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Famous Short Twilight Poems

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


by Matsuo Basho
In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus . . .
A lovely sunset



by Oscar Wilde
 Out of the mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!

by Sylvia Plath
 the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

by Billy Jno Hope
 folly cracked the mirror
a soul gasping wound
voodoo induced vertigo
psychedelic blackouts
in the cracks
between art and blasphemy
paralyzing paranoia of becoming
the vision that heals
cast shadows to douse the flames
starved enlightenment
i betrayed my muse
i wallowed in nostalgic fumes
blood clots from yesteryears insurrection mad dissident desire found wanting a rage dissipating in the twilight of friendship a facade evolved.

Hymn  Create an image from this poem
by Edgar Allan Poe
 At morn- at noon- at twilight dim-
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe- in good and ill-
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!



by Siegfried Sassoon
 For Morn, my dome of blue, 
For Meadows, green and gay, 
And Birds who love the twilight of the leaves, 
Let Jesus keep me joyful when I pray.
For the big Bees that hum And hide in bells of flowers; For the winding roads that come To Evening’s holy door, May Jesus bring me grateful to his arms, And guard my innocence for evermore.

by George (Lord) Byron
 It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour -- when lover's vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word;
And gentle winds and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet, And in the sky the stars are met, And on the wave is deeper blue, And on the leaf a browner hue, And in the Heaven that clear obscure So softly dark, and darkly pure, That follows the decline of day As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

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.

by Christina Rossetti
 When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

by Wang Wei
 High beyond the thick wall a tower shines with sunset 
Where peach and plum are blooming and the willowcotton flies.
You have heard in your office the court-bell of twilight; Birds find perches, officials head for home.
Your morning-jade will tinkle as you thread the golden palace; You will bring the word of Heaven from the closing gates at night.
And I should serve there with you; but being full of years, I have taken off official robes and am resting from my troubles.

by Robert Graves
 Desire, first, by a natural miracle
United bodies, united hearts, blazed beauty;
Transcended bodies, transcended hearts.
Two souls, now unalterably one In whole love always and for ever, Soar out of twilight, through upper air, Let fall their sensous burden.
Is it kind, though, is it honest even, To consort with none but spirits- Leaving true-wedded hearts like ours In enforced night-long separation, Each to its random bodily inclination, The thread of miracle snapped?

by James A Emanuel
 To every man
His treehouse,
A green splice in the humping years,
Spartan with narrow cot
And prickly door.
To every man His twilight flash Of luminous recall of tiptoe years in leaf-stung flight; of days of squirm and bite that waved antennas through the grass; of nights when every moving thing was girlshaped, expectantly turning.
To every man His house below And his house above— With perilous stairs Between.

by Thomas Hood
 It was not in the Winter 
Our loving lot was cast; 
It was the time of roses— 
We pluck'd them as we pass'd! 

That churlish season never frown'd 
On early lovers yet: 
O no—the world was newly crown'd 
With flowers when first we met! 

'Twas twilight, and I bade you go, 
But still you held me fast; 
It was the time of roses— 
We pluck'd them as we pass'd!

Hesper  Create an image from this poem
by Henry Van Dyke
 Her eyes are like the evening air,
Her voice is like a rose,
Her lips are like a lovely song,
That ripples as it flows,
And she herself is sweeter than
The sweetest thing she knows.
A slender, haunting, twilight form Of wonder and surprise, She seemed a fairy or a child, Till, deep within her eyes, I saw the homeward-leading star Of womanhood arise.

by John Masefield
 SILENT are the woods, and the dim green boughs are 
Hushed in the twilight: yonder, in the path through 
The apple orchard, is a tired plough-boy 
Calling the cows home.
A bright white star blinks, the pale moon rounds, but Still the red, lurid wreckage of the sunset Smoulders in smoky fire, and burns on The misty hill-tops.
Ghostly it grows, and darker, the burning Fades into smoke, and now the gusty oaks are A silent army of phantoms thronging A land of shadows.

by Charlotte Bronte
 Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.
Profoundly still the twilight air, Lifeless the landscape; so we deem Till like a phantom gliding near A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone, A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies, And one star, large and soft and lone, Silently lights the unclouded skies.

by James Joyce
 The twilight turns from amethyst 
To deep and deeper blue, 
The lamp fills with a pale green glow 
The trees of the avenue.
The old piano plays an air, Sedate and slow and gay; She bends upon the yellow keys, Her head inclines this way.
Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands That wander as they list -- - The twilight turns to darker blue With lights of amethyst.

by Kalidasa
A mid-day plunge will temper heat;
The breeze is rich with forest flowers;
To slumber in the shade is sweet;
And charming are the twilight hours.

by James Joyce
  Love Came to Us


 Love came to us in time gone by 
When one at twilight shyly played 
And one in fear was standing nigh -- - 
For Love at first is all afraid.
We were grave lovers.
Love is past That had his sweet hours many a one; Welcome to us now at the last The ways that we shall go upon.

by George William Russell
 FAR up the dim twilight fluttered
 Moth-wings of vapour and flame:
The lights danced over the mountains,
 Star after star they came.
The lights grew thicker unheeded, For silent and still were we; Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see.

by Rabindranath Tagore
 There is a looker-on who sits behind my eyes.
I seems he has seen things in ages and worlds beyond memory's shore, and those forgotten sights glisten on the grass and shiver on the leaves.
He has seen under new veils the face of the one beloved, in twilight hours of many a nameless star.
Therefore his sky seems to ache with the pain of countless meetings and partings, and a longing pervades this spring breeze, -the longing that is full of the whisper of ages without beginning.

by Donald Justice
 We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

by Louise Gluck
 As I perceive
I am dying now and know
I will not speak again, will not
survive the earth, be summoned
out of it again, not
a flower yet, a spine only, raw dirt
catching my ribs, I call you,
father and master: all around,
my companions are failing, thinking
you do not see.
How can they know you see unless you save us? In the summer twilight, are you close enough to hear your child's terror? Or are you not my father, you who raised me?

by Emily Dickinson
 I'd rather recollect a setting
Than own a rising sun
Though one is beautiful forgetting --
And true the other one.
Because in going is a Drama Staying cannot confer To die divinely once a Twilight -- Than wane is easier --

by Emily Dickinson
 As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away --
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy --
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon --
The Dusk drew earlier in --
The Morning foreign shone --
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone --
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry