to his Aid 
Eurus, his Confederate made, 
His eager Second in th' opposing Fight, 
That even the Winds may keep the Balance right, 
N...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...d ravened women lie,
Become his starving body's bait.

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;
 Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;
 The black marauder, hauled by love
On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.
Behind snarled thickets of my eyes
 Lurks the lithe one; in dreams' ambush
 Bright those claws that mar the flesh
And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.
His ardor snares me, lights the trees,
 And I run flaring in my skin;
 What lull, what cool can lap me in
When bu...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...Rosalind's.
Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair
Which is twined in the sultry summer air
Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, 
Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
And the sound of her heart that ever beat
As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;
And from her laboring bosom now,
Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,
The voice of ...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...way I have to go,
And my worst enemies, I know,
Are these within my breast;
And it is hard to toil for aye, -­
Through sultry noon and twilight grey
To toil and never rest.' 

'There is a rest beyond the grave,
A lasting rest from pain and sin,
Where dwell the faithful and the brave;
But they must strive who seek to win.'
"Show me that rest -­ I ask no more.
Oh, drive these misty doubts away;
And let me see that sunny shore,
However far away!
However wide this ro...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...day of cold adversity
By patience and by toil. The Summer morn
Shone on the pillow of his rushy bed;
The noontide, sultry hour, he fearless past
On the shagg'd eminence; while the young Kid
Skipp'd, to the cadence of his minstrelsy.

At night young HENRY trimm'd the ****** fire
While oft, Saint HUBERT, wove the ample net
To snare the finny victim. Oft they sang
And talk'd, while sullenly the waves would sound
Dashing the sandy shore. Saint HUBERT'S eyes
Would...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...r Vera Cruz.

And he would pause under the garden wall,
Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,
With all the sultry South in it, and all
Its importunity of love and pain;
And he would wait till the last passionate fall
Died on the night, and all was still again.
Then to his upland village wander home,
Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.

O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress,
Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays
Sweet o...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...t distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct.
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What meant she?--Who was she?---Her duty and station...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...the change and nigh,
When ye shall share our strength and mourn to share. 

43
When parch'd with thirst, astray on sultry sand
The traveller faints, upon his closing ear
Steals a fantastic music: he may hear
The babbling fountain of his native land.
Before his eyes the vision seems to stand,
Where at its terraced brink the maids appear,
Who fill their deep urns at its waters clear,
And not refuse the help of lover's hand. 
O cruel jest--he cries, as some one flin...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...endless plain,
The ragged rims of thunder brooding low,
With shadow-streaks of rain.

And one, the reapers at their sultry toil.
In front they bound the sheaves. Behind
Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil,
And hoary to the wind.

And one a foreground black with stones and slags,
Beyond, a line of heights, and higher
All barr'd with long white cloud the scornful crags,
And highest, snow and fire.

And one, an English home--gray twilight pour'd
On dewy pa...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
The steaming marshes of the scarlet cranes, 
The slant seas leaning oll the mangrove copse, 
And summer basking in the sultry plains 
About a land of canes; 

'Then from my vapour-girdle soaring forth 
I scaled the buoyant highway of the birds, 
And drank the dews and drizzle of the North, 
That I might mix with men, and hear their words 
On pathway'd plains; for--while my hand exults 
Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers 
To work old laws of Love to fresh results, 
T...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...nt up the sky,
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside--

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charm'ed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ere a jocund one. 
Lightly and brightly breaks away 
The Morning from her mantle gray, 
And the Noon will look on a sultry day. 
Hark to the trump, and the drum, 
And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, 
And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're borne, 
And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, 
And the clash and the shout, "They come, they come!" 
The horsetails are pluck'd from the ground, and the sword 
From its sheath; and they form, and b...Read more of this...

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