Famous Thrushes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Nymphs

by Katharine Tynan
 Where are ye now, O beautiful girls of the mountain,
Oreads all ?
Nothing at all stirs here save the drip of the fountain;
Answers our call
Only the heart-glad thrush, in the Vale of Thrushes;
Stirs in the brake
But the dew-bright ear of the hare in his couch of rushes
Listening, awake....Read more of this...

O Cool Is the Valley Now

by James Joyce
 O cool is the valley now 
And there, love, will we go 
For many a choir is singing now 
Where Love did sometime go. 
And hear you not the thrushes calling, 
Calling us away? 
O cool and pleasant is the valley 
And there, love, will we stay....Read more of this...

Farewell

by Wang Wei
 Farewell to the bushy clump close to the river
And the flags where the butter-bump hides in forever;
Farewell to the weedy nook, hemmed in by waters;
Farewell to the miller's brook and his three bonny daughters;
Farewell to them all while in prison I lie—
In the prison a thrall sees naught but the sky.

Shut out are the green fields and birds in...Read more of this...

Kashmiri Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   "Is it safe to lie so lonely when the summer twilight closes
   No companion maidens, only you asleep among the roses?

   "Thirteen, fourteen years you number, and your hair is soft and scented,
   Perilous is such a slumber in the twilight all untented.

   "Lonely loveliness means danger, lying in...Read more of this...

At the Melting of the Snow

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 There's a sunny Southern land, 
And it's there that I would be 
Where the big hills stand, 
In the South Countrie! 
When the wattles bloom again, 
Then it's time for us to go 
To the old Monaro country 
At the melting of the snow. 
To the East or to the West, 
Or wherever you may be, 
You will find...Read more of this...

A Good Boy

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day, 
I never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play. 

And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood, 
And I am very happy, for I know that I've been good. 

My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair,...Read more of this...

The Oxford Thrushes

by Henry Van Dyke
 FEBRUARY, 1917 

I never thought again to hear
The Oxford thrushes singing clear,
Amid the February rain,
Their sweet, indomitable strain. 

A wintry vapor lightly spreads
Among the trees, and round the beds
Where daffodil and jonquil sleep,
Only the snowdrop wakes to weep. 

It is not springtime yet. Alas,
What dark, tempestuous days must pass,
Till England's trial by battle cease,
And summer comes again with peace....Read more of this...

Thrushes

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; 
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; 
Who hears the cry of...Read more of this...

Christmas Carol

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ring out, ye bells!
All Nature swells
With gladness at the wondrous story,—
The world was lorn,
But Christ is born
To change our sadness into glory.
Sing, earthlings, sing!
To-night a King
Hath come from heaven's high throne to bless us.
The outstretched hand
O'er all the land
Is raised in pity to caress us.
Come at his call;
Be joyful all;
Away with mourning and with sadness!
The heavenly choir
With holy fire
Their voices...Read more of this...

A Cat

by Edward Thomas
 She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone owned
Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime
And had her kittens duly drowned.

In Spring, nevertheless, this cat
Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,
And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,
As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails.

I loathed and hated her for this;
One speckle on a thrush’s breast
Was worth a...Read more of this...

Limitations

by Siegfried Sassoon
 If you could crowd them into forty lines! 
Yes; you can do it, once you get a start; 
All that you want is waiting in your head, 
For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by heart. 

. . . . 
Begin: your mind’s the room where you have slept,
(Don’t pause for rhymes), till twilight woke you early. 
The window stands...Read more of this...

So Long In Coming

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When shall I hear the thrushes sing, 
And see their graceful, round throats swelling? 
When shall I watch the bluebirds bring
The straws and twiglets for their dwelling? 
When shall I hear among the trees
The little martial partridge drumming? 
Oh! Hasten! Sights and sounds that please –
The summer is so long in coming.

The winds are talking with the sun; 
I...Read more of this...

Ode To William H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blind worm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife.

Or who,...Read more of this...

Clearing at Dawn

by Li Po
 The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters...Read more of this...

The Blind Girl

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Kind Christians, pray list to me,
And I'll relate a sad story,
Concerning a little blind girl, only nine years of age,
Who lived with her father in a lonely cottage. 

Poor girl, she had never seen the blessed light of day,
Nor the beautiful fields of corn and hay,
Nor the sparrows, that lifted their heads at early morn
To bright Sol that does...Read more of this...

A Memory of June

by Claude McKay
 When June comes dancing o'er the death of May, 
With scarlet roses tinting her green breast, 
And mating thrushes ushering in her day, 
And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest, 

I always see the evening when we met-- 
The first of June baptized in tender rain-- 
And walked home through the wide streets, gleaming wet, 
Arms locked, our...Read more of this...

Cockspur Bush

by Les Murray
 I am lived. I am died.
I was two-leafed three times, and grazed,
but then I was stemmed and multiplied,
sharp-thorned and caned, nested and raised, 
earth-salt by sun-sugar. I was innerly sung
by thrushes who need fear no eyed skin thing.
Finched, ant-run, flowered, I am given the years
in now fewer berries, now more of sling
out over directions of luscious dung.
Of water crankshaft,...Read more of this...

Thrushes

by Ted Hughes
 Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,
More coiled steel than living - a poised
Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs
Triggered to stirrings beyond sense - with a start, a bounce, 
a stab
Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing. 
No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states,
No sighs or head-scratchings. Nothing but bounce and stab 
And a ravening...Read more of this...

Robin Redbreast

by William Allingham
 Good-bye, good-bye to Summer! 
For Summer's nearly done; 
The garden smiling faintly, 
Cool breezes in the sun; 
Our Thrushes now are silent, 
Our Swallows flown away, -- 
But Robin's here, in coat of brown, 
With ruddy breast-knot gay. 
Robin, Robin Redbreast, 
O Robin dear! 
Robin singing sweetly 
In the falling of the year. 

Bright yellow, red, and orange, 
The...Read more of this...

The Word

by Edward Thomas
 There are so many things I have forgot, 
That once were much to me, or that were not, 
All lost, as is a childless woman's child 
And its child's children, in the undefiled 
Abyss of what can never be again. 
I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men 
That fought and lost or won in the old wars,...Read more of this...

Ode to W. H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent...Read more of this...

The Robbers

by Robert William Service
 Alas! I see that thrushes three
 Are ravishing my old fig tree,
In whose green shade I smoked my pipe
 And waited for the fruit to ripe;
From green to purple softly swell
 Then drop into my lap to tell
That it is succulently sweet
 And excellent to eat.

And now I see the crimson streak,
 The greedy gash of yellow beak.
And look!...Read more of this...

The Cry Of The Children

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west— 
But the young, young...Read more of this...

The Castaways

by Claude McKay
 The vivid grass with visible delight 
Springing triumphant from the pregnant earth, 
The butterflies, and sparrows in brief flight 
Chirping and dancing for the season's birth, 
The dandelions and rare daffodils 
That touch the deep-stirred heart with hands of gold, 
The thrushes sending forth their joyous trills,-- 
Not these, not these did I at first behold! 
But seated on...Read more of this...

Playboy

by Robert William Service
 I greet the challenge of the dawn
 With weary, bleary eyes;
Into the sky so ashen wan
 I wait the sun to rise;
Then in the morning's holy hush,
 With heart of shame I hear
A robin from a lilac bush
 Pipe pure and clear.

All night in dive and dicing den,
 With wantons and with wine
I've squandered on wild, witless men
 The...Read more of this...

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