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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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by Yeats, William Butler
...s eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what's the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or ...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...m and spangled sky. The little boat
Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled--
As if that frail and wasted human form 
Had been an elemental god.

At midnight
The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
Among the stars like sunlight, and around
Whose cavern...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...is not May, 
That birds have flown, and trees are bare, 
That darker grows the shortening day, 
And colder blows the wintry air! 

The wrecks of passion and desire, 
The castles I no more rebuild, 
May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, 
And warm the hands that age has chilled. 

Whatever perished with my ships, 
I only know the best remains; 
A song of praise is on my lips 
For losses which are now my gains. 

Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost; 
No wi...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise; 
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes, 



XV.
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now, 
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those m...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ge; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed....Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...es by gazing; but I cannot live
"Another night, and not my passion shrive.

IX.
"Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,
"Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,
"And I must taste the blossoms that unfold
"In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time."
So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:
Great bliss was with them, and great happiness
Grew, like a lusty flower in June's caress.

X.
Parting they seem'd to trea...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...s
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrive the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Accept the bounty of thy birth;
Taste the lordship of the earth.

I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.

Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowe...Read more of this...

by Brontë, Emily
...ll! 

Like a soft air, above a sea,
Tossed by the tempest's stir;
A thaw-wind, melting quietly 
The snow-drift, on some wintry lea;
No: what sweet thing resembles thee,
My thoughtful Comforter? 

And yet a little longer speak,
Calm this resentful mood;
And while the savage heart grows meek,
For other token do not seek,
But let the tear upon my cheek 
Evince my gratitude!...Read more of this...

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

by Wilde, Oscar
...perfect wreath will twine.


V.


The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze
With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas,
And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright; -
I wandered through the wood in wild delight,
Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet,
Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay,
And small birds sang on every twining spray.
O waving trees, O forest liberty!
Within your haunts at leas...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
The wind blew east; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 
Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, 
Brought in the wood from out the doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows; 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the s...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...itation; 
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close; 
I find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.) 

The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the
 chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, 
The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread wings; 
I see in them and myself the same old law. 

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections;...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...he slightest gale 
Might whirl the leaves on high; 
And yet, though storms and blight assail, 
And hands more rude than wintry sky 
May wring it from the stem — in vain — 
To-morrow sees it bloom again! 
The stalk some spirit gently rears, 
And waters with celestial tears; 
For well may maids of Helle deem 
That this can be no earthly flower, 
Which mocks the tempest's withering hour, 
And buds unshelter'd by a bower; 
Nor droops, though spring refuse her shower, 
Nor woos th...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...ashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry ****** from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...rch,
And where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell'd twigs, fair beds of primrose lie. 
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming;
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid,
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring. 

7
In thee my spring of life hath bid the while
A rose unfold beyond the summer's best,
The mystery of joy mad...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...n, when the day began to wane, we went. 

`There rose a hill that none but man could climb, 
Scarred with a hundred wintry water-courses-- 
Storm at the top, and when we gained it, storm 
Round us and death; for every moment glanced 
His silver arms and gloomed: so quick and thick 
The lightnings here and there to left and right 
Struck, till the dry old trunks about us, dead, 
Yea, rotten with a hundred years of death, 
Sprang into fire: and at the base we found 
On eith...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...lides,
     Or heard my native Devan's tides,
     So sweetly would I rest, and pray
     That Heaven would close my wintry day!

     'Twas thus my hair they bade me braid,
          They made me to the church repair;
     It was my bridal morn they said,
          And my true love would meet me there.
     But woe betide the cruel guile
     That drowned in blood the morning smile!
     And woe betide the fairy dream!
     I only waked to sob and scream.
     X...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...Night;
Or suck the Mists in grosser Air below,
Or dip their Pinions in the painted Bow,
Or brew fierce Tempests on the wintry Main,
Or o'er the Glebe distill the kindly Rain.
Others on Earth o'er human Race preside,
Watch all their Ways, and all their Actions guide:
Of these the Chief the Care of Nations own,
And guard with Arms Divine the British Throne.

Our humbler Province is to tend the Fair,
Not a less pleasing, tho' less glorious Care.
To save the Powder f...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...he still Night, forsake the Parent-Bough,
That, in the first, grey, Glances of the Dawn,
Looks wild, and wonders at the wintry Waste.

THE Year, yet pleasing, but declining fast,
Soft, o'er the secret Soul, in gentle Gales, 
A Philosophic Melancholly breathes,
And bears the swelling Thought aloft to Heaven.
Then forming Fancy rouses to conceive,
What never mingled with the Vulgar's Dream:
Then wake the tender Pang, the pitying Tear, 
The Sigh for suffering Worth, the ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...on fire, full even to the brim,
And overflowing all the margin trim:--

Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor,
In many a mimic moon and bearded star,
O'er woods and lawns. The serpent heard it flicker
In sleep, and, dreaming still, he crept afar.
And, when the windless snow descended thicker
Than autumn-leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.

She had a boat which some say Vulcan ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs