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Famous Short Yellow Poems

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


by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
there is a 
moon sole 
in the blue 
night 

             amorous of waters 
tremulous, 
blinded with silence the 
undulous heaven yearns where 

in tense starlessness 
anoint with ardor 
the yellow lover 

stands in the dumb dark 
svelte 
and 
urgent 

           (again 
love i slowly 
gather 
of thy languorous mouth the 

thrilling 
flower)



Haiku  Create an image from this poem
by Jack Kerouac
 The low yellow
 moon above the
Quiet lamplit house

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I must launch out my boat. 
The languid hours pass by on the 
shore---Alas for me! 

The spring has done its flowering and taken leave. 
And now with the burden of faded futile flowers I wait and linger. 

The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane 
the yellow leaves flutter and fall. 

What emptiness do you gaze upon! 
Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air 
with the notes of the far-away song 
floating from the other shore?

by Carol Ann Duffy
 I put two yellow peepers in an owl.
Wow. I fix the grin of Crocodile.
Spiv. I sew the slither of an eel. 
I jerk, kick-start, the back hooves of a mule.
Wild. I hold the red rag to a bull.
Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.

I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.
Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.
Splayed. I pierce the heartbeat of a quail.

I like her to be naked and to kneel.
Tame. My motionless, my living doll.
Mute. And afterwards I like her not to tell.

by Richard Brautigan
 Forget love 
I want to die 
in your yellow hair



by Carolyn Forche
languid at the edge of the sea
lays itself open to immensity
leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers
     along the road
left everything left all usual worlds behind
library, lilac, linens, litany.

La Mer  Create an image from this poem
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 threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

Jilted  Create an image from this poem
by Sylvia Plath
 My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

by Ogden Nash
 There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

by Carl Sandburg
 I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

by Oscar Wilde
 An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

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 Oscar Wilde
 The sky is laced with fitful red,
The circling mists and shadows flee,
The dawn is rising from the sea,
Like a white lady from her bed.

And jagged brazen arrows fall
Athwart the feathers of the night,
And a long wave of yellow light
Breaks silently on tower and hall,

And spreading wide across the wold
Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,
And all the chestnut tops are stirred,
And all the branches streaked with gold.

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 William Shakespeare
 COME unto these yellow sands, 
 And then take hands: 
Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd,-- 
 The wild waves whist,-- 
Foot it featly here and there; 
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. 
 Hark, hark! 
 Bow, wow, 
 The watch-dogs bark: 
 Bow, wow. 
 Hark, hark! I hear 
 The strain of strutting chanticleer 
 Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow!

by Antonio Machado
 The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"


Translated by Robert Bly

Nature  Create an image from this poem
by George Herbert
 the yellow legged plovers live at the university and stare down
pale students who dare to walk near them

we like them

they are the smartest things around with their brown caps and stiffish know-it-all walk
god, don't they look like the newly arrived so proud to be here, 

and busy, 

the plovers should have keys and a whistle on a lanyard each 
like brisk brutish phys ed teachers they probably once were

by Oscar Wilde
 To outer senses there is peace,
A dreamy peace on either hand
Deep silence in the shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows cease.

Save for a cry that echoes shrill
From some lone bird disconsolate;
A corncrake calling to its mate;
The answer from the misty hill.

And suddenly the moon withdraws
Her sickle from the lightening skies,
And to her sombre cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.

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 Stephen Crane
 Forth went the candid man
And spoke freely to the wind --
When he looked about him he was in a far strange country.

Forth went the candid man
And spoke freely to the stars --
Yellow light tore sight from his eyes.

"My good fool," said a learned bystander,
"Your operations are mad."

"You are too candid," cried the candid man,
And when his stick left the head of the learned bystander
It was two sticks.

by Arna Bontemps
 God give the yellow man
an easy breeze at blossom time.
Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover
every land and dream
of afterwhile. 

Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs
to whirl in tall buildings.
Allow them many ships at sea,
and on land, soldiers
and policemen.

For black man, God,
no need to bother more
but only fill afresh his meed
of laughter,
his cup of tears.

God suffer little men
the taste of soul's desire.

by Emily Dickinson
 A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it -- did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun --
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign --

by Ezra Pound
 Luini in porcelain! 
The grand piano 
Utters a profane 
Protest with her clear soprano. 

The sleek head emerges 
From the gold-yellow frock 
As Anadyomene in the opening 
Pages of Reinach. 

Honey-red, closing the face-oval, 
A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were 
Spun in King Minos' hall 
From metal, or intractable amber; 

The face-oval beneath the glaze, 
Bright in its suave bounding-line, as, 
Beneath half-watt rays, 
The eyes turn topaz.

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
 When wintry winds are no more heard, 
And joy's in every bosom, 
When summer sings in every bird, 
And shines in every blossom, 
When happy twilight hours are long, 
Come home, my love, and think no wrong! 

When berries gleam above the stream 
And half the fields are yellow, 
Come back to me, my joyous dream, 
The world hath not thy fellow! 
And I will make thee Queen among 
The Queens of summer and of song.

Faun  Create an image from this poem
by Sylvia Plath
 Haunched like a faun, he hooed
From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost
Until all owls in the twigged forest
Flapped black to look and brood
On the call this man made.

No sound but a drunken coot
Lurching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank
Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.

An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout
Goat-horns. Marked how god rose
And galloped woodward in that guise.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry