Explore Poems: Pastoral

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Sound of Wave in Channel: 7.21
By Stephen Ratcliffe
light coming into fog against invisible
top of ridge, blue jay on redwood fence
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

starting from this concept,
anything that is not

on...
Nature
Animals
Landscapes & Pastorals
Stanza Forms
Mixed
Meters
Free Verse
Techniques
Imagery
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 4 more
A river slips
By Cole Swensen
a river slips
in shifting leaves
sifting. a river sifts
and falls to pieces
in which not seen
...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Seas, Rivers, & Streams
Living
Time & Brevity
Verse Forms
Meters
Free Verse
Techniques
Imagery
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 5 more
Montana Pastoral
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...
Nature
Stanza Forms
Couplet
Types/Modes
Pastoral
Anxiety & Insecurity
Melancholy & Despair
The Horses
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...
Nature
Animals
Landscapes & Pastorals
Stars, Planets, Heavens
Seas, Rivers, & Streams
Social Commentaries
Living
The Mind
Memory & Nostalgia
Time & Brevity
Stanza Forms
Couplet
Meters
Free Verse
Techniques
Consonance
Imagery
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 12 more
Watershed
By Tracy K. Smith
200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed
...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Trees & Flowers
Seas, Rivers, & Streams
Social Commentaries
Cities & Urban Life
Money & Economics
Town & Country Life
Living
Death
Activities
Sports & Outdoor Activities
Arts & Sciences
Sciences
Meters
Free Verse
Types/Modes
Elegy
Pastoral
+ 12 more
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...
Social Commentaries
Gender & Sexuality
Living
Life Choices
The Mind
Memory & Nostalgia
Arts & Sciences
Music
Mythology & Folklore
Greek & Roman Mythology
Types/Modes
Pastoral
Prose Poem
Series/Sequence
Disappointment
+ 8 more
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...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Techniques
Metaphor
Types/Modes
Pastoral
Anxiety & Insecurity
Gratitude
Joy & Contentment
+ 2 more
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...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Trees & Flowers
Social Commentaries
History & Politics
Living
Time & Brevity
Relationships
Family & Ancestors
Arts & Sciences
Music
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 6 more
The Workforce
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...
Social Commentaries
Class
Activities
Jobs & Working
Arts & Sciences
Humor & Satire
Types/Modes
Pastoral
The Untrustworthy Speaker
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...
Love
Break-ups & Vexed Love
Realistic & Complicated
Living
Sorrow & Grieving
Relationships
Home Life
Techniques
Confessional
Types/Modes
Dramatic Monologue
Pastoral
+ 5 more
A Pastoral
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...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Religion
The Spiritual
Arts & Sciences
Poetry & Poets
Types/Modes
Pastoral
Grief
Melancholy & Despair
+ 3 more
Hymn of Pan
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...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Mythology & Folklore
Greek & Roman Mythology
Stanza Forms
Rhymed Stanza
Types/Modes
Pastoral
Contact
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...
Love
Nature
Spring
Landscapes & Pastorals
Types/Modes
Pastoral
Little Exercise
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...
Nature
Animals
Landscapes & Pastorals
Trees & Flowers
Seas, Rivers, & Streams
Weather
Stanza Forms
Tercet
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 3 more
from The Princess: Come down, O Maid
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...
Love
Romantic Love
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Relationships
Mythology & Folklore
Fairy-tales & Legends
Meters
Blank Verse
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 4 more
Oenone
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...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Mythology & Folklore
Greek & Roman Mythology
Heroes & Patriotism
Meters
Blank Verse
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 2 more
II [What is this tint that in the shrill cress]
By Lisa Robertson
What is this tint that in the shrill cress
Will never cease to trouble us and in the fields
Gives prick and praise for Beauty?
And said birds that feed on berries
Are pervious—and shook the snow from his thighs.
I thought of nothing carefully,...
Love
Desire & Passion
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Living
Life Choices
The Body
The Mind
Memory & Nostalgia
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 4 more
Sharks' Teeth
By Kay Ryan
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in...
Nature
Social Commentaries
Cities & Urban Life
Meters
Free Verse
Techniques
Metaphor
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 2 more
Vespers ["Once I believed in you..."]
By Louise Glück
Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.

By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist
exclusively in warmer climates,
in fervent...
Nature
Trees & Flowers
Religion
Faith & Doubt
Living
Relationships
Home Life
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 2 more
A Magic Mountain
By Czeslaw Milosz
Translated By Czeslaw Milosz
I don’t remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years
      ago or three.
The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before.
Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive,
Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed,
For...
Nature
Landscapes & Pastorals
Weather
Arts & Sciences
Poetry & Poets
Techniques
Allusion
Types/Modes
Pastoral
+ 2 more

Explore Poems: Pastoral

Sound of Wave in Channel: 7.21

A river slips

Montana Pastoral

The Horses

Watershed

Arcadia

Reverie in Open Air

Blue Juniata

The Workforce

The Untrustworthy Speaker

A Pastoral

Hymn of Pan

Contact

Little Exercise

from The Princess: Come down, O Maid

Oenone

II [What is this tint that in the shrill cress]

Sharks' Teeth

Vespers ["Once I believed in you..."]

A Magic Mountain

p1Arcadia

p1Reverie in Open Air

p1Blue Juniata

p1Sharks' Teeth

Arcadia

Reverie in Open Air

Blue Juniata

Sharks' Teeth