Best Purple Poems

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
...

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
...

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
...

I dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-
...

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
...

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
...

Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
...

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
...

But like love
the archers
are blind
...

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
...

I am a little purple flower
My petals so extremely small
I 've stood in the grass for many an hour
Enjoying a breeze most of all
...

Just beyond the sunset
Someone waits for me
Just beyond the sunset
Lies my destiny
...

Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
...

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
...

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
...

WEAVERS, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
...

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
...

Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
...

Thistle and darnell and dock grew there,
And a bush, in the corner, of may,
On the orchard wall I used to sprawl
In the blazing heat of the day;
...

So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
...

Let us be thankful, Lord, for little things -
The song of birds, the rapture of the rose;
Cloud-dappled skies, the laugh of limpid springs,
Drowned sunbeams and the perfume April blows;
...

204

A slash of Blue—
A sweep of Gray—
...

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
...

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
...

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
...

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
...

IS it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
...

AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
...

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
...

In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
...

Sleep, darling
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is
...

Young palmer sun, that to these shining sands
Pourest thy pilgrim's tale, discoursing still
Thy silver passages of sacred lands,
With news of Sepulchre and Dolorous Hill,
...

What do you sell O ye merchants ?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
...

A man leaves the world
and the streets he lived on
grow a little shorter.
...

I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
...

Far are the shades of Arabia,
Where the Princes ride at noon,
'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,
Under the ghost of the moon;
...

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
...

THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
...

As the dim twilight shrouds
The mountain's purple crest,
And Summer's white and folded clouds
...

Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
...

...

Purple,
Purple,
Twilight
Sky light.
...

The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
...

If I were Lord of Tartary,
Myself, and me alone,
My bed should be of ivory,
Of beaten gold my throne;
...

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
...

The dayseye hugging the earth
in August, ha! Spring is
gone down in purple,
weeds stand high in the corn,
...

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
...

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!
...

<i>1856</i>

Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
...

Once a great guitar contortionist
alluded to the Axis
He provided peculiar clues
to a mystery that still hadn't been solved
...

A mysterious naked man has been reported
on Cranston Avenue. The police are performing
the usual ceremonies with coloured lights and sirens.
Almost everyone is outdoors and strangers are conversing
...

122

A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
...

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.
...

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
...

Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
...

Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth--nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
...

EYES ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms aflaming with fire
Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens that glimmer around them in fountains of light;
O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music that cleaveth the stars like a wail of desire,
And beautiful dancers with houri-like faces bewitch the voluptuous watches of night.
...

Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks,
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders,
purple neon flawless glistening
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast
...

My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear- a
care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings
...

A walk in the park is a pleasure to do,
When a visit to one is long overdue,
To take the dogs too, is really great,
For the exercise is just first rate.
...

Sick 'I cannot go to school today,'
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps....
...

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
...

663

Again—his voice is at the door—
I feel the old Degree—
...

839

Always Mine!
No more Vacation!
...

The seasons send their ruin as they go,
For in the spring the narciss shows its head
Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red,
And in the autumn purple violets blow,
...

I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the post,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
...

Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.
...

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
...

The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
...

UPON thy purple mat thy body bare
Is fine and limber like a tender tree.
The motion of thy supple form is rare,
Like a lithe panther lolling languidly,
...

I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
...

I
In the purple light, heavy with redwood, the slopes drop seaward,
Headlong convexities of forest, drawn in together to the
...

And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
...

Silver dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted.
...

Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
...

Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead
Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown was bred
Anything more bright.
...

I lie here thinking of you:---

the stain of love
is upon the world!
...

In Memoriam: Robert Lowell

I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
...

Pillowed and hushed on the silent plain,
Wrapped in her mantle of golden grain,

Wearied of pleasuring weeks away,
...

140

An altered look about the hills—
A Tyrian light the village fills—
...

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
...

COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
...

How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flower,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!
...

Cyprian, in my dream
the folds of a purple
kerchief shadowed
your cheeks --- the one
...

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dy'd
The azure flow'rs that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclin'd,
Gazed on the lake below.
...

Talking with my beloved in New York
I stood at the outdoor public telephone
in Mexican sunlight, in my purple shirt.
Someone had called it a man/woman
...

' die, I die!' the Mother said,
'My children die for lack of bread.
What more has the merciless Tyrant said?'
The Monk sat down on the stony bed.
...

Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
...

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
...

271

A solemn thing—it was—I said—
A woman—white—to be—
...

Life is a bright, long star boulevard,
Where you get good, when you work hard.

But Life is not a fantasy,
...

CUTE ONE, BE MINE, LOVE ME
Valentine’s day brings them out
BE TRUE, KISS ME, HUG ME,
Sayings candy Sweethearts shout
...

When daffodils danced in Chuck Hatch, and white clouds
Drew their own shadowy purple across the hills,
Darkening the valley where the small flint church
The Saxon built stood roofless to the sun,
...

He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,
...

...

The sun rises in south east corner of things
To look on the tall house of the Shin
For they have a daughter named Rafu,
...

All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
...

The balance between left and right
Where guilty extremes grow contrite...
Is the spirit a purple thing?
...

XXXVIII

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
...

Thee the ancientest peer, Duke of Burgundy, rose from the monarch's right hand, red as wines
From his mountains; an odor of war, like a ripe vineyard, rose from his garments,
...