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Famous Short Purple Poems

Famous Short Purple Poems. Short Purple Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Purple short poems


by Christina Rossetti
 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.

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast, 
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover, 
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover 
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast. 
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover 
Sleeping at last.



by Federico García Lorca
 But like love
the archers
are blind

Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm
lily.

The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.

Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!

by Pablo Neruda
 When I cannot look at your face 
I look at your feet. 
Your feet of arched bone, 
your hard little feet. 
I know that they support you, 
and that your sweet weight 
rises upon them. 
Your waist and your breasts, 
the doubled purple 
of your nipples, 
the sockets of your eyes 
that have just flown away, 
your wide fruit mouth, 
your red tresses, 
my little tower. 
But I love your feet 
only because they walked 
upon the earth and upon 
the wind and upon the waters, 
until they found me.

by Sarojini Naidu
 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.


Weavers, weaving at fall of night, 
Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . . 
Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green, 
We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.


Weavers, weaving solemn and still, 
What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . . 
White as a feather and white as a cloud, 
We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.



by Emily Dickinson
 A lane of Yellow led the eye
Unto a Purple Wood
Whose soft inhabitants to be
Surpasses solitude
If Bird the silence contradict
Or flower presume to show
In that low summer of the West
Impossible to know --

by Antonio Machado
 Who set, between those rocks like cinder,
to show the honey of dream,
that golden broom,
those blue rosemaries?
Who painted the purple mountains
and the saffron, sunset sky?
The hermitage, the beehives,
the cleft of the river
the endless rolling water deep in rocks,
the pale-green of new fields,
all of it, even the white and pink
under the almond trees!

by Alexander Pushkin
 You saw perched on a cliff a maid,
Her raiment white above the breakers,
When the mad sea reared up and played
Its whips of spray on coastal acres
And now and then the lightnings flush,
And purple gleams upon her hover,
And fluttering up in swirling rush,
The wind rides in her airy cover?
Fair is the sea in gales arrayed,
The heavens drained of blue and flashing,
But fairer on her cliff the maid
Than storms and skies and breakers crashing.

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread, 
Every day and every night, 
Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white. 

Do not chew the hemlock rank,
Growing on the weedy bank; 
But the yellow cowslips eat; 
They perhaps will make it sweet. 

Where the purple violet grows,
Where the bubbling water flows, 
Where the grass is fresh and fine, 
Pretty cow, go there to dine.

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

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated -- dying --
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

by Emily Dickinson
 Always Mine!
No more Vacation!
Term of Light this Day begun!
Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects --
Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first.

by William Butler Yeats
 This great purple butterfly,
In the prison of my hands,
Has a learning in his eye
Not a poor fool understands.

Once he lived a schoolmaster
With a stark, denying look;
A string of scholars went in fear
Of his great birch and his great book.

Like the clangour of a bell,
Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet.
That is how he learnt so well
To take the roses for his meat.

by Sylvia Plath
 Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed-out,
The color of pearl.

In a pit of a rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow thw whole sea's pivot.

The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.

by Gelett Burgess
 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!

by Emily Dickinson
 Revolution is the Pod
Systems rattle from
When the Winds of Will are stirred
Excellent is Bloom

But except its Russet Base
Every Summer be
The Entomber of itself,
So of Liberty --

Left inactive on the Stalk
All its Purple fled
Revolution shakes it for
Test if it be dead.

by Kathleen Raine
 Primrose, anemone, bluebell, moss
Grow in the Kingdom of the Cross

And the ash-tree's purple bud
Dresses the spear that sheds his blood.

With the thorns that pierce his brow
Soft encircling petals grow

For in each flower the secret lies
Of the tree that crucifies.

Garden by the water clear
All must die who enter here!

by Emily Dickinson
 This -- is the land -- the Sunset washes --
These -- are the Banks of the Yellow Sea --
Where it rose -- or whither it rushes --
These -- are the Western Mystery!

Night after Night
Her purple traffic
Strews the landing with Opal Bales --
Merchantmen -- poise upon Horizons --
Dip -- and vanish like Orioles!

by Stephen Crane
 God lay dead in heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.
But of all sadness this was sad --
A woman's arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast.

by George William Russell
 WITH eyes all untroubled she laughs as she passes,
 Bending beneath the creel with the seaweed brown,
Till evening with pearl dew dims the shining grasses
 And night lit with dreamlight enfolds the sleepy town.


Then she will wander, her heart all a laughter,
 Tracking the dream star that lights the purple gloom.
She follows the proud and golden races after,
 As high as theirs her spirit, as high will be her doom.

by Emily Dickinson
 I'll tell you how the Sun rose --
A Ribbon at a time --
The Steeples swam in Amethyst --
The news, like Squirrels, ran --
The Hills untied their Bonnets --
The Bobolinks -- begun --
Then I said softly to myself --
"That must have been the Sun"!
But how he set -- I know not --
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while --
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray --
Put gently up the evening Bars --
And led the flock away --

by Claude McKay
 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, 
Toying and turning slowly in her lair. 
Oh, I would never ask for more of thee, 
Thou art so clean in passion and so fair. 
Enough! if thou wilt ask no more of me!

by Emily Dickinson
 Me, change! Me, alter!
Then I will, when on the Everlasting Hill
A Smaller Purple grows --
At sunset, or a lesser glow
Flickers upon Cordillera --
At Day's superior close!

Bones  Create an image from this poem
by Carl Sandburg
 Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer's plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.
Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,
Purple fish play hide-and-seek,
And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,
Down on the floors of salt and wet.
 Sling me . . . under the sea.

by Emily Dickinson
 Who never lost, are unprepared
A Coronet to find!
Who never thirsted
Flagons, and Cooling Tamarind!

Who never climbed the weary league --
Can such a foot explore
The purple territories
On Pizarro's shore?

How many Legions overcome --
The Emperor will say?
How many Colors taken
On Revolution Day?

How many Bullets bearest?
Hast Thou the Royal scar?
Angels! Write "Promoted"
On this Soldier's brow!

by Li Po
 Where crowns a purple haze
Ashimmer in sunlight rays
The hill called Incense-Burner Peak, from far
To see, hung o'er the torrent's wall,
That waterfall
Vault sheer three thousand feet, you'd say
The Milky Way
Was tumbling from the high heavens, star on star


Book: Reflection on the Important Things