Famous Yearly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Prosopopoia: or Mother Hubbards Tale

by Edmund Spenser
 By that he ended had his ghostly sermon,
The fox was well induc'd to be a parson,
And of the priest eftsoons gan to inquire,
How to a benefice he might aspire.
"Marry, there" (said the priest) "is art indeed:
Much good deep learning one thereout may read;
For that the ground-work is, and end of all,
How to obtain a beneficial.
First, therefore, when ye have...Read more of this...

The Trees

by Philip Larkin
 The trees are coming into leaf 
Like something almost being said; 
The recent buds relax and spread, 
Their greenness is a kind of grief. 

Is it that they are born again 
And we grow old? No, they die too, 
Their yearly trick of looking new 
Is written down in rings of grain. 

Yet still the unresting castles thresh 
In...Read more of this...

A Panegyric To Sir Lewis Pemberton

by Robert Herrick
 Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but...Read more of this...

Harp Song of the Dane Women

by Rudyard Kipling
 What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in--
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you--
Out on...Read more of this...

Song of the Lotos-Eaters

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
THERE is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 
Or night-dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; 
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 5 
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; 
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 
Here are cool mosses deep, 
And...Read more of this...

In Memoriam Mae Noblitt

by A R Ammons
 This is just a place:
we go around, distanced, 
yearly in a star's

atmosphere, turning 
daily into and out of 
direct light and

slanting through the 
quadrant seasons: deep 
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing 
us loose: we look up 
or out so high, sight's

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs 
and oceans: water...Read more of this...

Stroke

by Heather McHugh
 The literate are ill-prepared for this
snap in the line of life:
the day turns a trick 
of twisted tongues and is
untiable, the month by no mere root
moon-ridden, and the yearly eloquences yielding more
than summer's part of speech times four. We better learn

the buried meaning in the grave: here
all we see of its alphabet is tracks
of predators, all we know of...Read more of this...

Christmass

by John Clare
 Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is...Read more of this...

Psalm 107 last part

by Isaac Watts
 Colonies planted; or, Nations blessed and punished.
A Psalm for New England.

When God, provoked with daring crimes,
Scourges the madness of the times,
He turns their fields to barren sand,
And dries the rivers from the land.

His word can raise the springs again,
And make the withered mountains green;
Send showery blessings from the skies,
And harvests in the desert rise.

[Where nothing dwelt but beasts of...Read more of this...

Lifes Scars

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 They say the world is round, and yet
I often think it square,
So many little hurts we get
From corners here and there.
But one great truth in life I've found,
While journeying to the West-
The only folks who really wound
Are those we love the best. 

The man you thoroughly despise
Can rouse your wrath, 'tis true;
Annoyance in your heart will rise
At things mere...Read more of this...

Holy-Cross Day

by Robert Browning
 ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO
ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON
IN ROME.

[``Now was come about Holy-Cross Day,
and now must my lord preach his first sermon
to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in tine
merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to
speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous
table here in Rome should be, though but
once yearly, cast...Read more of this...

That Half-Crown Sweep

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The run of Billabong-go-dry 
Is just beyond Lime Burner's Gap; 
Its waterhole and tank supply 
Is excellent -- upon the map. 
But lacking nature's liquid drench, 
The station staff are wont to try 
With "Bob-in Sweeps" their thirst to quench, 
Or nearly quench, at Bong-go-dry. 
The parson made five-yearly rounds 
That soil of arid souls to delve, 
He wrote,...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...

The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

Late Leaves

by Walter Savage Landor
 THE leaves are falling; so am I; 
The few late flowers have moisture in the eye; 
 So have I too. 
Scarcely on any bough is heard 
Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird 
 The whole wood through. 

Winter may come: he brings but nigher 
His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire 
 Where old friends meet. 
Let him; now...Read more of this...

Spring

by John Gould Fletcher
 To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under...Read more of this...

Those Annual Bills

by Mark Twain
 These annual bills! these annual bills!
How many a song their discord trills
Of "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
Since I was skinned by last year's lot!

Those joyous beans are passed away;
Those onions blithe, O where are they?
Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS
Your shades troop back in annual bills!

And so 'twill be when I'm aground
These yearly duns will still go round,
While other bards,...Read more of this...

Heritage

by Countee Cullen
 What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive...Read more of this...

November

by William Cullen Bryant
 The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.
For days the shepherds in the fields may be,
Nor mark a patch of sky— blindfold they trace,
The plains, that seem...Read more of this...

Here Is A Wound That Never Will Heal I Know

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
Its friendly weathers down, far Underneath
Shall be such bitterness of an old...Read more of this...

Mr Bleaney

by Philip Larkin
 'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or...Read more of this...

Jubal and Tubal Cain

by Rudyard Kipling
 Canadian
Jubal sang of the Wrath of God
 And the curse of thistle and thorn--
But Tubal got him a pointed rod,
 And scrabbled the earth for corn.
 Old--old as that early mould,
 Young as the sprouting grain-- 
 Yearly green is the strife between
 Jubal and Tubal Cain!

Jubal sang of the new-found sea,
 And the love that its waves divide--
But...Read more of this...

I Hoed and Trenched and Weeded

by A E Housman
 I hoed and trenched and weeded, 
And took the flowers to fair: 
I brought them home unheeded; 
The hue was not the wear. 

So up and down I sow them 
For lads like me to find, 
When I shall lie below them, 
A dead man out of mind. 

Some seed the birds devour, 
And some the season mars, 
But...Read more of this...

Words For A Trumpet Chorale Celebrating The Autumn

by Delmore Schwartz
 "The trumpet is a brilliant instrument." - Dietrich Buxtehude


Come and come forth and come up from the cup of
Your dumbness, stunned and numb, come with
The statues and believed in,
Thinking this is nothing, deceived. 

 Come to the summer and sun,
 Come see upon that height, and that sum
 In the seedtime of the winter's absolute,
 How yearly the phoenix...Read more of this...

An Idyll of Dandaloo

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 On Western plains, where shade is not, 
'Neath summer skies of cloudless blue, 
Where all is dry and all is hot, 
There stands the town of Dandaloo -- 
A township where life's total sum 
Is sleep, diversified with rum. 
Its grass-grown streets with dust are deep; 
'Twere vain endeavour to express 
The dreamless silence of its sleep, 
Its wide,...Read more of this...

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