Poems About Peace
Curated by the Writory editorial team. Updated September 2026.
Quick answer: Read 12 classic poems about peace and quiet, from Hopkins and Whitman to Rossetti and the Brontes. Full texts with short notes on where each one finds its calm.
Peace in poetry is rarely grand. It arrives as a quiet room, a walk that calms the blood, a mind that has finally stopped arguing with itself. The poems here look for it in small places and usually find it there.
Hopkins asks where peace has gone and learns to wait for it. A nun in his other poem trades storms for a place where springs never fail. Whitman salutes the real peace that outlasts every war.
These are good poems to end a day on.
Peace
Gerard Manley Hopkins · Victorian
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
Hopkins treats peace like a shy bird that comes and goes, and learns to leave the door open.
Heaven--Haven: A Nun Takes The Veil
Gerard Manley Hopkins · Victorian
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
A nun asks for the one place where storms do not come and springs never fail.
Spring Quiet
Christina Rossetti · Victorian
Gone were but the Winter,
Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
Where the birds sing;
Where in the whitethorn
Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
In the holly-bush.
Full of fresh scents
Are the budding boughs
Arching high over
A cool green house:
Full of sweet scents,
And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
"We spread no snare;
"Here dwell in safety,
Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
And a mossy stone.
"Here the sun shineth
Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
Of the far sea,
Though far off it be."
Rossetti builds a green hush of leaves and running water and simply stays inside it.
O Sun of Real Peace.
Walt Whitman · American
O SUN of real peace! O hastening light!
O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for!
O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height--and you too, O my
Ideal,
will surely ascend!
O so amazing and broad--up there resplendent, darting and burning!
O vision prophetic, stagger’d with weight of light! with pouring glories!
O lips of my soul, already becoming powerless!
O ample and grand Presidentiads! Now the war, the war is over!
New history! new heroes! I project you!
Visions of poets! only you really last! sweep on! sweep on!
O heights too swift and dizzy yet!
O purged and luminous! you threaten me more than I can stand!
(I must not venture--the ground under my feet menaces me--it will not support me:
O future too immense,)--O present, I return, while yet I may, to you.
Whitman looks past the noise of his age to the lasting peace he is sure will follow.
I many times thought Peace had come
Emily Dickinson · American
I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away --
As Wrecked Men -- deem they sight the Land --
At Centre of the Sea --
And struggle slacker -- but to prove
As hopelessly as I --
How many the fictitious Shores --
Before the Harbor be --
Dickinson keeps mistaking a lull for the real thing, the way anyone waiting for calm does.
A chilly Peace infests the Grass
Emily Dickinson · American
A chilly Peace infests the Grass
The Sun respectful lies --
Not any Trance of industry
These shadows scrutinize --
Whose Allies go no more astray
For service or for Glee --
But all mankind deliver here
From whatsoever sea --
Though the great Waters sleep,
Emily Dickinson · American
Though the great Waters sleep,
That they are still the Deep,
We cannot doubt --
No vacillating God
Ignited this Abode
To put it out --
Monday Night May 11th 1846 / Domestic Peace
Anne Bronte · Victorian
Why should such gloomy silence reign;
And why is all the house so drear,
When neither danger, sickness, pain,
Nor death, nor want have entered here?
We are as many as we were
That other night, when all were gay,
And full of hope, and free from care;
Yet, is there something gone away.
The moon without as pure and calm
Is shining as that night she shone;
but now, to us she brings no balm,
For something from our hearts is gone.
Something whose absence leaves a void,
A cheerless want in every heart.
Each feels the bliss of all destroyed
And mourns the change - but each apart.
The fire is burning in the grate
As redly as it used to burn,
But still the hearth is desolate
Till Mirth and Love with Peace return.
'Twas Peace that flowed from heart to heart
With looks and smiles that spoke of Heaven,
And gave us language to impart
The blissful thoughts itself had given.
Sweet child of Heaven, and joy of earth!
O, when will Man thy value learn?
We rudely drove thee from our hearth,
And vainly sigh for thy return.
Anne Bronte measures the plain warmth of a settled household and knows exactly what it is worth.
In the Black Forest
Amy Levy · Victorian
I lay beneath the pine trees,
And looked aloft, where, through
The dusky, clustered tree-tops,
Gleamed rent, gay rifts of blue.
I shut my eyes, and a fancy
Fluttered my sense around:
"I lie here dead and buried,
And this is churchyard ground.
"I am at rest for ever;
Ended the stress and strife."
Straight I fell to and sorrowed
For the pitiful past life.
Right wronged, and knowledge wasted;
Wise labour spurned for ease;
The sloth and the sin and the failure;
Did I grow sad for these?
They had made me sad so often;
Not now they made me sad;
My heart was full of sorrow
For joy it never had.
This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison
Samuel Coleridge · Romantic
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge; -- that branchless ash,
Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.
Now, my friends emerge
Beneath the wide wide Heaven -- and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hunger'd after Nature, many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence.
A delight
Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd
Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass
Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
Through the late twilight; and though now the bat
Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
Yet still the solitary humble-bee
Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory,
While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still,
Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.
Left behind while friends walk out, Coleridge talks himself into contentment and means it by the end.
Sympathy
Emily Bronte · Victorian
There should be no despair for you
While nightly stars are burning,
While evening pours its silent dew
And sunshine gilds the morning.
There should be no despair - though tears
May flow down like a river:
Are not the best beloved of years
Around your heart forever?
They weep - you weep - it must be so;
Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And Winter sheds his grief in snow
Where Autumn's leaves are lying:
Yet these revive, and from their fate
Your fate cannot be parted,
Then journey on, if not elate,
Still, never broken-hearted!
A poem that sets grief down gently and reminds the reader that the storm does pass.
Oh Future! thou secreted peace
Emily Dickinson · American
Oh Future! thou secreted peace
Or subterranean woe --
Is there no wandering route of grace
That leads away from thee --
No circuit sage of all the course
Descried by cunning Men
To balk thee of thy sacred Prey --
Advancing to thy Den --
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best poem about inner peace?
Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'Peace' and 'Heaven-Haven' both search for calm and name the cost of it. Christina Rossetti's 'Spring Quiet' is another that reads like a held breath.
Are there short poems about peace?
Yes. Emily Dickinson's 'I many times thought Peace had come' and 'Though the great Waters sleep' both fit in a few lines while saying a great deal.
Which poets wrote about peace and quiet?
Hopkins, Whitman, Christina Rossetti, Anne Bronte and Samuel Coleridge all wrote memorably about calm, retreat and rest. This page gathers one strong poem from each.
How to write a poem about peace
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