Birthday Poems to Read and Share
Curated by the Writory editorial team. Updated September 2026.
Quick answer: Read 10 of the best birthday poems, from Rossetti and Burns to Landor and Longfellow. Full texts to read aloud or copy into a card, with notes on choosing one.
A birthday is a small new year, and poets have marked it with everything from a toast to a reckoning. The poems here suit the day whether you want to celebrate, tease gently, or say something that lasts longer than a card.
Rossetti's heart is a singing bird because love has come. Landor, at seventy-five and eighty, counts his years with astonishing calm. Herrick reminds the young, kindly, to gather their rosebuds while they may.
A practical note: match the poem to the person. A short bright one copies beautifully into a card, and one of the reflective ones reads well aloud at a gathering.
A Birthday
Christina Rossetti · Victorian
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
My heart is like a singing bird. Rossetti's is the birthday poem of pure joy, and the easiest to love.
Sonnet on the Author’s Birthday
Robert Burns · Romantic
SING on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough,
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain,
See aged Winter, ’mid his surly reign,
At thy blythe carol, clears his furrowed brow.
So in lone Poverty’s dominion drear,
Sits meek Content with light, unanxious heart;
Welcomes the rapid moments, bids them part,
Nor asks if they bring ought to hope or fear.
I thank thee, Author of this opening day!
Thou whose bright sun now gilds yon orient skies!
Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys--
What wealth could never give nor take away!
Yet come, thou child of poverty and care,
The mite high heav’n bestow’d, that mite with thee I’ll share.
Burns marks his own birthday with a thrush and a wish, a graceful model for any card.
Birthday Ode for 31st December, 1787
Robert Burns · Romantic
AFAR 1 the illustrious Exile roams,
Whom kingdoms on this day should hail;
An inmate in the casual shed,
On transient pity’s bounty fed,
Haunted by busy memory’s bitter tale!
Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
But He, who should imperial purple wear,
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
His wretched refuge, dark despair,
While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
And distant far the faithful few
Who would his sorrows share.
False flatterer, Hope, away!
Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
To prove our loyal truth-we can no more,
And owning Heaven’s mysterious sway,
Submissive, low adore.
Ye honored, mighty Dead,
Who nobly perished in the glorious cause,
Your King, your Country, and her laws,
From great DUNDEE, who smiling Victory led,
And fell a Martyr in her arms,
(What breast of northern ice but warms!)
To bold BALMERINO’S undying name,
Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven’s high flame,
Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim:
Nor unrevenged your fate shall lie,
It only lags, the fatal hour,
Your blood shall, with incessant cry,
Awake at last, th’ unsparing Power;
As from the cliff, with thundering course,
The snowy ruin smokes along
With doubling speed and gathering force,
Till deep it, crushing, whelms the cottage in the vale;
So Vengeance’ arm, ensanguin’d, strong,
Shall with resistless might assail,
Usurping Brunswick’s pride shall lay,
And STEWART’S wrongs and yours, with tenfold weight repay.
PERDITION, baleful child of night!
Rise and revenge the injured right
Of STEWART’S royal race:
Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of hell,
Till all the frighted echoes tell
The blood-notes of the chase!
Full on the quarry point their view,
Full on the base usurping crew,
The tools of faction, and the nation’s curse!
Hark how the cry grows on the wind;
They leave the lagging gale behind,
Their savage fury, pitiless, they pour;
With murdering eyes already they devour;
See Brunswick spent, a wretched prey,
His life one poor despairing day,
Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse!
Such havock, howling all abroad,
Their utter ruin bring,
The base apostates to their God,
Or rebels to their King.
On His Seventy-fifth Birthday
Walter Savage Landor · Romantic
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Four calm lines from a man ready to let the fire of life sink. Wise beyond its size, and endlessly quotable.
On His Eightieth Birthday
Walter Savage Landor · Romantic
To my ninth decade I have tottered on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.
A Ninth Birthday
Algernon Charles Swinburne · Victorian
Three times thrice hath winter's rough white wing
Crossed and curdled wells and streams with ice
Since his birth whose praises love would sing
Three times thrice.
Earth nor sea bears flower nor pearl of price
Fit to crown the forehead of my king,
Honey meet to please him, balm, nor spice.
Love can think of nought but love to bring
Fit to serve or do him sacrifice
Ere his eyes have looked upon the spring
Three times thrice.
II.
Three times thrice the world has fallen on slumber,
Shone and waned and withered in a trice,
Frost has fettered Thames and Tyne and Humber
Three times thrice,
Fogs have swoln too thick for steel to slice,
Cloud and mud have soiled with grime and umber
Earth and heaven, defaced as souls with vice,
Winds have risen to wreck, snows fallen to cumber,
Ships and chariots, trapped like rats or mice,
Since my king first smiled, whose years now number
Three times thrice.
III.
Three times thrice, in wine of song full-flowing,
Pledge, my heart, the child whose eyes suffice,
Once beheld, to set thy joy-bells going
Three times thrice.
Not the lands of palm and date and rice
Glow more bright when summer leaves them glowing,
Laugh more light when suns and winds entice.
Noon and eve and midnight and cock-crowing,
Child whose love makes life as paradise,
Love should sound your praise with clarions blowing
Three times thrice.
Birthday of but a single pang
Emily Dickinson · American
Birthday of but a single pang
That there are less to come --
Afflictive is the Adjective
But affluent the doom --
TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME
Robert Herrick · Cavalier
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may:
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best, which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.
--Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. A birthday nudge to seize the day, kindly meant and hard to argue with.
A Psalm of Life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · American
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;--
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Act in the living present. A bracing reading for a milestone birthday, all forward motion and resolve.
O Me! O Life!
Walt Whitman · American
O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more
faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever
renew’d;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
That you are here, that life exists, and you may contribute a verse: a birthday thought worth reading aloud.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good birthday poem?
Christina Rossetti's 'A Birthday' is the most joyful, and Longfellow's 'A Psalm of Life' suits a milestone birthday. Landor's short birthday poems are perfect for a card.
Are there short birthday poems for a card?
Yes. Emily Dickinson's 'Birthday of but a single pang' and Landor's four-line birthday poems copy neatly into a card and still say something real.
How do I choose a birthday poem?
Match it to the person and the moment. A short bright poem suits a card, while a reflective one on time and life reads well aloud at a milestone gathering.
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