Poems on Girl

There once was a girl of Lahore,
The same shape behind as before;
As no one knew where
To offer a chair,
She had to sit down on the floor.

by William Cosmo Monkhouse.

There once was a girl of Lahore,
The same shape behind as before;
As no one knew where
To offer a chair,
She had to sit down on the floor.

by William Cosmo Monkhouse.

On her beautiful face there are smiles of grace
That linger in beauty serene
And there are no pimples, encircling her dimples,
As ever, as yet, I have seen.

by J. Gordon Coogler.

There was a Young Girl of Majorca,
Whose aunt was a very fast walker;
She walked seventy miles,
And leaped fifteen stiles,
Which astonished that Girl of Majorca.

by Edward Lear.

''Y' are the maiden posies,
And so graced,
To be placed
Fore damask roses.
Yet, though thus respected,
By and by
Ye do lie,
Poor girls, neglected.'

by Louisa May Alcott.

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In hand I take this pen of mine
To write you, sweet, a valentine;
I’d take your dainty hand instead,
But—you’re a drawing—I am wed—
And that is why, you understand,
I only take my pen in hand.

by Ellis Parker Butler.

Kim, composite of all my loves,
less real than most, more real than all;
of my making, all the good and
some of the bad, yet of yourself;
sole, unique, strong, alone,
whole, independent, one: yet mine
in that you cannot be unfaithful.

by Ben Jonson.

MY girl she's airy, she's buxom and gay;
Her breath is as sweet as the blossoms in May;
A touch of her lips it ravishes quite:
She's always good natur'd, good humour'd, and free;
She dances, she glances, she smiles upon me;
I never am happy when out of her sight.

by Robert Burns.

To the maiden
The sea was blue meadow,
Alive with little froth-people
Singing.

To the sailor, wrecked,
The sea was dead grey walls
Superlative in vacancy,
Upon which nevertheless at fateful time
Was written
The grim hatred of nature.

by Stephen Crane.

I.
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.

II.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

MY dear, my dear, I know
More than another
What makes your heart beat so;
Not even your own mother
Can know it as I know,
Who broke my heart for her
When the wild thought,
That she denies
And has forgot,
Set all her blood astir
And glittered in her eyes.

by William Butler Yeats.

My bonny lass she smileth
When she my heart beguileth. Fa la.
Smile less, dear love, therefore,
And you shall love me more. Fa la.

When she her sweet eye turneth,
O how my heart doth burneth! Fa la.
Dear love, call in their light,
O else you burn me quite! Fa la.

by Thomas Morley.

I ne'er could be entirely fond
Of any maiden who's a blonde,
And no brunette that e'er I saw
Had charms my heart's whole
warmth to draw.

Yet sure no girl was ever made
Just half of light and half of shade.
And so, this happy mean to get,
I love a blonde and a brunette.

by Ambrose Bierce.

With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing
to see herself tonight.

by Countee Cullen.

THERE was a bonie lass, and a bonie, bonie lass,
And she lo'ed her bonie laddie dear;
Till War's loud alarms tore her laddie frae her arms,
Wi' mony a sigh and tear.
Over sea, over shore, where the cannons loudly roar,
He still was a stranger to fear;
And nocht could him quail, or his bosom assail,
But the bonie lass he lo'ed sae dear.

by Robert Burns.

Rosy maiden Winifred,
With a milkpail on her head,
Tripping through the corn,
While the dew lies on the wheat
In the sunny morn.
Scarlet shepherd's-weatherglass
Spreads wide open at her feet
As they pass;
Cornflowers give their almond smell
While she brushes by,
And a lark sings from the sky
‘All is well.’

by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.

by Sara Teasdale.

Ah, she was music in herself,
A symphony of joyousness.
She sang, she sang from finger tips,
From every tremble of her dress.
I saw sweet haunting harmony,
An ecstasy, an ecstasy,
In that strange curling of her lips,
That happy curling of her lips.
And quivering with melody
Those eyes I saw, that tossing head.

And so I saw what music was,
Tho' still accursed with ears of lead.

by Vachel Lindsay.

BARCAROLE ON THE STYX


Fair youth with the rose at your lips,
A riddle is hid in your eyes;
Discard conversational quips,
Give over elaborate disguise.

The rose's funeral breath
Confirms by intuitive fears;
To prove your devotion, Sir Death,
Avaunt for a dozen of years.

But do not forget to array
Your terror in juvenile charms;
I shall deeply regret my delay
If I sleep in a skeleton's arms.

by Elinor Morton Wylie.

“Now I often sit at Watty’s, when the night is very near
With a head that’s full of jingles – and the fumes of bottled beer;
For I always have a fancy that, if I am over there
When the Army prays for Watty, I’m included in the prayer.

“It would take a lot of praying, lots of thumping on the drum,
To prepare our sinful, straying, erring souls for Kingdom Come,
But I love my fellow-sinners! And I hope upon the whole,
That the Army gets a hearing when it prays for Watty’s soul.

by Henry Lawson.

Oh if I were the velvet rose
Upon the red rose vine,
I'd climb to touch his window
And make his casement fine.

And if I were the little bird
That twitters on the tree,
All day I'd sing my love for him
Till he should harken me.

But since I am a maiden
I go with downcast eyes,
And he will never hear the songs
That he has turned to sighs.

And since I am a maiden
My love will never know
That I could kiss him with a mouth
More red than roses blow.

by Sara Teasdale.

The Country Girl reflects at last –
And well in her young days –
For she is learning very fast,
The worth of City ways.
The emptiness of Tailors men
The women’s paltry strife
The Sham of ‘Smart Society’
Compared with Country Life.

The novelty wore off at length,
And flattered at the Ball,
She things of one who has the strength
And brains above them all.
She things of men who Live and Work
For sweetheart and for wife.
And though it be as far as Bourke’
Are true to Country Life

by Henry Lawson.

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

by William Butler Yeats.

FLOAT on—float on—my haunted bark,
Above the midnight tide;
Bear softly o'er the waters dark
The hopes that with thee glide.

Float on—float on—thy freight is flowers,
And every flower reveals
The dreaming of my lonely hours,
The hope my spirit feels.

Float on—float on—thy shining lamp,
The light of love, is there;
If lost beneath the waters damp,
That love must then despair.

Float on—beneath the moonlight float
The sacred billows o'er:
Ah, some kind spirit guards my boat,
For it has gained the shore.

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

She standeth silent as a thought
Too sacred to be uttered; all
Her face unfurling like a flower
That at a breath too near will shut.
Her life a little golden clock
Whose shining hands, arrested, stay
Forever at the hour of Love.


She doubts, she dares, she dreams-of what?
I ask; she, shrinking, answers not,
She swims before me, dim, a cup
Of waste, untasted tenderness.
I drink, I dread, until I seem
(Myself unto myself) to be
He whom she chose, and charmed-and missed,
On some faint Asiatic day
Of languorous summer, ages since.

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.

Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, what is the matter?
Why are you shaking so? Why do you chatter?
Because it is just a white baby you see,
And it's the black ones you like, cabbage tree?

Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, you're a strange fellow
With your green hair and your legs browny-yellow.
Wouldn't you like to have curls, dear, like me?
What! No one to make them? O poor cabbage tree!

Never mind, cabbage tree, when I am taller,
And if you grow, please, a little bit smaller,
I shall be able by that time, bay be,
To make you the loveliest curls, cabbage tree.

by Katherine Mansfield.

O, wind! what saw you in the South,
In lilied meadows fair and far?
I saw a lover kiss his lass
New-won beneath the evening star.

O, wind! what saw you in the West
Of passing sweet that wooed your stay?
I saw a mother kneeling by
The cradle where her first-born lay.

O, wind! what saw you in the North
That you shall dream of evermore?
I saw a maiden keeping tryst
Upon a gray and haunted shore.

O, wind! what saw you in the East
That still of ancient dole you croon?
I saw a wan wreck on the waves
And a dead face beneath the moon.

by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Girl of fifteen,
I see you each morning from my window
As you pass on your way to school.
I do more than see, I watch you.
I furtively draw the curtain aside.
And my heart leaps through my eyes
And follows you down the street;
Leaving me behind, half-hid
And wholly ashamed.

What holds me back,
Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,
But my forty years beyond your fifteen?
Girl of fifteen, as you pass
There passes, too, a lightning flash of time
In which you lift those forty summers off my head,
And take those forty winters out of my heart.

by James Weldon Johnson.

My love, she's but a lassie yet,
My love, she's but a lassie yet!
We'll let her stand a year or twa,
She'll no be half sae saucy yet!

I rue the day I sought her, O!
I rue the day I sought her, O!
Wha gets her need na say he's woo'd,
But he may say he has bought her, O.

Come draw a drap o' the best o't yet,
Come draw a drap o' the best o't yet!
Gae seek for pleasure whare ye will,
But here I never miss'd it yet.

We're a'dry wi' drinkin o't,
We're a'dry wi' drinkin o't!
The minister kiss't the fiddler's wife-
He could na preach for thinkin o't!

by Robert Burns.

Timid and smiling, beautiful and shy,
She drops her head at every passer bye.
Afraid of praise she hurries down the streets
And turns away from every smile she meets.
The forward clown has many things to say
And holds her by the gown to make her stay,
The picture of good health she goes along,
Hale as the morn and happy as her song.
Yet there is one who never feels a fear
To whisper pleasing fancies in her ear;
Yet een from him she shuns a rude embrace,
And stooping holds her hands before her face,--
She even shuns and fears the bolder wind,
And holds her shawl, and often looks behind.

by John Clare.

MIRANDA! mark where shrinking from the gale,
Its silken leaves yet moist with early dew,
That fair faint flower, the Lily of the vale
Droops its meek head, and looks, methinks, like you!
Wrapp'd in a shadowy veil of tender green,
Its snowy bells a soft perfume dispense,
And bending as reluctant to be seen,
In simple loveliness it sooths the sense.
With bosom bared to meet the garish day,
The glaring Tulip, gaudy, undismay'd,
Offends the eye of taste; that turns away
To seek the Lily in her fragrant shade.
With such unconscious beauty, pensive, mild,
Miranda charms--Nature's soft modest child.

by Charlotte Smith.

I know a maiden with a laughing face,
And springing feet like wings;—the light that flies
Forth from the radiant dancing of her eyes
Is full of mischievous and mirthful grace.
I know a maiden you might scarce think fair
The first time that across your path she past,
And suddenly you would be fettered fast
In the thick meshes of her chestnut hair,
And in her floating motions gay and glad,
And in the sparkling triumph of her mirth:
Like summer rain-showers twinkling to the earth,
Through sudden sun-gleams, when the wind is mad,
When all the shrubberies rock in rustling glee,
And clouds of blossoms fall from every tree.

by Frances Anne Kemble.

LIKE Clotho, at her harp she sits and weaves
With mystic fingers from the swaying strings
A melody that ever louder sings
And my charmed heart in vibrant rapture leaves
All hers! And all her quiet life receives
The peaceful melody which round her clings;
She walks amid suave strains and murmurings
That never doubt or strident discord cleaves.
And from her singing harp she bends to grant
My dear desire; and the poor monotone,
That is my life, in her glad heart she takes,
And, twining its dull phrases with her own
Full-flowing theme of life, of both she makes
The pæan of one love reverberant.

by Arthur Henry Adams.

Far in the mellow western sky,
Above the restless harbor bar,
A beacon on the coast of night,
Shines out a calm, white evening star;
But your deep eyes, my 'longshore lass,
Are brighter, clearer far.

The glory of the sunset past
Still gleams upon the water there,
But all its splendor cannot match
The wind-blown brightness of your hair;
Not any sea-maid's floating locks
Of gold are half so fair.

The waves are whispering to the sands
With murmurs as of elfin glee;
But your low laughter, 'longshore lass,
Is like a sea-harp's melody,
And the vibrant tones of your tender voice
Are sweeter far to me.

by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

There's never a delicate nurseling of the year
But our huge London hails it, and delights
To wear it on her breast or at her ear,
Her days to colour and make sweet her nights.
Crocus and daffodil and violet,
Pink, primrose, valley-lily, close-carnation,
Red rose and white rose, wall-flower, mignonette,
The daisies all-these be her recreation,
Her gaudies these! And forth from Drury Lane,
Trapesing in any of her whirl of weathers,
Her flower-girls foot it, honest and hoarse and vain,
All boot and little shawl and wilted feathers:
Of populous corners right advantage taking,
And, where they squat, endlessly posy-making.

by William Ernest Henley.

Here is a tale for men and women teachers:
There was a girl who'd ceased to be a maiden;
Who walked by night with heart like Lilith's laden;
A child of sin anathemaed of preachers.
She had been lovely once; but dye and scarlet,
On hair and face, had ravaged all her beauty;
Only her eyes still did her girl-soul duty,
Showing the hell that hounded her poor harlot!
One day a fisherman from out the river
Fished her pale body, (like a branch of willlow,
Or golden weed) self-murdered, drowned and broken:
The sight of it had made a strong man shiver;
And on her poor breast, as upon a pillow,
A picture smiled, a baby's, like some token

by Madison Julius Cawein.

Give thou a gift to me
From thy treasure-house, O sea!

Said a red-lipped laughing girl
While the summer yet was young;

And the sea laughed back and flung
At her feet a priceless pearl.

Give thou a gift to me
From thy treasure-house, O sea!

Said the maiden once again
On a night of wind and rain.

Like a ghost the moon above her
Stared through winding-sheets of cloud.

On the sand in sea-weed shroud,
Lay the pale corpse of her lover.

Which is better, gain or loss?
Which is nobler, crown or cross?

We shall know these things, maybe,
When the dead rise from the sea.

by Victor James Daley.

Seven sweet singing birds up in a tree;
Seven swift sailing ships white upon the sea;
Seven bright weather-cocks shining in the sun;
Seven slim race-horses ready for a run;
Seven gold butterflies, flitting overhead;
Seven red roses blowing in a garden bed;
Seven white lilies, with honey bees inside them;
Seven round rainbows with clouds to divide them;
Seven pretty little girls with sugar on their lips;
Seven witty little boys, whom everybody tips;
Seven nice fathers, to call little maids joys;
Seven nice mothers, to kiss the little boys;
Seven nights running I dreamt it all plain;
With bread and jam for supper I could dream it all again!

by William Brighty Rands.

Go, go, my naughty girl, and kiss
Your little sister dear;
I must not have such things as this,
And noisy quarrels here.

What! little children scratch and fight,
That ought to be so mild;
Oh! Mary, it's a shocking sight
To see an angry child.

I can't imagine, for my part,
The reason for your folly;
She did not do you any hurt
By playing with your dolly.

See, see, the little tears that run
Fast from her watery eye:
Come, my sweet innocent, have done,
'Twill do no good to cry.

Go, Mary, wipe her tears away,
And make it up with kisses:
And never turn a pretty play
To such a pet as this is.

by Ann Taylor.