Famous Weather Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Weather poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous weather poems. These examples illustrate what a famous weather poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh...Read more of this...
by
Charles Simic
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.
A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident
To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
When outside the icy rain
Comes leaping helter-skelter,
Shall I tie my restive brain
Snugly under shelter?
Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study,
When outside the winds blow strong
And the lanes are muddy?
With old wine and drowsy meats
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats?
Shall I drink with...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
'Tis Christmas weather, and a country house
Receives us: rooms are full: we can but get
An attic-crib. Such lovers will not fret
At that, it is half-said. The great carouse
Knocks hard upon the midnight's hollow door,
But when I knock at hers, I see the pit.
Why did I come here in that dullard fit?
I enter,...Read more of this...
by
Ambrose Bierce
Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud:
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns --
It's the MUD,
MUD,
MUD.
It isn't the melee we mind.
That often...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
...Read more of this...
by
Denise Duhamel
I had sex with a famous poet last night
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered
because I was married to someone else,
because I wasn't supposed to have been drinking,
because I was in fancy hotel room
I didn't recognize. I would have told you
right off this was a dream, but recently
a friend...Read more of this...
by
Susan Rich
Xhosa women in clothes too light
for the weather have brought wild flowers
and sit sloped along the Claremont road.
I see her through rolled windows,
watch her watch me to decide if I’ll pay.
It’s South Africa, after all, after apartheid;
but we’re still idling here, my car to her curb,
my automatic locks to her inadequate wage....Read more of this...
by
Helen Hunt Jackson
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When gentians roll their fingers tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.
A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.
A darkness in the weather of...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice, that thrill'd the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
Hath fir'd they blood or flush'd thy brow,
Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!"
The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed --
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
Reader! what soul that laoves a verse can see
The spring return, nor glow like you and me?
Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill,
Nor long to utter his melodious will?
This more than ever leaps into the veins,
When spring has been delay'd by winds and rains,
And coming with a burst, comes like a...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
This level reach of blue is not my sea;
Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,
Whose quiet ripples meet obediently
A marked and measured line, one after one.
This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves
Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.
I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
So let a love beat...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
GUID speed and furder to you, Johnie,
Guid health, hale han’s, an’ weather bonie;
Now, when ye’re nickin down fu’ cannie
The staff o’ bread,
May ye ne’er want a stoup o’ bran’y
To clear your head.
May Boreas never thresh your rigs,
Nor kick your rickles aff their legs,
Sendin the stuff o’er muirs an’ haggs
Like drivin wrack;
But may the tapmost grain that...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
It hain't no use to grumble and complane;
It's jest as cheap and easy to rejoice. --
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
W'y rain's my choice.
Men ginerly, to all intents --
Although they're apt to grumble some --
Puts most theyr trust in Providence,
And takes things as they come --
That is, the commonality
Of men...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.
If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Blunden
At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends,
And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends
Of all the village, two old dames that cling
As close as any trueloves in the spring.
Long, long ago they passed threescore-and-ten,
And in...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
by God, I don't know what to
do.
they're so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls
and looking at the cock very
seriously
turning it
tweeking it
examining each part
as their long hair falls on
your belly.
it's not the fucking and sucking
alone that reaches into a man
and softens him, it's the extras,
it's all the extras.
now it's raining tonight
and there's nobody
they are elsewhere
examining...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Stone
A basket of dirty clothes
spills all day long
down the mountain
beating the rocks
with a horrible washer-woman's cry.
Now two riders go by
horseback on the dirt road.
Young women talking of antique latches,
blind to the dirty linen,
smells of urine, bedsores,
bowels of old women
left on their backs,
fat and lye,
lies of doctoring men.
Strange weather mid-summer
is summer spent.
I open a book of poems.
All lies on the psalter,...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece.
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough
It cost me, what with my daft management,
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me,
And backing losers; and the local bucks
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
The weather was fine. They took away his teeth,
white & helpful; bothered his backhand;
halved his green hair.
They blew out his loves, his interests. 'Underneath,'
(they called in iron voices) 'understand,
is nothing. So there.'
The weather was very fine. They lifted off
his covers till he showed, and cringed & pled
to see himself less.
They instaleld mirrors till he flowed. 'Enough'
(murmmered they) 'if you...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple
of cats.
As knockabout clown, quick-change comedians, tight-rope
walkers and acrobats
They had extensive reputation. They made their home in
Victoria Grove--
That was merely their centre of operation, for they were
incurably given to rove.
They were very well know in Cornwall Gardens, in Launceston
Place and in Kensington...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
To-day, fair Thisbe, winsome girl!
Strays o'er the meads where daisies blow,
Or, ling'ring where the brooklets purl,
Laves in the cool, refreshing flow.
To-morrow, Thisbe, with a host
Of amorous suitors in her train,
Comes like a goddess forth to coast
Or skate upon the frozen main.
To-day, sweet posies mark her track,
While birds sing gayly in the trees;
To-morrow morn, her...Read more of this...
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