Poetry: Animal Symbolism
300 Goats
A Bird, came down the Walk
A Dog Has Died
An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog
Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House
Ariel
Birdfoot’s Grampa
Black Cat
Death
Five Flights Up
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Identity
Mr. Edwards and the Spider
Mr. Mistoffelees
Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market
Old Pond
Seal Lullaby
Sorrow Is Not My Name
The Blind Men and the Elephant
The Blue Bowl
The Darkling Thrush
The Lamb
The Raven
The Song of the Jellicles
The Tyger
The Windhover
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
To a Skylark
To Help the Monkey Cross the River
To the Skylark
Whales Weep Not!
In the Poetry: Animal Symbolism Collection, we've gathered a selection of poems that represent abstract ideas using animals. For hundreds of years, poets have turned to the animal kingdom and natural world for inspiration. This Collection highlights the many ways poets have used mammals, fish, birds, and other creatures to represent themes such as love, grief, and mortality.
Many scholars agree that “Old Pond” (1686) by Matsuo Bashō is one of the most—if not the most—famous haiku of all time. The term “haiku” translates as “play verse,” and though “Old Pond” appears whimsical and simple—a frog jumping into water and the subsequent splash—Bashō utilizes various literary devices such as key words and onomatopoeia to ensure this three-line poem is both didactic and enjoyable. “Old Pond” is instructional, especially for its use of common... Read Old Pond Summary
Influenced by the English Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Lord” George Gordon Byron, and Percy Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe represents one of the essential American Romantic poets of the nineteenth century. Romanticism here refers to a literary movement of the late 1700s and 1800s which focused on the emotional life of the individual and curiosity about the self. This movement complemented a larger geopolitical and ideological shift in the United States. As a young nation... Read The Raven Summary
Wallace Stevens is the author of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and he first published the poem in 1917 as a part of the literary anthology Others: An Anthology of New Verse. In 1923, he included the poem in his first collection of poetry, Harmonium, which features many of Stevens’s most well-known poems—poems that continue to appear in anthologies—like “The Snow Man“ and “The Emperor of Ice-Cream.” Stevens was born in Pennsylvania and... Read Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Summary