Famous Wintry Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Book of Urizen: Chapter VIII

by William Blake
 1. Urizen explor'd his dens
Mountain, moor, & wilderness,
With a globe of fire lighting his journey
A fearful journey, annoy'd
By cruel enormities: forms 
Of life on his forsaken mountains 

2. And his world teemd vast enormities
Frightning; faithless; fawning
Portions of life; similitudes
Of a foot, or a hand, or a head 
Or a heart, or an eye, they swam mischevous
Dread terrors! delighting in...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Hesperus

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his month,
And he watched how the...Read more of this...

Over the wintry

by Natsume Soseki
Over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow....Read more of this...

The Daguerreotype

by William Vaughn Moody
 This, then, is she, 
My mother as she looked at seventeen, 
When she first met my father. Young incredibly, 
Younger than spring, without the faintest trace 
Of disappointment, weariness, or tean 
Upon the childlike earnestness and grace 
Of the waiting face. 
Those close-wound ropes of pearl 
(Or common beads made precious by their use) 
Seem heavy for so slight...Read more of this...

Memorial Verses

by Matthew Arnold
 Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw 
Of...Read more of this...

The Den o Fowlis

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Den o' Fowlis, most charming to be seen
In the summer season, when your trees are green;
Especially in the bright and clear month of June,
When your flowere and shrubberies are in full bloom. 

There visitors can enjoy themselves during the holidays,
And be shaded by the trees from the sun's rays,
And admire the beautiful primroses that grow there;
And inhale their...Read more of this...

Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos

by George (Lord) Byron
 If, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

If, when the wintry tempest roared,
He sped to Hero, nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current poured,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think...Read more of this...

Presentiment

by Charlotte Bronte
 ' SISTER, you've sat there all the day,
Come to the hearth awhile;
The wind so wildly sweeps away,
The clouds so darkly pile.
That open book has lain, unread,
For hours upon your knee;
You've never smiled nor turned your head
What can you, sister, see ? ' 

' Come hither, Jane, look down the field;
How dense a mist creeps on !
The path, the hedge,...Read more of this...

Ode Written On The First Of January

by Robert Southey
 Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!

Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
For well the funeral song
Befits this solemn hour.

But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
This consecrated day,
To Mirth and Indolence.

Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant...Read more of this...

In January

by Ted Kooser
 Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles....Read more of this...

Juvenilia An Ode to Natural Beauty

by Alan Seeger
 There is a power whose inspiration fills 
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, 
Like airy dew ere any drop distils, 
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught 
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole 
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. 
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, 
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, 
When...Read more of this...

La Mer

by Oscar Wilde
 A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom; -
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin...Read more of this...

My Aviary

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 THROUGH my north window, in the wintry weather,--
My airy oriel on the river shore,--
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.

The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.

I see the solemn gulls in...Read more of this...

Poor Marguerite

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Swift, o'er the wild and dreary waste
A NUT-BROWN GIRL was seen to haste;
Wide waving was her unbound hair,
And sun-scorch'd was her bosom bare;
For Summer's noon had shed its beams
While she lay wrapp'd in fev'rish dreams;
While, on the wither'd hedge-row's side,
By turns she slept, by turns she cried,
"Ah ! where lies hid the balsam sweet,
"To heal the wounds of MARGUERITE?"

Dark...Read more of this...

The Kiss

by Edith Nesbit
 The snow is white on wood and wold,
The wind is in the firs,
So dead my heart is with the cold,
No pulse within it stirs,
Even to see your face, my dear,
Your face that was my sun;
There is no spring this bitter year,
And summer's dreams are done.

The snakes that lie about my heart
Are in their wintry sleep;
Their fangs no more deal...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 2

by Alexander Pope
 Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain, 
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively...Read more of this...

Ode Written On The First Of December

by Robert Southey
 Tho' now no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze
That lingers o'er the green wood shade,
I love thee Winter! well.

Sweet are the harmonies of Spring,
Sweet is the summer's evening gale,
Pleasant the autumnal winds that shake
The many-colour'd grove.

And pleasant to the sober'd soul
The silence of the wintry scene,
When Nature shrouds her in her trance

Not undelightful now to roam
The...Read more of this...

How still how happy!

by Emily Brontë
 How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge -
The changing heaven the breezy weather, 

More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears. 

How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...

Massachusetts To Virginia

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay:
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel,

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;
And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
A...Read more of this...

Ah! would there were a place of rest from pain,

by Omar Khayyam
Ah! would there were a place of rest from pain,
Which we, poor pilgrims, might at last attain,
And after many thousand wintry years,
Renew our life, like flowers, and bloom again!...Read more of this...

188. Song—Strathallan's Lament

by Robert Burns
 THICKEST 1 night, o’erhang my dwelling!
 Howling tempests, o’er me rave!
Turbid torrents, wintry swelling,
 Roaring by my lonely cave!


Crystal streamlets gently flowing,
 Busy haunts of base mankind,
Western breezes softly blowing,
 Suit not my distracted mind.


In the cause of Right engaged,
 Wrongs injurious to redress,
Honour’s war we strongly waged,
 But the Heavens denied success.
Ruin’s wheel has driven o’er us,
 Not...Read more of this...

Morning Express

by Siegfried Sassoon
ALONG the wind-swept platform pinched and white 
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light 
Offering themselves to morn¡¯s long slanting arrows.
The train¡¯s due; porters trundle laden barrows.
The train steams in volleying resplendent clouds 5
Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about 
Scared people hurry storming the doors in crowds.
The officials seem to waken with a shout 
Resolved to hoist and plunder;...Read more of this...

The Friendly Meeting

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 Lovingly I'll sing of love;
Ever comes she from above.

THE FRIENDLY MEETING.

IN spreading mantle to my chin conceald,

I trod the rocky path, so steep and grey,

Then to the wintry plain I bent my way
Uneasily, to flight my bosom steel'd.

But sudden was the newborn day reveal'd:

A maiden came, in heavenly bright array,

Like the fair creatures of the poet's lay
In realms of...Read more of this...

Early Spring

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees....Read more of this...

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