1. Adventure
2. Animals
3. Beauty
4. Bereavement
5. Birds
6. Carpe Diem
7. Children
8. Dance
9. Death
10. Descriptions
11. Faith & Religion
12. Family & Home
13. Flowers
14. Food & Drink
15. Friendship
16. Garden
17. Heroes
18. History
19. Holidays
20. Humor
21. Images
22. Imagination
23. Inspiration
24. Life
25. Love
26. Machines
27. Marriage
28. Memorials
29. Memory
30. Months
31. Music
32. Mystery
33. Nature
34. Parodies
35. Parting
36. Patriotism
37. People
38. Places
39. Poetry
40. Protest
41. Rhyme & Rhythm
42. Satire
43. School
44. Sea & Sailing
45. Seasons
46. Song
47. Sport
48. Stages of Life
49. Story Telling
50. Time
51. Time of Day
52. Travel
53. War
54. Weather

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Subject Index - Descriptions

So how to describe descriptions? Simply said, most poetry is descriptive in nature. Poets often elaborate on one or more essential qualities of something that, in their eyes, makes it unique, or dear to them, or a great metaphor for something else.

Sometimes the poet is trying to describe something more ephemeral - not something concrete or easy to grasp: an impression, the feel of a place, a sense of wonder - or a sense of forebodeing. The poem is generally designed to accentuate that impression, through its sounds (consonance and assonance) its rhythm, an its rhyme scheme.

There are quite a few examples here - I was surprised how many Jon collected - so if you want a quick, representative sampling, try these: To a Locomotive in Winter by Whitman, Wild Peaches by Wylie, and Pan in Wall Street by Stedman. Imagine readng the first one aloud in the voice of King Lear (that's how I imagine it). The second one describes an escapist proposal, and the third one is one of those things that have no grounding in reality - but are very entertaining nonetheless.

1. Meadowsweet by William Allingham


2. Sonnet on a Wet Summer by John Codrington Bampfylde


3. The rain was ending, and light by Laurence Binyon


4. The Evening Darkens Over by Robert Bridges
   A storm over the ocean at sunset.


5. The Fish by Rupert Brooke


6. After a Tempest by William Cullen Bryant


7. The Haunted House by Madison Cawein


8. Rain Music by Joseph Seamans Cotter, Jr.


9. In August by Babette Deutsch


10. Morning at the Window by T. S. Eliot


11. Irradiations by John Fletcher


12. The Stars are Glittering by Charles Heavysege


13. The Snowing of the Pines by Mary Thacher Higginson


14. My Strawberry by Helen Hunt Jackson


15. Keen, Fitful Gusts by John Keats


16. The Taj by H.G. Keene


17. Among the Orchards by Archibald Lampman


18. A Rainy Day in April by Francis Ledwidge


19. A Japanese Wood-Carving by Amy Lowell


20. Cargoes by John Masefield


21. The Night Fire by Claude McKay


22. The Berg by Herman Melville
    An indifferent iceberg.


23. The Coral Grove by James Gates Percival


24. Nightfall by Alexander Lawrence Posey


25. Moonlight by Victoria Sackville-West


26. The Bayadere by Francis S. Saltus


27. The Sea-Breeze at Matanzas by Epes Sargent


28. Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon


29. The Spell of the Yukon by Robert W. Service
    A desolate place made beautiful


30. Pan In Wall Street by Edmund Clarence Stedman


31. Emmy by Arthur Symons


32. Dew by Sara Teasdale


33. The Path by Edward Thomas


34. To a Snowflake by Francis Thompson


35. Mist by Henry David Thoreau


36. April by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman


37. The Half-Rainbow by Charles Turner


38. The Naturalist's Summer-Evening Walk by Gilbert White


39. To a Locomotive in Winter by Walt Whitman


40. Sights and Sounds of the Night by Carlos Wilcox


41. Impression du Matin by Oscar (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills) Wilde


42. Wild Peaches by Elinor Wylie