Category

Pastoral

A poem that retreats from the trappings of modernity to the imagined virtues and romance of nature and rural life.

Showing 1-20 of 104
  • Poem

    From the magazine:Lost Quails in an Easter Pastoral

    By Hershman John
    Last Easter, I gave my mother-in-law a large, brown, simple ceramic
                Navajo water pot, shiny with pine…
  • Poem
    By Chris Hoshnic
    Dá’ák’eh     ahooł’níi niłch’i  doo   naadą́ą́.
    Naadą́   niłch’i
    Doo     Sodizin.
    Niłchi     adiin             goo
    Sodizin bee ’adoolnii…
  • Glossary Terms
    Classically, an idyll is a pastoral poem about shepherds. In more contemporary contexts, an idyll is often seen as similar to a pastoral or descriptive poem depicting a peaceful, idealized, rural scene or setting. It often celebrates the beauty of nature, rural life, and the harmony that can be found between people and the natural world. Idylls typically evoke a sense of tranquility and nostalgia, as well as a longing for a simpler, rural way of life.Well-known historical examples of the idyll include…
  • Glossary Terms
    A poem that retreats from the trappings of modernity to the imagined virtues and romance of nature and rural life.
  • Poem
    By J. V. Cunningham
    I am no shepherd of a child’s surmises.
    I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises,

    Thirst where the grasses burn in early May
    And thistle, mustard, and the wild oat stay.

    There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat
    Grasshoppers...
  • Poem
    By Ted Hughes
    I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
    Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

    Not a leaf, not a bird,—
    A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

    Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
    But the valleys were draining...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Arcadia

    By James Longenbach
    1


    Just as there were reeds along the riverbank,
    Just as there were clouds
    Above my head, my lute was lying beside me on the grass.

    I placed the little finger of my right hand on the soundboard,
    Just below the strings.
    Not the tip...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Reverie in Open Air

    By Rita Dove
    I acknowledge my status as a stranger:   
    Inappropriate clothes, odd habits   
    Out of sync with wasp and wren.   
    I admit I don’t know how   
    To sit still or move without purpose.   
    I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.   

    But this lawn has been leveled for...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Blue Juniata

    By Malcolm Cowley
    Farmhouses curl like horns of plenty, hide   
    scrawny bare shanks against a barn, or crouch   
    empty in the shadow of a mountain. Here   
    there is no house at all—

    only the bones of a house,
    lilacs growing beside them,
    roses in clumps between them,   
    honeysuckle over;
    a gap...
  • Poem
    By James Tate
    Do you have adequate oxen for the job?
    No, my oxen are inadequate.
    Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job?
    I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately.
    I'll see if I can get them for...
  • Poem
    By Louise Glück
    Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken.
    I don’t see anything objectively.

    I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
    When I speak passionately,
    that’s when I’m least to be trusted.

    It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised
    for my...
  • Poem
    By Allen Grossman
    At that time the sheep called to him
    From their wormy bellies, as they
    Lay bloating in the field. He was
    A pastoralist,
    The schoolhouse hardly handsize
    In a sky of flax.

                                 He began
    Then to keep the sayings of man
    (The left hand writing; the right...
  • Poem
    By Percy Bysshe Shelley
    From the forests and highlands
             We come, we come;
    From the river-girt islands,
             Where loud waves are dumb
                    Listening to my sweet pipings.
    The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
             The bees on the bells of thyme,
    The...
  • Poem
    By Maureen N. McLane
    and sex once
    a day a week a
    month a year
    goes by and one
    hyacinth only
    returns, frail
    blue against the militant
    grass that does cover all
    in the residential
    precinct of the
    New England town
    its roads long paved
    old Indian trails the steps
    they took toward
    us the first
    exchange for a...
  • Poem
    By Elizabeth Bishop
    Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
    like a dog looking for a place to sleep in,
    listen to it growling.

    Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
    lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
    in dark, coarse-fibred families,

    where occasionally a heron...
  • Poem
    By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

          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
    To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
    To sit...
  • Poem
    By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
    There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
    Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
    The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
    Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
    And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
    The lawns...
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