Famous Wakening Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wakening poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wakening poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wakening poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sarojini Naidu
Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
THE READERS of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long; another Spring
Shall deck her for men's eyes---but not for thine---
Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
And the vexed ore no mineral of power;
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief
Till...Read more of this...
by
Francis Thompson
To Monica
Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth, red like a lion's, it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine
When the Eastern conduits...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXXII. Come 'l candido piè per l' erba fresca. HER WALK, LOOKS, WORDS, AND AIR. As o'er the fresh grass her fair form its sweetAnd graceful passage makes at evening hours,Seems as around the newly-wakening flowersFound virtue issue from her delicate feet.Love, which in true hearts only has his seat,Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
To find the hidden place
Longing freely to explore
Break obstacles and recognize
Invisible sparks emanating
From the deserved discovery
Of nothing between us
Shining longing only
Wakening stars in the Garden
Witnessing the birth of new landscapes,
Future cities and temples
Hearing new stories, falling
From the fountains of the secret art
All old sounds and colors reviving
And...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.
Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the dreaming...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something.
The west wind is dead, the waves
Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons
Whole hillsides burst aglow
With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,
And every pool was rimmed
With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.
Now tall and slender suddenly
The stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks,
The pencilled ones...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
When through life unblest we rove,
Losing all that made life dear,
Should some notes we used to love,
In days of boyhood, meet our ear,
Oh! how welcome breathes the strain!
Wakening thoughts that long have slept,
Kindling former smiles again
In faded eyes that long have wept.
Like the gale, that sighs along
Beds of oriental flowers,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXI. L' aura gentil che rasserena i poggi. JOURNEYING TO VISIT LAURA, HE FEELS RENEWED ARDOUR AS HE APPROACHES. The gale, that o'er yon hills flings softer blue,And wakes to life each bud that gems the glade,[Pg 176]I know; its breathings such impression made,Wafting me fame, but wafting...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I
I took the clock down from the shelf;
"At eight," said I, "I shoot myself."
It lacked a minute of the hour,
And as I waited all a-cower,
A skinful of black, boding pain,
Bits of my life came back again. . . .
"Mother, there's nothing more to eat --
Why don't you go out on the street?
Always you sit and cry and cry;
Here at...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
O splendid, spacious day, irradiate
With flaming dawns, when earth shows yet more fair
Her ardent beauty, proud, without alloy;
And wakening life breathes out her perfume rare
So potently, that, all intoxicate,
Our ravished being rushes upon joy!
Be thanked, mine eyes, that now
Ye still shine clear beneath my furrowed brow
To see afar, the light vibrating there;
And you my hands, that in the sun yet...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oh, there are times
When all this fret and tumult that we hear
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear
His own dull chimes.
Ding dong! ding dong!
The world is in a simmer like a sea
Over a pent volcano, -- woe is me
All the day long!
From crib to shroud!
Nurse o'er our cradles...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE VI. Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi. TO RIENZI, BESEECHING HIM TO RESTORE TO ROME HER ANCIENT LIBERTY. Spirit heroic! who with fire divineKindlest those limbs, awhile which pilgrim holdOn earth a Chieftain, gracious, wise, and bold;Since, rightly, now the rod of state is thineRome and her wandering children to...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Je suis la Charité.")
{February, 1837.}
"Lo! I am Charity," she cries,
"Who waketh up before the day;
While yet asleep all nature lies,
God bids me rise and go my way."
How fair her glorious features shine,
Whereon the hand of God hath set
An angel's attributes divine,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA I. A qualunque animale alberga in terra. NIGHT BRINGS HIM NO REST. HE IS THE PREY OF DESPAIR. To every animal that dwells on earth,Except to those which have in hate the sun,Their time of labour is while lasts the day;But when high heaven relumes its thousand stars,This seeks his...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the leveled scene.
I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
A deep, delicious hush in earth and sky --
A gracious lull--since, from its wakening,
The morn has been a feverish, restless thing
In which the pulse of Summer ran too high
And riotous, as though its heart went nigh
To bursting with delights past uttering:
Now--as an o'erjoyed child may cease to sing
All falteringly at play, with...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
I bend to the ground
to catch
something whispered,
urgent, drifting
across the ditches.
The heaviness of
flies stuttering
in orbit, dirt
ripening, the sweat
of eggs.
There are
small streams
the width ofa thumb
running in the villages
of sheaves, whole
eras of grain
wakening on
the stalks, a roof
that breathes over
my head.
Behind...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Comrades, up! Let us row down stream in this first rare dawnlight,
While far in the clear north-west the late moon whitens and wanes;
Before us the sun will rise, deep-purpling headland and islet,
It is well to meet him thus, with the life astir in our veins!
The wakening birds will sing for us in the woods wind-shaken,
And the solitude of...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
STATELY, kindly, lordly friend,
Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn
Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
On the golden page I read.
All your wondrous wealth of hair,
Dark and fair,
Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
As the clouds and beams of night,
Pays my reverent hand's caress
Back with friendlier gentleness.
Dogs may fawn on all and some
As they come;
You, a friend of loftier...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Strike the gay harp! see the moon is on high,
And, as true to her beam as the tides of the ocean,
Young hearts, when they feel the soft light of her eye,
Obey the mute call, and heave into motion.
Then, sound notes -- the gayest, the lightest,
That ever took wing, when heaven look'd brightest
Again! Again!...Read more of this...
by
Emma Lazarus
I
A dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
My lady in her white silk shawl
Is like a lily dim,
Within the twilight of the room
Enthroned and kind and prim.
My lady! Pale gold is her hair.
Until she smiles her face
Is pale with far Hellenic moods,
With thoughts that find no place
In our harsh village of the West
Wherein she lives of late,
She's distant as far-hidden stars,
And cold — (almost!) — as...Read more of this...
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