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Famous Summers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kipling, Rudyard
...wind and open surge
 Took us from our mothers--
Flung us on a naked shore
(Twelve bleak houses by the shore.
Seven summers by the shore! )
 'Mid two hundred brothers.

There we met with famous men
 Set in office o'er us;
And they beat on us with rods-- 
Faithfully with many rods--
Daily beat us on with rods,
 For the love they bore us!

Out of Egypt unto Troy--
 Over Himalaya--
Far and sure our bands have gone--
Hy-Brazil or Babylon,
Islands of the Southern Run,
 And...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...I can count upon my fingers
The years I hope to bide with men,
(Though by God's grace one often lingers.)
So in the summers left to me,
Because I'm blest beyond my merit,
I hope with gratitude and glee
To sparkle with the birthday spirit.

Let me inform myself each day
Who's proudmost on the natal roster;
If Washington or Henry Clay,
Or Eugene Field or Stephen Foster.
oh lots of famous folks I'll find
Who more than measure to my rating,
And so thanksgivingly incli...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...xplored the green

Springs of my birth, in the bare hedges

Of Knostrop where I began this present

Pilgrimage by Joyce Summersgill’s side

As she ran from the shouting man and in

Disarray began this never-ending flight

And still at fifty-four I run, I know not

Why or where and death cannot be far

From this half-open door.



For luck I count each cobble, there’s enough

Beneath the ginnel to take a breath

And that’s the luck I need to live on.

In the dark I saw...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
..., 
And prove Zeus' self, the latent everywhere! 
This is a dream:--but no dream, let us hope, 
That years and days, the summers and the springs, 
Follow each other with unwaning powers. 
The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far, 
Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock; 
The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe; 
The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet; 
The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers; 
That young and tender crescent-moon, thy sla...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...lity of passion's thine:
Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine
Of heaven ambrosial; and we will shade
Ourselves whole summers by a river glade;
And I will tell thee stories of the sky,
And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy.
My happy love will overwing all bounds!
O let me melt into thee; let the sounds
Of our close voices marry at their birth;
Let us entwine hoveringly--O dearth
Of human words! roughness of mortal speech!
Lispings empyrean will I sometime teach
Th...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...he snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves.
Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.
Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside,
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses!
Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows.
When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide
Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden,
Fai...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...oblest manners, though himself would say 
Sir Lancelot had the noblest; and he died, 
Killed in a tilt, come next, five summers back, 
And left me; but of others who remain, 
And of the two first-famed for courtesy-- 
And pray you check me if I ask amiss- 
But pray you, which had noblest, while you moved 
Among them, Lancelot or our lord the King?' 

Then the pale Queen looked up and answered her, 
`Sir Lancelot, as became a noble knight, 
Was gracious to all ladies, and the ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Year 
Seasons return, but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
But cloud in stead, and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the chearful waies of men 
Cut off, and for the Book of knowledg fair 
Presented with a Universal blanc 
Of Natures works to mee expung'd and ras'd, 
And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out. 
So much the rather thou Celestial light 
...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...Five years have passed; five summers, with the length 
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.  Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I a...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...ours
To boil in water milk and way1
For washes on an holiday
To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
I'th'2 middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers the toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lowly joys
That met the may wi hopes as sweet
As those her suns in gardens meet
And oft the dame will feel inclind
As childhoods memory comes to mind
To t...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...y back:
I think 'twas in my twentieth spring, -
Ay, 'twas, - when Casimir was king -
John Casimir, - I was his page
Six summers, in my earlier age:
A learned monarch, faith! was he,
And most unlike your majesty:
He made no wars, and did not gain
New realms to lose them back again;
And (save debates in Warsaw's diet)
He reigned in most unseemly quiet;
Not that he had no cares to vex,
He loved the muses and the sex;
And sometimes these so froward are,
They made him wish himself...Read more of this...

by Kendall, Henry
...was of yore, 
And would never wish to clamber, seeking for an unknown shore; 
I have dwelt within this cottage twenty summers, and mine eyes 

Never wandered erewhile round in search of undiscovered skies; 
But a spirit sits beside me, veiled in robes of dazzling white, 
And a dear one's whisper wakens with the symphonies of night; 
And a low sad music cometh, borne along on windy wings, 
Like a strain familiar rising from a maze of slumbering springs. 


And the S...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...eturns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.

O poet's city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn's livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy days of glory; - poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd's reed,
Where the loud clarion's blast should shake the sky,
And flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly: yet I know
That never felt my heart a...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with he...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...;  The red-breast known for years, which at my casement peck'd.   The suns of twenty summers danced along,—  Ah! little marked, how fast they rolled away:  Then rose a stately hall our woods among,  And cottage after cottage owned its sway.  No joy to see a neighbouring house, or stray  Through pastures not his own, the master took;  My Father dared his greed...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...desk of satin-wood, 
A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, 
And on the hither side, or so she looked, 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child, 
In shining draperies, headed like a star, 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 
Aglaïa slept. We sat: the Lady glanced: 
Then Florian, but not livelier than the dame 
That whispered 'Asses' ears', among the sedge, 
'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that's fair,' 
Said Cyril. 'Oh hush, hush!' and she began....Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
..., 
Lepanto's gulf; and on the brow 
Of Delphi's hill, unshaken snow, 
High and eternal, such as shone 
Through thousand summers brightly gone. 
Along the gulf, the mount, the clime; 
It will not melt, like man, to time; 
Tyrant and slave are swept away, 
Less form'd to wear the before the ray; 
But that white veil, the lightest, frailest, 
Which on the mighty mount thou hailest, 
Shines o'er its craggy battlement; 
In form a peak, in height a cloud, 
In texture like a hov...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...livia, came 
To rest beneath thy boughs.--- 

"O Walter, I have shelter'd here 
Whatever maiden grace 
The good old Summers, year by year 
Made ripe in Sumner-chace: 

"Old Summers, when the monk was fat, 
And, issuing shorn and sleek, 
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat 
The girls upon the cheek, 

"Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence, 
And number'd bead, and shrift, 
Bluff Harry broke into the spence 
And turn'd the cowls adrift: 

"And I have seen some score of those...Read more of this...

by McGough, Roger
...e house
Gross and misshapen
As if waiting for something
Bad to happen.

For as the years pass
And I grow older
When summers seem short
And winters colder.

The snowmen I envy
As I watch children play
Are the ones that are made
And then fade away....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things