Winter Poetry Quotes & Sayings

We hold on to poetry because it lights a fire in our soul and keeps our bodies warm. — Sanober Khan

In ev'ry life there comes a winter bleak
That, in it, never yet seems life to come
And on each heart such desolation wreak
That even light from Heaven seems succumb'.
But, even as in year, doth follow Spring
As ever hath it, through all Ages past
Yet so in life a joy again will ring
And light and love will come again at last. — Stephanie Osborn

Snow harder! Snow more!
Snow blizzards galore!
I can't get enough
Of the fluffy white stuff!
Snow! Snow! Snow!
Snow a ton! Snow a heap!
Snow ten feet deep!
I wouldn't cry
If it snowed til July.
Snow! Snow! Snow! — Paul F. Kortepeter

you make autumn mist
taste like champagne

and turn winter rain
into the elixir of life itself. — Sanober Khan

THE BLUE DRESS

Her blue dress is a silk train is a river
is water seeps into the cobblestone steps of my sleep, is still raining
is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles
is goodbye in a flooded, antique room, is goodbye in a room of crystal bowls
and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the mouths
of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi river is a hallway, is leaks
like tears from windowsills of a drowned house, is windows open to waterfalls
is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a currant come to carry me in its arms
through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets
is the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a blue dress
out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea. — Saeed Jones

Poetry is no less than this:
An unexpected workplace kiss
The brandy in the spirit cage
A salve upon our wounded age
That lustful swell, the secret damp
The yellow of the attic lamp
The drifting, smoky, hazel haze
Of wooded hills on autumn days
Between the thoughts of summer lost
And anvil of the winter frost — Martin Newell

Mist lies over the river like the icy breath of winter angels. Darkness gathers round ... and it is beautiful.
Thank you for this life, this death, whatever it is you are
that makes us finally see. — Jay Woodman

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter. — Robert Hass

Spring, spring! Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1805. — George Orwell

If Springtime crawls out of the
wild mouths of flowers, then
surely, Winter crawls out of mine. — Cecilia Llompart

Thoughtful for Winter's future sorrow,
Its gloom and scarcity;
Prescient to-day, of want to-morrow,
Toiled quiet Memory.
'Tis she that from each transient pleasure
Extracts a lasting good;
'Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure
To serve for winter's food.
And when Youth's summer day is vanished,
And Age brings Winter's stress,
Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,
Life's evening hours will bless. — Charlotte Bronte

In the great cities, winter glitters with art and feasting. But poetry, the country cousin, sees only the dearth of the fields. — Mason Cooley

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs. — Roman Payne

Though the body is its
genesis, a poem is the vision of a process
Out of ceaseless motion in edgeless space
Carved in space, vision your poor eye's single
armor against winter spring summer fall — Frank Bidart

Lines for Winter

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself -
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are. — Mark Strand

The most racket time of the year for those that don't know, is the warmest of the four seasons and the winter as it is so cold and felt in your heart. — Auliq Ice

I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.
The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still. — Alexander Pushkin

Zero Holding

I grow to like the bare
trees and the snow, the bones and fur
of winter. Even the greyness
of the nunneries, they are so grey,
walled all around with grey stones -
and the snow piled up on ledges
of wall and sill, those grey
planes for holding snow: this is how
it will be, months now, all so still,
sunk in itself, only the cold alive,
vibrant, like a wire - and all the
busy chimneys - their ghost-breath,
a rumour of lives warmed within,
rising, rising, and blowing away. — Robyn Sarah

I also believe, along with Keats, that the Poetry of Earth is never dead, as long as Spring succeeds Winter, and man is there to perceive it ... And finally, I believe that because all these things are true, Ives' Unanswered Question has an answer. I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I know the answer is Yes. — Leonard Bernstein

How like a winter has been my hard spring away from you, my harp.
Psalm — David Lehman

Under the Sun of the night. The Sun in winter is addictive. And at night like it is. To be in the forest and wait for a rain of sighs. — Gwen Calvo

Of Nature itself upon the soul; the sunrise, the haze of autumn, the winter starlight seem interlocutors; the prevailing sense is that of an exposition in poetry; a high discourse, the voice of the speaker seems to breathe as much from the landscape as from his own breast; it is Nature communing with the seer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
E'en in Australia art thou still more hot
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
(Since that's your winter it don't mean a lot)
Sometimes too bright the eye of heaven shines
And bushfires start through half of New South Wales
Just so, when I do see thy bosom's lines
A fire consumes me and my breathing fails
But thine eternal summer shall not fade
This is in no way due to global warming;
Nay, from thy breasts shall verses fair be made
So damn compulsive they are habit-forming
So long as men can read and eyes can see
So long lives this, thou 34DD
(Based on an idea by William Shakespeare. I'm sure he'd agree that I've improved it) — Manny Rayner

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp
praise song for walking forward in that light. — Elizabeth Alexander

Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don't believe there's a poem in anything anymore, maybe I'll write a story. A lot of people do that when they can't seem to figure out who or what they love. It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know. — Jennifer Egan

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter ... ' — Gary Oldman

Snake's Lullaby

Brother, sister, flick your tongue
and taste the flakes of autumn sun.

Use these last few hours of gold
to travel, travel toward the cold.

Before your coils grow stiff and dull,
your heartbeat slows to winter's lull,

seek the sink of sheltered stones
that safely cradle sleeping bones.

Brother, sister, find the ways
back to the deep and tranquil bays,

and 'round each other twist and fold
to weave a heavy cloak of cold. — Joyce Sidman

What Do the Trees Know?

What do the trees know?
To bend when all the wild winds blow.
Roots are deep and time is slow.
All we grasp we must let go.

What do the trees know?
Buds can weather ice and snow.
Dark gives way to sunlight's glow.
Strength and stillness help us grow. — Joyce Sidman

This winter, there will be no voices, no glimpses, no arms.
only the fabric of poetry, to keep me warm. — Sanober Khan

I'm falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below. — Ashly Lorenzana

Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry. — Theophile Gautier

How like a winter hath my absence been
From Thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
What old December's bareness everywhere! — William Shakespeare

Love In Autumn

I sought among the drifting leaves,
The golden leaves that once were green,
To see if Love were hiding there
And peeping out between.

For thro' the silver showers of May
And thro' the summer's heavy heat,
In vain I sought his golden head
And light, fast-flying feet.

Perhaps when all the world is bare
And cruel winter holds the land,
The Love that finds no place to hide
Will run and catch my hand.

I shall not care to have him then,
I shall be bitter and a-cold --
It grows too late for frolicking
When all the world is old.

Then little hiding Love, come forth,
Come forth before the autumn goes,
And let us seek thro' ruined paths
The garden's last red rose. — Sara Teasdale

The Blues
The Blahs
The Weary Dismals
Lost in Gloom
Woesome Me's
The Eternal 3 AM of the Soul. — Vivian Swift

Winter's notion of poetry is tragedy. It knows nothing of comedy. Its laughter was frozen on its lips long ago. — William Alfred Quayle

A Lament
O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more
Oh, never more!
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more
Oh, never more! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

It came to me on a winter day.
Life so full and rich will fade.
Though I wish it were not so,
One cannot run from an expected fate.
And as a steady gust of wind fell upon my face,
It was then when I felt a chill and thus did then know;
Though I wish it were not true,
Life beautiful and sweet shall ripe and pass today.
As a petal falls from a rose so shall she blossom and shed;
Catching each falling tear, I will not leave a word unsaid. — Lee Argus

And maybe one winter it will get too cold and I'll forget about the summers we once shared. My family portrait might
fold in too, producing the same horrific effect as Jeremy's: that I, all along, had another sibling who eclipsed and became me - a prosperous sibling, an imposturous sibling, who outgrew a sense of time and place in which the three of us were everything to one another. Then only my blood in the sea could unfold and lead me back out of the origami. — Nicholaus Patnaude

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. — Rainer Maria Rilke

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. — William Shakespeare

Winter is already a lost shape, forgotten
in the ground. Instead, here is Spring
with all the grace of a woman
smoothing out her apron. — Cecilia Llompart

I waited for the seasons of love to pass from this cold winter to the summer heat I dreamed of. — Shannon L. Alder

The season was waning fast
Our nights were growing cold at last
I took her to bed with silk and song,
'Lay still, my love, I won't be long;
I must prepare my body for passion.'
'O, your body you give, but all else you ration.'
'It is because of these dreams of a sylvan scene:
A bleeding nymph to leave me serene ...
I have dreams of a trembling wench.'
'You have dreams,' she said, 'that cannot be quenched.'
'Our passion,' said I, 'should never be feared;
As our longing for love can never be cured.
Our want is our way and our way is our will,
We have the love, my love, that no one can kill.'
'If night is your love, then in dreams you'll fulfill ...
This love, our love, that no one can kill.'
Yet want is my way, and my way is my will,
Thus I killed my love with a sleeping pill. — Roman Payne

She was the kind of elegance
That would never tarnish.
A mixture of lace and mesh,
Like a classic heirloom that begged to be worn.
She was sharp intellect and quick wit.
The type of woman that spoke her mind,
Even if it shook.
(Or even if no one was listening.)
She was beautiful.
But not someone you'd see in magazines,
Her hips were too wide, her hair a mess of wispy tendrils,
(Rather, she was actually very ordinary.)
My, was she stubborn! She'd drive you mad!
(Sometimes, you'd probably call her crazy.)
But mostly, her laughter was a joyful moments.
Like a warm towel fresh from the dryer,
Or finding a twenty-dollar bill in your winter coat.
And that was the true revelation.
That magic does exist,
It ran through her like a wild, fiery current. — M.J. Abraham

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me. — Pablo Neruda

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning, but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

my love is a winter's mist
gently dissolving
through the window
at the nape of your neck. — Sanober Khan

Fishing books , lit by emotion recollected in tranquility, are like poetry.. We do not think of them as books but as men. They are our companions and not only riverside. Summer and winter they are with us and what a pleasant company they are. — Arthur Ransome

Early Summer, loveliest season,
The world is being colored in.
While daylight lasts on the horizon,
Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing.

The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.
"Welcome, summer" is what he says.
Winter's unimaginable.
The wood's a wickerwork of boughs.

Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.

Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.

Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.

A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. — Marie Heaney

Still
In the fall, I believe again in poetry
if nothing else it is
a movement of the mind.
Summers ball together
into sticky lumps,
spring evenings are glass beads from one mould
for standard-size youth,
winter a smooth heaviness, not even cold.
But the mind trembles
here, on the brink
the mind trembles
there is life, after all,
there is life, still
unbelief left. — Jaakko A. Ahokas

We went too far when we put on the fur of lynxes,
Of weasels trapped in winter when they've lost their tan;
We went too far when we let the fox assist us
To warm the hide that houses the soul of Man.

The reek of the leopard and the stink of the inky cat
Striped handsomely with white, are in the concert hall;
We sleekly writhe from under them, and are above all that;
But, the concert over, back into our pelts we crawl. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

and on the other side for lack of sun there is death perhaps
waiting for you in the uproar of a dazzling whirlwind with a thousand explosive arms
stretched toward you man flower passing from the seller's hands to
those of the lover and the loved
passing from the hand of one event to the other passive and sad parakeet
the teeth of doors are chattering and everything is done with
impatience to make you leave quickly
man amiable merchandise eyes open but tightly sealed
cough of waterfall rhythm projected in meridians and slices
globe spotted with mud with leprosy and blood
winter mounted on its pedestal of night poor night weak and sterile
draws the drapery of cloud over the cold menagerie
and holds in its hands as if to throw a ball
luminous number your head full of poetry — Tristan Tzara

Winter crescent resting in the high pine bough - you fly through the woods like a lone snow bird ... — John Geddes

Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may. — Oscar Wilde

The winter is kind and leaves red berries on the boughs for hungry sparrows ... — John Geddes

In the east a bank of cloud rises up silently like dark bread. — Margaret Atwood

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be. — Archibald MacLeish

some winters
will never melt

some summers
will never freeze

and some things will only
... live in poems. — Sanober Khan

Unforgiveness,
splinter in your breastbone, lives
there lodged like a small tree.
Withers in winter, looms
in spring. Its fruit is sweet
on first bite, then turns
into the taste of your own flesh. — Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird's throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather. — William Shakespeare

What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much more of Dryden, and Pope, and Gray! Our summer of English poetry, like the Greek and Latin before it, seems well advanced towards its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage of the season, with bright autumnal tints, but soon the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shading leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in the blasts of age. — Henry David Thoreau

Following dark winter's strife, a warm air rises, teemed with life. Birth, rebirth, as the waiting die. Old love, new love sprouts wings to fly. — Phar West Nagle

I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls. — Ashly Lorenzana

Winter Comes

Winter came too quick for me
it seems as though it was just spring.
Now summers gone and fall is here,
As the year behind just disappears. — Reed Abbitt Moore

If ever I was meant to love, my heart would beat for you,"

Need not the Raven say to Crow beneath the winter's howl.

Excerpt from "The Raven and The Crow — Angela B. Chrysler

winter plumb
not plumb — Geof Huth

Change like a tree
When it is winter
Don't complain or fear
Just wait for the spring
To bloom and sing — Debasish Mridha

Wolf Star shines on wintry high;
Gazing northward by and by.
Ice and snow on shorelines lie;
Wind and spirits haunt the sky. — F.T. McKinstry

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? — Kurt Vonnegut

The summer in you
calms the winter in me. — Saiber

Buds in the snow
- the deadly fight
between two birds — Jack Kerouac

Dream of the Tundra Swan

Dusk fell
and the cold came creeping,
cam prickling into our hearts.
As we tucked beaks
into feathers and settled for sleep,
our wings knew.

That night, we dreamed the journey:
ice-blue sky and the yodel of flight,
the sun's pale wafer,
the crisp drink of clouds.
We dreamed ourselves so far aloft
that the earth curved beneath us
and nothing sang but
a whistling vee of light.

When we woke, we were covered with snow.
We rose in a billow of white. — Joyce Sidman

A Short Testament

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches. — Anne Porter

Winter noon is on the rise. Weak suns yet alive
are as virtue to suns of that other day.
For the poor town dreams
of surrender, mother
never untender,
mother gallant
and gay. — Anne Carson

A single poem
is worth a hundred
cozy winter nights
kind words
and healed wounds. — Sanober Khan

In the distance, a Benz motor sounds. A neon light wraps itself around the driver and the winter that beats in his heart. His heart stays cold. stays melting. — Gwen Calvo

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires
And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,
Opens great gates to some forgotten year
Of elder splendours and divine desires.
Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,
Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;
A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear
Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.
It is the land where beauty's meaning flowers,
Where every unplaced memory has a source,
Where the great river Time begins its course
Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.
Dreams bring us close - but ancient lore repeats
That human tread has never soiled these streets. — H.P. Lovecraft

Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heartless. — Sara Teasdale

My art unkind, my energy all gone blind;The limbs uneven, the face shallower,Because those who I see are not seen,Those who see me are rude indeed. So blow, blow dear winter, just blow along me!
— Santosh Kalwar

Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when ... — Pablo Neruda

Isn't it true that a pleasant house makes winter more poetic, and doesn't winter add to the poetry of a house? — Charles Baudelaire

How I used to love the dark, sad evenings of late autumn and winter, how eagerly I imbibed their moods of loneliness and melancholy when wrapped in my cloak I strode for half the night through rain and storm, through the leafless winter landscape, lonely enough then too, but full of deep joy, and full of poetry which later I wrote down by candlelight sitting on the edge of my bed! — Hermann Hesse