Famous Sunset Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sunset poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sunset poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sunset poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Victor Hugo
I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.
Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,...Read more of this...
by
Edith Wharton
I
Leaguered in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her hand swings...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.
In summer when I passed the place
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.
No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past!
Inflating my throat—you, divine average!
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.
Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How the old Mountains drip with Sunset
How the Hemlocks burn --
How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder
By the Wizard Sun --
How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet
Till the Ball is full --
Have I the lip of the Flamingo
That I dare to tell?
Then, how the Fire ebbs like Billows --
Touching all the Grass
With a departing -- Sapphire -- feature...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
RED gold of pools,
Sunset furrows six o’clock,
And the farmer done in the fields
And the cows in the barns with bulging udders.
Take the cows and the farmer,
Take the barns and bulging udders.
Leave the red gold of pools
And sunset furrows six o’clock.
The farmer’s wife is singing.
The farmer’s boy is whistling.
I wash my hands in red gold of pools....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Sunset at Night -- is natural --
But Sunset on the Dawn
Reverses Nature -- Master --
So Midnight's -- due -- at Noon.
Eclipses be -- predicted --
And Science bows them in --
But do one face us suddenly --
Jehovah's Watch -- is wrong....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
An ignorance a Sunset
Confer upon the Eye --
Of Territory -- Color --
Circumference -- Decay --
Its Amber Revelation
Exhilirate -- Debase --
Omnipotence' inspection
Of Our inferior face --
And when the solemn features
Confirm -- in Victory --
We start -- as if detected
In Immortality --...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
O beautiful hills in the purple light,
That shadow the western sky,
I dream of you oft in the silent night,
As the golden days go by.
The river that flows at my longing feet
Is tinged with a deeper glow;
But the song that it sings is as sad to-day
As it was in the long ago.
The far-off...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Master I may be,
But not of my fate.
Now come the kisses, too many too late.
Tell me, O Parcae,
For fain would I know,
Where were these kisses three decades ago?
Girls there were plenty,
Mint julep girls, beer girls,
Gay younger married and headstrong career girls,
The girls of my friends
And the wives of my friends,
Some smugly settled and some at loose ends,
Sad girls, serene...Read more of this...
by
William Allingham
The vast and solemn company of clouds
Around the Sun's death, lit, incarnadined,
Cool into ashy wan; as Night enshrouds
The level pasture, creeping up behind
Through voiceless vales, o'er lawn and purpled hill
And hazéd mead, her mystery to fulfil.
Cows low from far-off farms; the loitering wind
Sighs in the hedge, you hear it if you will,--...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning's flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps --
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!
Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin's ecstasy
Among astonished boughs --
How many trips the Tortoise makes --
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Sunset that screens, reveals --
Enhancing what we see
By menaces of Amethyst
And Moats of Mystery....Read more of this...
by
Gwendolyn Brooks
Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.
It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Sunset stopped on Cottages
Where Sunset hence must be
For treason not of His, but Life's,
Gone Westerly, Today --
The Sunset stopped on Cottages
Where Morning just begun --
What difference, after all, Thou mak'st
Thou supercilious Sun?...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
All that I dream
By day or night
Lives in that stream
Of lovely light.
Here is the earth,
And there is the spire;
This is my hearth,
And that is my fire.
From the sun's dome
I am shouted proof
That this is my home,
And that is my roof.
Here is my food,
And here is my...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
INTO the blue river hills
The red sun runners go
And the long sand changes
And to-day is a goner
And to-day is not worth haggling over.
Here in Omaha
The gloaming is bitter
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.
The long sand changes.
To-day is a goner.
Time knocks in another brass nail.
Another yellow plunger shoots the dark.
Constellations
Wheeling over Omaha
As in Chicago
Or...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Sometimes we remember kisses,
Remember the dear heart-leap when they came:
Not always, but sometimes we remember
The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame
Of laughter and farewell.
Beside the road
Afar from those who said "Good-by" I write,
Far from my city task, my lawful load.
Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder,
Streaming clouds, banners of new-born night
Enchant me now. The splendors growing bolder
Make bold...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Le soleil s'est couché")
{XXXV. vi., April, 1829.}
The sun set this evening in masses of cloud,
The storm comes to-morrow, then calm be the night,
Then the Dawn in her chariot refulgent and proud,
Then more nights, and still days, steps of Time in his flight.
The days shall pass rapid...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
"I have heard the sunset song of the birches,
A white melody in the silence,
I have seen a quarrel of the pines.
At nightfall
The little grasses have rushed by me
With the wind men.
These things have I lived," quoth the maniac,
"Possessing only eyes and ears.
But you --
You don green spectacles before you look at roses."...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Gleaming folds of read and gold linger in the western sky;
Fleecy clouds of purest tint, mingle with the purple dye.
Faintly to the dreamy mind comes the sound of earthly life;
Far beyond the shining banks, cometh rest from worldly strife.
Through the sunset's misty veil, now we look with longing eyes,
To behold more beauteous sight than the evening's glor'ous skies.
Slowly now the...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Love's twilight wanes in heaven above,
On earth ere twilight reigns:
Ere fear may feel the chill thereof,
Love's twilight wanes.
Ere yet the insatiate heart complains
'Too much, and scarce enough,'
The lip so late athirst refrains.
Soft on the neck of either dove
Love's hands let slip the reins:
And while we look for light of love
Love's twilight wanes....Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
A gallant city has been builded far
In the pied heaven,
Bannered with crimson, sentinelled by star
Of crystal even;
Around a harbor of the twilight glowing,
With jubilant waves about its gateways flowing
A city of the Land of Lost Delight,
On seas enchanted,
Presently to be lost in mist moon-white
And music-haunted;
Given but briefly to our raptured vision,
With all its opal towers and...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The river sleeps beneath the sky,
And clasps the shadows to its breast;
The crescent moon shines dim on high;
And in the lately radiant west
The gold is fading into gray.
Now stills the lark his festive lay,
And mourns with me the dying day.
While in the south the first faint star
[Pg 10]Lifts to the night its silver face,
And twinkles to the moon...Read more of this...
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