Famous Welcoming Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Life Is A Privilege

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Life is a privilege. Its youthful days
Shine with the radiance of continuous Mays.
To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire, 
To feed with dreams the heart’s perpetual fire, 
To thrill with virtuous passions, and to glow
With great ambitions – in one hour to know
The depths and heights of feeling – God! in truth, 
How beautiful, how beautiful is youth!...Read more of this...

Fisherman jims kids

by Eugene Field
 Fisherman Jim lived on the hill
With his bonnie wife an' his little boys;
'T wuz "Blow, ye winds, as blow ye will -
Naught we reck of your cold and noise!"
For happy and warm were he an' his,
And he dandled his kids upon his knee
To the song of the sea.

Fisherman Jim would sail all day,
But, when come night, upon the sands
His...Read more of this...

An Edwardian Sunday Broomhill Sheffield

by John Betjeman
 High dormers are rising
So sharp and surprising,
And ponticum edges
The driveways of gravel;
Stone houses from ledges
Look down on ravines.
The vision can travel
From gable to gable,
Italianate mansion
And turretted stable,
A sylvan expansion
So varied and jolly
Where laurel and holly
Commingle their greens.

Serene on a Sunday
The sun glitters hotly
O'er mills that on Monday
With engines will hum.
By tramway excursion
To Dore and to Totley
In search of diversion
The...Read more of this...

The Giver of Stars

by Amy Lowell
 Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of...Read more of this...

Feb. 29 1958

by Allen Ginsberg
 Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
curtains on his windows, fog seeping in
the chimney but a nice warm house 
and an incredibly sweet hooknosed
Eliot he loved me, put me up,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I...Read more of this...

The Investiture

by Siegfried Sassoon
 GOD with a Roll of Honour in His hand 
Sits welcoming the heroes who have died, 
While sorrowless angels ranked on either side 
Stand easy in Elysium’s meadow-land. 
Then you come shyly through the garden gate,
Wearing a blood-soaked bandage on your head; 
And God says something kind because you’re dead, 
And homesick, discontented with your fate. 

If I were...Read more of this...

The Torrent

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I found a torrent falling in a glen 
Where the sun’s light shone silvered and leaf-split; 
The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it 
All made a magic symphony; but when 
I thought upon the coming of hard men
To cut those patriarchal trees away, 
And turn to gold the silver of that spray, 
I shuddered. Yet a...Read more of this...

The Visitation

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Louise Imogen Guiney)

There is a wall of flesh before the eyes
Of John, who yet perceives and hails his King.
It is Our Lady's painful bliss to bring
Before mankind the Glory of the skies.
Her cousin feels her womb's sweet burden rise
And leap with joy, and she comes forth to sing,
With trembling mouth, her words of welcoming.
She knows her hidden God,...Read more of this...

A Hymn To The Graces

by Robert Herrick
 When I love, as some have told
Love I shall, when I am old,
O ye Graces! make me fit
For the welcoming of it!
Clean my rooms, as temples be,
To entertain that deity;
Give me words wherewith to woo,
Suppling and successful too;
Winning postures; and withal,
Manners each way musical;
Sweetness to allay my sour
And unsmooth behaviour:
For I know you have the skill
Vines to prune, though...Read more of this...

when the new year

by Rg Gregory
 when the new year
came out of nowhere
and peeped into rooms
it was so flattered to find
all the tv's drinking its health
praising its innocent appearance
it responded with its warm
dark smile and went round
filling people's dry hearts
with joy

over the coming weeks though
those same tv's attacked it
criticising its puerile style
its sickly contemptible face
one year is the same as another
(they said) for the doom
time...Read more of this...

From Adonais 49-52

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 49

Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness
Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass...Read more of this...

Welsh Incident

by Robert Graves
 'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
'What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
'Nothing at all of any things like that.'
'What were they, then?'
 'All sorts of ***** things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes...Read more of this...

Draw up your chair near mine

by Emile Verhaeren
Draw up your chair near mine, and stretch your hands out towards the hearth that I may see between your fingers the old flame burning; and watch the fire quietly with your eyes that fear no light, that they may be for me still franker when a quick and flashing ray strikes to their depths, illuminating them.
Oh! how beautiful and...Read more of this...

Hughes' Voice In My Head

by Barry Tebb
 As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire

Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable

Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain

Like a tattered lacework window;

Black glisten on roof slates,

Tarmac turned to shining ice,

Blusters of naked wind whipping

The wavelets of shifting water

To imaginary floating islets

On the turbulent river

Glumly he asked, "Where are the mills?"

Knowing their goneness in his lonely heart.

"Where are the mines...Read more of this...

The Bards Of Olden Time

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Say, where is now that glorious race, where now are the singers
Who, with the accents of life, listening nations enthralled,
Sung down from heaven the gods, and sung mankind up to heaven,
And who the spirit bore up high on the pinions of song?
Ah! the singers still live; the actions only are wanting,
And to awake the glad harp, only a welcoming...Read more of this...

The Old Home Calls

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Come back to me, little dancing feet that roam the wide world o'er,
I long for the lilt of your flying steps in my silent rooms once more;
Come back to me, little voices gay with laughter and with song,
Come back, little hearts beating high with hopes, I have missed and mourned you long. 

My roses bloom in my garden walks...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 Japanese Wood-Carving

by Amy Lowell
 High up above the open, welcoming door
It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.
Once, long ago, it was a waving tree
And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves
Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.
The winter snows had bent its branches down,
The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,
Summer had run like fire through its veins,
While...Read more of this...

The Mississippi

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Where is the bard, O river grand and old,
That has thy praises sung, thy beauties told,
In measures lofty as the mighty pride
That lingers in thy deep and flowing tide?
And where the echoing measures low and sweet
That should thine own faint rippling songs repeat?
The eyes of nature ever turned on thee
Watch o'er thy restless wandering to the sea;
The rosy morn awakes...Read more of this...

At the time when I had long suffered

by Emile Verhaeren
At the time when I had long suffered and the hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as the welcoming light that shines from the windows on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings.
The brightness of your hospitable soul touched my heart lightly without wounding it, like a hand of tranquil warmth.
Then came a holy trust,...Read more of this...

Poems

by Ruth Stone
When you come back to me
it will be crow time
and flycatcher time,
with rising spirals of gnats
between the apple trees.
Every weed will be quadrupled,
coarse, welcoming
and spine-tipped.
The crows, their black flapping
bodies, their long calling
toward the mountain;
relatives, like mine,
ambivalent, eye-hooded;
hooting and tearing.
And you will take me in
to your fractal meaningless
babble; the quick of my mouth,
the madness of my tongue....Read more of this...

See they come post haste from Thanet

by Jane Austen
 See they come, post haste from Thanet,
Lovely couple, side by side;
They've left behind them Richard Kennet
With the Parents of the Bride! 
Canterbury they have passed through;
Next succeeded Stamford-bridge;
Chilham village they came fast through;
Now they've mounted yonder ridge. 

Down the hill they're swift proceeding,
Now they skirt the Park around;
Lo! The Cattle sweetly feeding
Scamper, startled at the sound! 

Run, my Brothers,...Read more of this...

the feminine touch

by Rg Gregory
 she came on a fine cool morning
the last of a course i was attending
as we crowded the pavement
waiting to be let in – hello she said 

put her arms around me – hugged me
gave me a welcoming kiss
long time she said – she looked
familiar but i did not know her

couldn’t make it before she said
trouble – now we’re splitting...Read more of this...

Song of Marions Men

by William Cullen Bryant
OUR band is few but true and tried  
Our leader frank and bold; 
The British soldier trembles 
When Marion's name is told. 
Our fortress is the good greenwood 5 
Our tent the cypress-tree; 
We know the forest round us  
As seamen know the sea. 
We know its walls of thorny vines  
Its glades of reedy grass 10...Read more of this...

Two Infants II

by Kahlil Gibran
 A prince stood on the balcony of his palace addressing a great multitude summoned for the occasion and said, "Let me offer you and this whole fortunate country my congratulations upon the birth of a new prince who will carry the name of my noble family, and of whom you will be justly proud. He is the new bearer...Read more of this...

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