Famous Thistledown Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Houses chapter IX

by Kahlil Gibran
 A mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses." 

And he answered and said: 

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. 

For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone. 

Your house is your larger...Read more of this...

Winter Sleep

by Elinor Wylie
 When against earth a wooden heel 
Clicks as loud as stone on steel, 
When stone turns flour instead of flakes, 
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, 
When the hard-bitten fields at last 
Crack like iron flawed in the cast, 
When the world is wicked and cross and old, 
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

Little birds...Read more of this...

Poem On His Birthday

by Dylan Thomas
 In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
 Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
 And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
 He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they...Read more of this...

Taedium Vitae

by Oscar Wilde
 To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, - I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath...Read more of this...

Her Voice

by Oscar Wilde
 The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun, -
It shall...Read more of this...

Marginalia

by Barry Tebb
 Here is a silence I had not hoped for

This side of paradise, I am an old believer

In nature’s bounty as God’s grace

To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming

At frustrated lust or the scent of fame 

Coming too late to make a difference

Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the...Read more of this...

The Sorceress!

by Vachel Lindsay
 I asked her, "Is Aladdin's lamp 
Hidden anywhere?" 
"Look into your heart," she said, 
"Aladdin's lamp is there." 

She took my heart with glowing hands. 
It burned to dust and air 
And smoke and rolling thistledown 
Blowing everywhere. 

"Follow the thistledown," she said, 
"Till doomsday, if you dare, 
Over the hills and far away. 
Aladdin's lamp is there."...Read more of this...

The Worlds All Right

by Robert William Service
 Be honest, kindly, simple, true;
Seek good in all, scorn but pretence;
Whatever sorrow come to you,
Believe in Life's Beneficence!

The World's all right; serene I sit,
And cease to puzzle over it.
There's much that's mighty strange, no doubt;
But Nature knows what she's about;
And in a million years or so
We'll know more than to-day we know.
Old Evolution's under way --
 What ho! the...Read more of this...

Ode for the Keats Centenary

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
Giving to some the keys of all the joy
Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
Back from their life;
Bidding them feed on hope,
A plant of bitter growth,
Deep-rooted in the past;
Truth, 'tis a doubtful art
To make Hope sweeten
Time as it flows;
For no man knows
Until the very last,
Whether it be a sovereign herb...Read more of this...

Lily-Bell and Thistledown Song II

by Louisa May Alcott
 Thistledown in prison sings:

Bright shines the summer sun,
Soft is the summer air;
Gayly the wood-birds sing,
Flowers are blooming fair.
But, deep in the dark, cold rock,
Sadly I dwell,
Longing for thee, dear friend, 
Lily-Bell! Lily-Bell!

Lily-Bell replies:

Through sunlight and summer air
I have sought for thee long,
Guided by birds and flowers,
And now by thy song.

Thistledown! Thistledown!
O'er hill and dell
Hither to comfort thee
Comes Lily-Bell....Read more of this...

The Opal Dream Cave

by Katherine Mansfield
 In an opal dream cave I found a fairy:
Her wings were frailer than flower petals,
Frailer far than snowflakes.
She was not frightened, but poised on my finger,
Then delicately walked into my hand.
I shut the two palms of my hands together
And held her prisoner.
I carried her out of the opal cave,
Then opened my hands.
First she became thistledown,
Then a mote in a...Read more of this...

Lily-Bell and Thistledown Song I

by Louisa May Alcott
 Awake! Awake! for the earliest gleam 
Of golden sunlight shines 
On the rippling waves, that brightly flow 
Beneath the flowering vines. 
Awake! Awake! for the low, sweet chant 
Of the wild-birds' morning hymn 
Comes floating by on the fragrant air, 
Through the forest cool and dim; 
Then spread each wing, 
And work, and sing, 
Through the long, bright sunny...Read more of this...

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