Famous Warming Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Bad Monk

by Charles Baudelaire
 On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.

In the times when Christ was seeded around,
More than one illustrious monk, today unknown
Took for a studio the funeral grounds
And glorified Death as the one way shown.

—My soul is a tomb, an empty confine
Since eternity...Read more of this...

When A Woman Loves A Man

by David Lehman
 When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston,...Read more of this...

The Truce of the Bear

by Rudyard Kipling
 Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go
By the Pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in --
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless -- toothless, broken of speech,
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over...Read more of this...

Long Distance II

by Tony Harrison
 Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time 
to clear away her things and look alone 
as though his still...Read more of this...

Let my first Knowing be of thee

by Emily Dickinson
 Let my first Knowing be of thee
With morning's warming Light --
And my first Fearing, lest Unknowns
Engulf thee in the night --...Read more of this...

The Birth

by Paul Muldoon
 Seven o'clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year.
No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs,
a sterile cap and mask,
and taken my place at the head of the table

than the windlass-woman ply their shears
and gralloch-grub
for a footling foot, then, warming to their task,
haul into the inestimable

realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears
and...Read more of this...

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

by Adrienne Rich
 I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around...Read more of this...

Highland Hospitality

by Robert William Service
 Unto his housemaid spoke the Laird:
"Tonight the Bishop is our guest;
The spare room must be warmed and aired:
To please him we will do our best.
A worthy haggis you must make,
And serve a bowl of barley bree;
We must be hearty for the sake
Of Highland Hospitality.

The feast was set, the candles lit,
The Bishop came with modest mien,
And (one surmised) was glad...Read more of this...

470. Song—She says she loes me best of a'

by Robert Burns
 SAE flaxen were her ringlets,
 Her eyebrows of a darker hue,
Bewitchingly o’er-arching
 Twa laughing e’en o’ lovely blue;
Her smiling, sae wyling.
 Wad make a wretch forget his woe;
What pleasure, what treasure,
 Unto these rosy lips to grow!
Such was my Chloris’ bonie face,
 When first that bonie face I saw;
And aye my Chloris’ dearest charm—
 She says, she lo’es me...Read more of this...

Punch Song (To be sung in the Northern Countries)

by Friedrich von Schiller
 On the mountain's breezy summit,
Where the southern sunbeams shine,
Aided by their warming vigor,
Nature yields the golden wine.

How the wondrous mother formeth,
None have ever read aright;
Hid forever is her working,
And inscrutable her might.

Sparkling as a son of Phoebus,
As the fiery source of light,
From the vat it bubbling springeth,
Purple, and as crystal bright;

And rejoiceth all the senses,
And in every sorrowing breast
Poureth...Read more of this...

Tulips

by Sylvia Plath
 The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the...Read more of this...

Go Little Book - The Ancient Phrase

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 GO, little book - the ancient phrase
And still the daintiest - go your ways,
My Otto, over sea and land,
Till you shall come to Nelly's hand.

How shall I your Nelly know?
By her blue eyes and her black brow,
By her fierce and slender look,
And by her goodness, little book!

What shall I say when I come there?
You shall speak her soft and...Read more of this...

A precious -- mouldering pleasure -- tis

by Emily Dickinson
 A precious -- mouldering pleasure -- 'tis --
To meet an Antique Book --
In just the Dress his Century wore --
A privilege -- I think --

His venerable Hand to take --
And warming in our own --
A passage back -- or two -- to make --
To Times when he -- was young --

His quaint opinions -- to inspect --
His thought to...Read more of this...

Saturday At The Canal

by Gary Soto
 I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night. The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand. The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us talking...Read more of this...

Little Polly Flinders

by Mother Goose
Little Polly Flinders
Sat among the cinders
    Warming her pretty little toes;
Her mother came and caught her,
Whipped her little daughter
    For spoiling her nice new clothes....Read more of this...

The Sun Rising

by John Donne
 Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour 'prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so...Read more of this...

The Empty Quatrain

by Henry Van Dyke
 A flawless cup: how delicate and fine
The flowing curve of every jewelled line!
Look, turn it up or down, 't is perfect still,--
But holds no drop of life's heart-warming wine....Read more of this...

A Pastiche For Eve

by Weldon Kees
 Unmanageable as history: these
Followers of Tammuz to the land
That offered no return, where dust
Grew thick on every bolt and door. And so the world
Chilled, and the women wept, tore at their hair.
Yet, in the skies, a goddess governed Sirius, the Dog,
Who shines alike on mothers, lesbians, and whores.

What are we governed by? Dido and Carrie
Chapman Catt arrange themselves as...Read more of this...

While Gazing on the Moons Light

by Thomas Moore
 While gazing on the moon's light, 
A moment from her smile I turn'd, 
To look at orbs that, more bright, 
In lone and distant glory burn'd. 
But too far 
Each proud star, 
For me to feel its warming flame; 
Much more dear 
That mild sphere, 
Which near our planet smiling came;
Thus, Mary, be but thou my own, 
While brighter...Read more of this...

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

by Amy Lowell
 After a Print by George Cruikshank

It was a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled...Read more of this...

The Owl

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his...Read more of this...

Patches

by Robert William Service
 Mother focused with a frown
The part of me where I sit down.
Said she: "Your pants are wearing through;
Let me sew on a patch for you."
And so she did,--of azure blue.
My britches were of sober grey,
And when I went to school next day,
The fellows said: "Excuse our smile:
We saw your patch 'way off a mile."
Said I: "Sure, it's the latest...Read more of this...

Blinks through Blood-shot Walks

by T Wignesan
When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half awakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while
Exchanges a casual passing...Read more of this...

Beauty is a waving tree

by Hafez
Beauty is a waving tree,
Beauty is a flower,
Beauty is a grassy lea
& a shady bower,
Beauty is the verdant Spring
In our hearts awakening.

Beauty is a summer sun
Warming all the land,
Whose full bounty doth o’errun
More than our demand;
Spreadeth Beauty her kind feast
Lavishly for man & beast.

Autumn’s quiet hast thou too,
Beauty, who canst feed
Every craving, known or new
Of the spirit’s need,
Laying up a...Read more of this...

Intramuros

by Roddy Lumsden
 She lies in her well-kept apartment
above the spick and span cathedral
in the heart of the walled city
above Manila Bay and she dreams 
of the great, ruined cities of Europe:
Vienna crumbling into the ocean,
Warsaw in a plague of frogs and flies
and London, where all the black men
have learned to talk like white men,
where all the white men have begun
to talk...Read more of this...

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