ARTICLE
Winter Poems
From the archive: perfect for long nights by the fire. ChristmasA Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
Out with the Old, In with the New
Year’s End by Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey
A Pumpkin at New Year’s by Sandra McPherson
Heads were rolling down the highway in high slat trucks.
I knew it was time to buy you and found you,
The Shortest Month
February by Margaret Atwood
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
February Evening in New York by Denise Levertov
As the stores close, a winter light
opens air to iris blue,
Late February by Ted Kooser
The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
Walking in the Snow
Crossing the Square by Grace Schulman
Squinting through eye-slits in our balaclavas,
we lurch across Washington Square Park
Winter Love
The Curtain by Hayden Carruth
Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing
We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sun of corpse-flesh.
The Snow is Deep on the Ground by Kenneth Patchen
The snow is deep on the ground.
Always the light falls
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.
Sonnet XCVII: How like a Winter hath my Absence been by William Shakespeare
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
Winter Love by Linda Gregg
I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
Snowy Wonder
Lines: The Cold Earth Slept Below by Percy Shelley
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
The Blizzard of the Self
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
Blizzard by William Carlos Williams
Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
Ice by Gail Mazur
In the warming house, children lace their skates,
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.
White Darkness by Virginia Hamilton Adair
Whether this is time or snow, passing
Through the night, earthward,
A Winter Daybreak Above Venice by James Wright
The night’s drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Winter Tales
The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
Midwinter by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
And again, at dusk, I find the madwoman,
Crouched on the stone bridge by the cornfields,
Winter is Coming
Beyond the Red River by Thomas McGrath
The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
After Apple Picking by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
Narcolepsy by Ann Lauterbach
Comes sarcastic November in mummy garb, hauling,
same old same old what laid bare
COMMENTS (8)
On December 22, 2006 at 12:54 pm alyssa wrote:
Thank you for your generosity in providing these poems for public use. I am forming a collection of poems for my family and my father, who is ill, to read during these holidays. I will share some of the pieces you have made available here with them. And they lead me to want to read more of some of the authors...so, I hope we all benefit.
On January 20, 2007 at 10:25 am Alissa duBois wrote:
A search for poems to express this soft gray day winter day led me to the pleasure of this site, and the additional coincidence of a single comment from a woman with a name so similiar to mine. A chance encounter of words and needs. Thank you for the pleasures, Alissa
On February 18, 2007 at 2:13 pm KdKa wrote:
Great selection, but what about Wallace Stevens' Snowman? That's the poem I think of when I've been cold a long time.
On August 3, 2007 at 4:39 pm Asher Bass Proschansky wrote:
Relief
by Asher Proschansky
Oh wondrous practitioners
Who ply the same trade
year in and out
And never tire
Would that I be
Cunning, subtle, and smooth
Crafty and ultimately purposeful
As you
But before I settle down
I move or am moved around
On to something new
And I no long kid myself
It is not in the cards
My fate to roam
And help ignite a new spark
Whose full fire
Will warm others, not me,
who maintain the fire
And grow it
Laboring over it as though
It be an eternal flame
while I’m being ushered
quietly out of the circus
tent’s back door and into
the coldest of nights,
wondering why and wherein lies
my next mission,
searching for it among the stars
and in the howl of the midnight wind
and in the faces of established craftsmen
but lest I deceive you
I am the nomad
and the chilling fresh air
at the circus tent’s back door
is my greatest relief
a catalyst should not
get consumed by the reaction
even if he at times entertains
wishful but false notions
that he is a necessary ingredient
On September 6, 2007 at 1:54 pm Elaine Clevinger wrote:
I'm looking for a poem When the Snow is on the Ground ....A Mother Goose Thyme. I'm having difficulty locating the poem. Can you assist me as I'm needing the poem for my classroom. Thanks.....
On January 4, 2008 at 8:18 am amanda wrote:
this is a great poetry site
On January 24, 2008 at 4:54 pm patricia wrote:
Am trying to find a poem that my mother taught me as a child.I don't know who it is by and all I can remember is;
On moony nights when dogs bark shrill
Down the valley and up the hill
There's one who's angry to behold,
The Moon,so unafraid and cold.
Who makes the Earth as bright as day
But yet unhappy, dead and grey.
Another in his strawy lair,says,
"Who's a howling over there?"
"By Heaven I will stop him soon,
from interfering with our Moon".
So back he barks with throat upthrown,
"You leave our Moon,our Moon alone".
And other distant dogs respond,
Beyond the fields,beyond,beyond.
Noone but me seems to have heard of it ,so any help would be greatly appreciated.
On August 8, 2008 at 9:36 pm Brent wrote:
Patricia - it is a Frances Cornford poem. I memorized it in grade 4, 1975. Still remember most of it.
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