Famous Sunshine Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Insult Not The Fallen

by Victor Hugo
 ("Oh! n'insultez jamais une femme qui tombe.") 
 
 {XIV., Sept. 6, 1835.} 


 I tell you, hush! no word of sneering scorn— 
 True, fallen; but God knows how deep her sorrow. 
 Poor girl! too many like her only born 
 To love one day—to sin—and die the morrow. 
 What know you of her struggles or...Read more of this...

Lines Inscribed on The Wall of a Dungeon in The Southern P of I

by Anne Bronte
 Though not a breath can enter here,
I know the wind blows fresh and free;
I know the sun is shining clear,
Though not a gleam can visit me. 
They thought while I in darkness lay,
'Twere pity that I should not know
How all the earth is smiling gay;
How fresh the vernal breezes blow.

They knew, such tidings to impart
Would pierce my weary spirit...Read more of this...

Sunshine

by Robert William Service
 I

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.
Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:
"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."

I have not slept for many, many days.
I close my eyes with weariness -- that's all.
I still have...Read more of this...

A Rolling Stone

by Robert William Service
 There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I;
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.

I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
 And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
 The...Read more of this...

Sunshine

by Vachel Lindsay
 FOR A VERY LITTLE GIRL, NOT A YEAR OLD. 
CATHARINE FRAZEE WAKEFIELD.


The sun gives not directly
The coal, the diamond crown;
Not in a special basket
Are these from Heaven let down.

The sun gives not directly
The plough, man's iron friend;
Not by a path or stairway 
Do tools from Heaven descend. 

Yet sunshine fashions all things
That cut or burn or fly;
And corn that...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

The Regret of the Ranee in the Hall of Peacocks

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The tropic day's redundant charms
     Cool twilight soothes away,
   The sun slips down behind the palms
     And leaves the landscape grey.
           I want to take you in my arms
        ...Read more of this...

Lines by Taj Mahomed

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   There were Roses in the hedges, and Sunshine in the sky,
   Red Lilies in the sedges, where the water rippled by,
   A thousand Bulbuls singing, oh, how jubilant they were,
   And a thousand flowers flinging their sweetness on the air.

   But you, who sat beside me, had a shadow...Read more of this...

The sunshine seeks my little room

by Robert William Service
 The sunshine seeks my little room
To tell me Paris streets are gay;
That children cry the lily bloom
All up and down the leafy way;
That half the town is mad with May,
With flame of flag and boom of bell:
For Carnival is King to-day;
So pen and page, awhile farewell....Read more of this...

The Precinct. Rochester

by Amy Lowell
 The tall yellow hollyhocks stand,
Still and straight,
With their round blossoms spread open,
In the quiet sunshine.
And still is the old Roman wall,
Rough with jagged bits of flint,
And jutting stones,
Old and cragged,
Quite still in its antiquity.
The pear-trees press their branches against it,
And feeling it warm and kindly,
The little pears ripen to yellow and red.
They hang heavy, bursting with juice,
Against the wall.
So...Read more of this...

LAllegro

by John Milton
 Hence, loathed Melancholy,
............Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn
............'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
............Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
............There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
............In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely...Read more of this...

Count That Day Lost

by George Eliot
 If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard, 
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay...Read more of this...

Dear Harp of my Country

by Thomas Moore
 Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, 
The cold chain of Silence had hung o'er thee long.
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, 
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song. 
The warm lay of love and the light note of gladness 
Have waken'd thy fondest, thy livliest thrill, 
But, so oft...Read more of this...

To know just how He suffered -- would be dear --

by Emily Dickinson
 To know just how He suffered -- would be dear --
To know if any Human eyes were near
To whom He could entrust His wavering gaze --
Until it settle broad -- on Paradise --

To know if He was patient -- part content --
Was Dying as He thought -- or different --
Was it a pleasant Day to die --
And did the...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

Catching the Sunbeams

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Catching the sunbeams, oh, wee dimpled child,
  Gleefully laughing because they are bright;
Knowing, ah! never, my beautiful pet,
  Ne'er can our fingers imprison the light.
Beautiful sunshine, oh! fair is the light
  Falling on earth from the heavens above;
Beautiful childhood, oh! glad is the sight
  Filling the world with its measure of love.
Playing with sunbeams, oh, all...Read more of this...

Making Good

by Robert William Service
 No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success;
he may not own his roof-tree overhead,
He may be on his uppers and have hocked his evening dress -
(Financially speaking - in the red)
He may have chronic shortage to repay the old home mortgage,
And almost be a bankrupt in his biz.,
But though he skips his dinner,
And each day...Read more of this...

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

by Anne Bronte
 My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. 
The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves, beneath them, are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are...Read more of this...

Our Blessings

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Sitting to-day in the sunshine, 
That touched me with fingers of love, 
I thought of the manifold blessings
God scatters on earth, from above; 
And they seemed, as I numbered them over, 
Far more than we merit, or need, 
And all that we lack is the angels
To make earth a heaven indeed.

The winter brings long, pleasant evenings, 
The spring brings...Read more of this...

Stoves and sunshine

by Eugene Field
 Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this...Read more of this...

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

by Amy Lowell
 What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream
Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.
Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,
The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese
Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky
Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly
And...Read more of this...

Thee Thee Only Thee

by Thomas Moore
 The dawning of morn, the daylight's sinking, 
The night's long hours still find me thinking 
Of thee, thee, only thee. 
When friends are met, and goblets crown'd, 
And smiles are near, that once enchanted, 
Unreach'd by all that sunshine round, 
My soul, like some dark spot, is haunted 
By thee, thee, only thee. 

Whatever in fame's high path could...Read more of this...

A Gleam Of Sunshine

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my...Read more of this...

"Love Lightly"

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Rose-colour
   Rose Pink am I, the colour gleams and glows
     In many a flower; her lips, those tender doors
   By which, in time of love, love's essence flows
     From him to her, are dyed in delicate Rose.
   Mine is the earliest Ruby light...Read more of this...

The Arbour

by Anne Bronte
 I'll rest me in this sheltered bower,
And look upon the clear blue sky
That smiles upon me through the trees,
Which stand so thickly clustering by; 
And view their green and glossy leaves,
All glistening in the sunshine fair;
And list the rustling of their boughs,
So softly whispering through the air. 

And while my ear drinks in the sound,
My winged soul shall fly...Read more of this...

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