Yellow poems add a sunny burst of energy, often symbolizing warmth, joy, and optimism. It’s the color of sunflowers swaying in the breeze and the golden glow of a perfect summer day. Poets use yellow to paint vivid pictures, evoking feelings of happiness, hope, and enlightenment. It’s the hue of laughter, ripe fruit, and the first light of dawn, infusing verses with a sense of brightness and positivity. Whether describing fields of daffodils or the delicate wings of a butterfly, yellow in poetry brings a cheerful and lively vibe, making verses come alive with the essence of sunshine. Keep in mind, yellow poems can also be used to subvert typical expectations, even used to describe illness. Color in poetry is a complicated tool. Here are some examples of yellow poems.
Ode to a Lemon by Pablo Neruda
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love’s
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree’s yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree’s planetarium
Read the poem here.
Sonnet by C.W. Bryan
The air is sick with pallid yellow light
A jaundiced fog swimming throughout the night
Across a lonely road of ashen gray
I am there caught, alone, and swept away
In sudden water, scared, I fight the tides
For fear of learning where the fog resides
No man should live to see that port, behold
The fragments of his dream, too brash, too bold
Of visions painted in strokes of ‘could be’
A dream, in secret, bestowed unto me
By a man who knew what it means to fight
Do not go gently into that good night
Despite the current, I kick and I thrash
Fighting water, fighting fate, breaking glass
Japanese Varnish Tree by C.W. Bryan
Midsummer—quite yellow by the bloom,
With a finer texture than in winter.
You may think it is the heat
Flattening the panicles with sunlight,
Opening veins to purge their frictionless blood.
Be wary of easy answers.
I am afraid of anything frictionless.
How much uncertainty can be tolerated
For the sake of a finer texture?
Winter comes hard, the yellows fade to brown.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Yellow Goblins by Fanny Howe
Yellow goblins
and a god I can swallow:
Eyes in the evergreens
under ice.
Interior monologue
and some voice.
Weary fears, the
usual trials and
a place to surmise
blessedness.
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