Famous Warm Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Song of the Lotos-Eaters

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
THERE is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 
Or night-dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; 
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 5 
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; 
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 
Here are cool mosses deep, 
And...Read more of this...

Improvisations: Light And Snow

by Conrad Aiken
 I

The girl in the room beneath 
Before going to bed 
Strums on a mandolin 
The three simple tunes she knows. 
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! 
When she has finished them several times 
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails 
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.

II

I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...

Twas warm -- at first -- like Us --

by Emily Dickinson
 'Twas warm -- at first -- like Us --
Until there crept upon
A Chill -- like frost upon a Glass --
Till all the scene -- be gone.

The Forehead copied Stone --
The Fingers grew too cold
To ache -- and like a Skater's Brook --
The busy eyes -- congealed --

It straightened -- that was all --
It crowded Cold to Cold --
It multiplied...Read more of this...

The Last Parade

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 With never a sound of trumpet, 
With never a flag displayed, 
The last of the old campaigners 
Lined up for the last parade. 

Weary they were and battered, 
Shoeless, and knocked about; 
From under their ragged forelocks 
Their hungry eyes looked out. 

And they watched as the old commander 
Read out to the cheering men 
The Nation's thanks, and...Read more of this...

A Song: When June is Past the Fading Rose

by Thomas Carew
 Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose; 
For in your beauty's orient deep 
These flowers as in their causes, sleep. 

Ask me no more whither doth stray 
The golden atoms of the day; 
For in pure love heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

Ask me no more whither doth...Read more of this...

Implications of One Plus One

by Marge Piercy
 Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging, 
continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten 
veins of fire deep in the earth and raising 
tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra. 

Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's 
airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses, 
our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering 
like fog over warm water, thickening to rain. 

Sometimes...Read more of this...

O burden not thyself with drudgery,

by Omar Khayyam
O burden not thyself with drudgery,
Lord of white silver and red gold to be;
But feast with friends, ere this warm breath of thine
Be chilled in death, and earthworms feast on thee....Read more of this...

Rumors from an Aeolian Harp

by Henry David Thoreau
 There is a vale which none hath seen, 
Where foot of man has never been, 
Such as here lives with toil and strife, 
An anxious and a sinful life. 
There every virtue has its birth, 
Ere it descends upon the earth, 
And thither every deed returns, 
Which in the generous bosom burns. 

There love is warm, and youth is...Read more of this...

A Warm Day In Winter

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
"Sunshine on de medders,
Greenness on de way;
Dat 's de blessed reason
I sing all de day."
Look hyeah! Whut you axin'?
Whut meks me so merry?
'Spect to see me sighin'
W'en hit's wa'm in Febawary?
'Long de stake an' rider
Seen a robin set;
W'y hit 'mence a-thawin',
Groun' is monst'ous wet.
Den you stan' dah wond'rin',
Lookin' skeert an' stary;
I's a right to caper
W'en hit's wa'm in Febawary.
Missis gone...Read more of this...

A Leaf

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve,
That you were married, or soon to be.
I have not thought of you, I believe,
Since last we parted. Let me see:
Five long Summers have passed since then –
Each has been pleasant in its own way –
And you are but one of a dozen men
Who have played the suitor a Summer day.

But, nevertheless, when...Read more of this...

On a Lady Throwing Snow-Balls at Her Lover

by Christopher Smart
 [From the Latin of Petronious Ascanius.]

When, wanton fair, the snowy orb you throw, 
I feel a fire before unknown in snow. 
E'en coldest snow I find has pow'r to warm 
My breast, when flung by Julia's lovely arm. 
T'elude love's pow'rful arts I strive in vain, 
If ice and snow can latent fires contain. 
These frolics leave: the force...Read more of this...

To Robert Nichols

by Robert Graves
 (From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer to a letter saying: “I am just finishing my ‘Faun’s Holiday.’ I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.”)


Here by a snowbound river 
In scrapen holes we shiver, 
And like old bitterns we 
Boom to you plaintively: 
Robert, how can I rhyme
Verses for your desire— 
Sleek fauns...Read more of this...

The Stolen Child

by William Butler Yeats
 Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand. 

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The...Read more of this...

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood

by William Cullen Bryant
 Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 
No school of long experience, that the world 
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 
And view the haunts of nature. The calm shade 
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the...Read more of this...

Horace Lib. I Epist. IX Imitated

by Matthew Prior
 [To the right honourable Mr. Harley]


Dear Dick, how e'er it comes into his head,
Believes, as firmly as he does his creed,
That you and I, sir, are extremely great;
Though I plain Mat, you minister of state.
One word from me, without all doubt, he says,
Would fix his fortune in some little place.
Thus better than myself, it seems, he knows
How far my...Read more of this...

The Power Of Song

by Friedrich von Schiller
 The foaming stream from out the rock
With thunder roar begins to rush,--
The oak falls prostrate at the shock,
And mountain-wrecks attend the gush.
With rapturous awe, in wonder lost,
The wanderer hearkens to the sound;
From cliff to cliff he hears it tossed,
Yet knows not whither it is bound:
'Tis thus that song's bright waters pour
From sources never known before.

In union with those dreaded...Read more of this...

Back to the Border

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Alas! alas! this wasted Night
   With all its Jasmin-scented air,
   Its thousand stars, serenely bright!
   I lie alone, and long for you,
   Long for your Champa-scented hair,
   Your tranquil eyes of twilight hue;

   Long for the close-curved, delicate lips
   —Their sinuous sweetness laid...Read more of this...

Warm in her Hand these accents lie

by Emily Dickinson
 Warm in her Hand these accents lie
While faithful and afar
The Grace so awkward for her sake
Its fond subjection wear --...Read more of this...

The Shivering Beggar

by Robert Graves
 NEAR Clapham village, where fields began, 
Saint Edward met a beggar man. 
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled, 
The old man trembled for the fierce cold. 

Saint Edward cried, “It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin! 
An old gray-beard and the frost so keen: 
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.” 

He stripped...Read more of this...

I Love To Be Warm By The Red Fireside

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I LOVE to be warm by the red fireside,
I love to be wet with rain:
I love to be welcome at lamplit doors,
And leave the doors again....Read more of this...

It Is Much

by Carl Sandburg
 Women of night life amid the lights
Where the line of your full, round throats
Matches in gleam the glint of your eyes
And the ring of your heart-deep laughter:
 It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.

Women of night life along the shadows,
Lean at your throats and skulking the walls,
Gaunt as a ***** worn to the bone,
Under the paint...Read more of this...

My Love Was Warm

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 MY love was warm; for that I crossed
The mountains and the sea,
Nor counted that endeavour lost
That gave my love to me.

If that indeed were love at all,
As still, my love, I trow,
By what dear name am I to call
The bond that holds me now...Read more of this...

The Snow Fairy

by Claude McKay
 I 

Throughout the afternoon I watched them there, 
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky, 
Whirling fantastic in the misty air, 
Contending fierce for space supremacy. 
And they flew down a mightier force at night, 
As though in heaven there was revolt and riot, 
And they, frail things had taken panic flight 
Down to the calm earth seeking peace and...Read more of this...

Nilsson

by Sidney Lanier
 A rose of perfect red, embossed
With silver sheens of crystal frost,
Yet warm, nor life nor fragrance lost.

High passion throbbing in a sphere
That Art hath wrought of diamond clear,
-- A great heart beating in a tear.

The listening soul is full of dreams
That shape the wondrous-varying themes
As cries of men or plash of streams.

Or noise of summer rain-drops round
That patter daintily...Read more of this...

The Warm and the Cold

by Ted Hughes
 Freezing dusk is closing
 Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
 That can no longer feel.
 But the carp is in its depth
 Like a planet in its heaven.
 And the badger in its bedding
 Like a loaf in the oven.
 And the butterfly in its mummy
 Like a viol in its case.
...Read more of this...

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