Here are my favorite poems about gold categorized:
- Short poems about gold
- Gold poems that rhyme
So if you want the best poems about gold, then you’re in the right place.
Keep reading and enjoy!
Glorious Poems About Gold
Welcome to a world where shimmering brilliance and timeless allure take center stage with our collection of golden verses, thoughtfully compiled for your convenience.
Prepare to be dazzled by concise yet evocative verses and melodic charm of rhyming verses that capture the essence of this shining element in all its splendor.
So take a moment to explore and appreciate the richness and depth of words that bring to life the enduring fascination with this precious metal!
Enjoy these golden poems!
My #1 Favorite Poem About Gold
“The Miser & His Gold” by Walter Crane
He buried his Gold in a hole.
One saw, and the treasure he stole.
Said another, “What matter?
Don’t raise such a clatter,
You can still go & sit by the hole.”
Use Alone Gives Value
Short Poems About Gold
“Gold Before Goodness.” by Robert Herrick
How rich a man is all desire to know;
But none inquires if good he be or no.
“The New-Year’s Gift” by Robert Herrick
Let others look for pearl and gold,
Tissues, or tabbies manifold:
One only lock of that sweet hay
Whereon the blessed Baby lay,
Or one poor swaddling-clout, shall be
The richest New-Year’s gift to me.
“To God: His Good Will.” by Robert Herrick
Gold I have none, but I present my need,
O Thou, that crown’st the will, where wants the deed.
Where rams are wanting, or large bullocks’ thighs,
There a poor lamb’s a plenteous sacrifice.
Take then his vows, who, if he had it, would
Devote to Thee both incense, myrrh and gold
Upon an altar rear’d by him, and crown’d
Both with the ruby, pearl, and diamond.
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Lee Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
“Gold And Frankincense.” by Robert Herrick
Gold serves for tribute to the king,
The frankincense for God’s off’ring.
“Had I a Golden Pound” by Francis Ledwidge
Had I a golden pound to spend,
My love should mend and sew no more.
And I would buy her a little quern,
Easy to turn on the kitchen floor.
And for her windows curtains white,
With birds in flight and flowers in bloom,
To face with pride the road to town,
And mellow down her sunlit room.
And with the silver change we’d prove
The Truth of Love to life’s own end,
With hearts the years could but embolden,
Had I a golden pound to spend.
“Gold” by Oliver Herford
Some take their gold
In minted mold,
And some in harps hereafter,
But give me mine
In tresses fine,
And keep the change in laughter!
“I saw a Chapel all of Gold” by William Blake
I saw a Chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in,
And many weeping stood without,
Weeping, mourning, worshipping.
I saw a Serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door,
And he forc’d and forc’d and forc’d;
Down the golden hinges tore,
And along the pavement sweet,
Set with pearls and rubies bright,
All his shining length he drew,
Till upon the altar white
Vomiting his poison out
On the Bread and on the Wine.
So I turn’d into a sty,
And laid me down among the swine.
From “Long Ago” by Michael Field (Katherine Harris Bradley)
Yea, gold is son of Zeus: no rust
Its timeless light can stain;
The worm that brings man’s flesh to dust
Assaults its strength in vain:
More gold than gold the love I sing,
A hard, inviolable thing.
Men say the passions should grow old
With waning years; my heart
Is incorruptible as gold,
’Tis my immortal part:
Nor is there any god can lay
On love the finger of decay.
“The Goldsmith” by Siegfried Sassoon
‘This job’s the best I’ve done.’ He bent his head
Over the golden vessel that he’d wrought.
A bird was singing. But the craftsman’s thought
Is a forgotten language, lost and dead.
He sighed and stretch’d brown arms. His friend came in
And stood beside him in the morning sun.
The goldwork glitter’d.… ‘That’s the best I’ve done.
‘And now I’ve got a necklace to begin.’
This was at Gnossos, in the isle of Crete…
A girl was selling flowers along the street.
“For Lack of Gold” by Adam Austin
For lack of gold she’s left me, Oh!
And of all that’s dear bereft me, Oh!
For Athole’s duke she me forsook,
And to endless woe she has left me, Oh!
A star and garter have more art
Than youth, a true and faithful heart;
For empty titles we must part.
And for glitt’ring show she’s left me, Oh!
No cruel fair shall ever move
My injur’d heart again to love;
Thro’ distant climates I must rove;
Since Jeany she has left me, Oh!
Ye pow’rs above, I to your care
Give up my faithless, lovely fair;
Your choicest blessings be her share,
Tho’ she’s for ever left me, Oh!
“Riches” by Sara Teasdale
I have no riches but my thoughts,
Yet these are wealth enough for me;
My thoughts of you are golden coins
Stamped in the mint of memory;
And I must spend them all in song,
For thoughts, as well as gold, must be
Left on the hither side of death
To gain their immortality.
Gold Poems That Rhyme
“The Eve Of Crecy” by William Morris
Gold on her head, and gold on her feet,
And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet,
And a golden girdle round my sweet;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
Margaret’s maids are fair to see,
Freshly dress’d and pleasantly;
Margaret’s hair falls down to her knee;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
If I were rich I would kiss her feet;
I would kiss the place where the gold hems meet,
And the golden girdle round my sweet:
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
Ah me! I have never touch’d her hand;
When the arriere-ban goes through the land,
Six basnets under my pennon stand;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
And many an one grins under his hood:
Sir Lambert du Bois, with all his men good,
Has neither food nor firewood;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
If I were rich I would kiss her feet,
And the golden girdle of my sweet,
And thereabouts where the gold hems meet;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
Yet even now it is good to think,
While my few poor varlets grumble and drink
In my desolate hall, where the fires sink,
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
Of Margaret sitting glorious there,
In glory of gold and glory of hair,
And glory of glorious face most fair;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
Likewise to-night I make good cheer,
Because this battle draweth near:
For what have I to lose or fear?
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
For, look you, my horse is good to prance
A right fair measure in this war-dance,
Before the eyes of Philip of France;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
And sometime it may hap, perdie,
While my new towers stand up three and three,
And my hall gets painted fair to see,
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
That folks may say: Times change, by the rood,
For Lambert, banneret of the wood,
Has heaps of food and firewood;
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite;
And wonderful eyes, too, under the hood
Of a damsel of right noble blood.
St. Ives, for Lambert of the Wood!
Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.
“The Refiner’s Gold.” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
He stood before my heart’s closed door,
And asked to enter in;
But I had barred the passage o’er
By unbelief and sin.
He came with nail-prints in his hands,
To set my spirit free;
With wounded feet he trod a path
To come and sup with me.
He found me poor and brought me gold,
The fire of love had tried,
And garments whitened by his blood,
My wretchedness to hide.
The glare of life had dimmed my eyes,
Its glamour was too bright.
He came with ointment in his hands
To heal my darkened sight.
He knew my heart was tempest-tossed,
By care and pain oppressed;
He whispered to my burdened heart,
Come unto me and rest.
He found me weary, faint and worn,
On barren mountains cold;
With love’s constraint he drew me on,
To shelter in his fold.
Oh! foolish heart, how slow wert thou
To welcome thy dear guest,
To change thy weariness and care
For comfort, peace and rest.
Close to his side, oh! may I stay,
Just to behold his face,
Till I shall wear within my soul
The image of his grace.
The grace that changes hearts of stone
To tenderness and love,
And bids us run with willing feet
Unto his courts above.
“The Spell Of The Yukon” by Robert William Service
I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy – I fought it,
I hurled my youth into the grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it –
Came out with a fortune last fall, –
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it,
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe: but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth – and I’m one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason),
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.
I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.
The summer – no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness –
O God! how I’m stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I’ve bade ’em good-bye – but I can’t.
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land – oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back – and I will.
They’re making my money diminish;
I’m sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish
I’ll pike to the Yukon again.
I’ll fight – and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell! – but I’ve been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite –
So me for the Yukon once more.
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting,
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.
“The Golden Dream.” by Samuel Griswold Goodrich
In midnight dreams the Wizard came,
And beckoned me away
With tempting hopes of wealth and fame,
He cheered my lonely way.
He led me o’er a dusky heath,
And there a river swept,
Whose gay and glassy tide beneath,
Uncounted treasure, slept.
The wooing ripples lightly dashed
Around the cherished store,
And circling eddies brightly flashed
Above the yellow ore.
I bent me o’er the deep smooth stream,
And plunged the gold to get,
But oh! it vanished with my dream
And I got dripping wet!
O’er lonely heath and darksome hill,
As shivering home I went,
The mocking Wizard whispered shrill,
‘Thou’dst better been content!’
“Ode to an Indian Gold Coin” by John Leyden
Slave of the dark and dirty mine!
What vanity has brought thee here?
How can I love to see thee shine
So bright, whom I have bought so dear?
The tent-ropes flapping lone I hear
For twilight converse, arm in arm,
The jackal’s shriek bursts on mine ear
When mirth and music wont to charm.
By Clerical’s dark, wandering streams,
Where cane-tufts shadow all the wild,
Sweet visions haunt my waking dreams,
Of Teviot loved while still a child,
Of castled rock, stupendous piled
By Esk or Eden’s classic wave,
Where loves of youth and friendship smiled,
Uncursed by thee, vile, yellow slave!
Fade, day-dreams sweet, from memory fade!
The perished bliss of youth’s first prime,
That once so bright on fancy played,
Revives no more in after-time:
Far from my sacred natal clime,
I haste to an untimely grave;
The daring thoughts that soared sublime
Are sunk in Ocean’s Southern wave.
Slave of the mine! thy yellow light
Gleams baneful as the tomb-fire drear;
A gentle vision comes by night
My lonely widow’s heart to cheer:
Her eyes are dim with many a tear,
That once were guiding-stars to mine;
Her fond heart throbs with many a fear!
I cannot bear to see thee shine.
For thee, for thee, vile, yellow slave,
I left a heart that loved me true,
I crossed the tedious ocean wave,
To roam in climes unkind and new.
The cold wind of the stranger blew
Chill on my withered heart; the grave
Dark and untimely met my view,—
And all for thee, vile, yellow slave!
Ha! com’st thou now so late to mock
A wanderer’s banished heart forlorn,
Now that his frame the lightning-shock
Of sun-rays tipped with death has borne
From love? from friendships, country torn,
To memory’s fond regrets the prey?
Vile slave, thy yellow dross I scorn!
Go mix thee with thy kindred clay!
“On His “Sonnets of the Wingless Hours”” by Eugene Lee-Hamilton
I wrought them like a targe of hammered gold
On which all Troy is battling round and round;
Or Circe’s cup, embossed with snakes that wound
Through buds and myrtles, fold on scaly fold;
Or like gold coins, which Lydian tombs may hold,
Stamped with winged racers, in the old red ground;
Or twined gold armlets from the funeral mound
Of some great viking, terrible of old.
I know not in what metal I have wrought;
Nor whether what I fashioned will be thrust
Beneath the clouds that hide forgotten thought;
But if it is of gold it will not rust;
And when the time is ripe it will be brought
Into the sun, and glitter through its dust.
From “Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg.” by Thomas Hood
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammer’d, and roll’d;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, barter’d, bought, and sold
Stolen, borrow’d, squander’d, doled:
Spurn’d by the young, but hugg’d by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousand-fold!
How widely its agencies vary:
To save—to ruin—to curse—to bless—
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp’d with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a bloody Mary.
“Sunken Gold” by Eugene Lee-Hamilton
In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships;
And gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell,
Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell
With love’s old gifts, once kissed by long-drowned lips;
And round some wrought gold cup the sea-grass whips,
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,
Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell
And seek dim sunlight with their restless tips.
So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes
Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,
In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes;
They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold
In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,
The gleam of irrecoverable gold.
“No Gold, No Goodnesse” by Edward Hake
O gold! that goest in and out,
That rul’st and raignest at thy will;
O thou, that bringest things about,
Why art thou absent from us still?
But O, our God! O where art thou,
That suff’rest gold to conquer now?
You earthly men, who unto men
Nought give where you can nothing take,
I speake to you; regard me then:
Your gold and goods your god you make,
For whereas gold is, you are won,
But where gold is not, you have done.
Be honest, learned, skilfull, wise;
Be what thou canst,—if gold thou want
Thou maist lie still, thou shalt not rise,
For nothing proves where gold is skant:
For gold it is that doth the deed,
But nothing prospers where is need.
What shall I then lie downe and die?
Alas! I cannot when I would;
Or shall I sit me downe and crie,
And with my teares my griefe unfold?
Lament and crie, do what thou wilt,
Thy cause is lost for lack of gilt.
Yet say I not that all men looke
To be rewarded of their deed;
But this I say, that few men brooke
To helpe a man that is in need;
For tho’ he write with Homer’s inke,
Yet go he shall, before he drinke.
“Pioneers” by Frederick William Ophel
They said: ‘Now here is gold;
The cloth of gold unrolled
Lies spread about our feet,
Now fortune smiles and sweet.’
The mulga hid the face of Fate
Watching with ruthless eyes of hate.
‘Now wealth is ours,’ they said,
‘Great wealth and riches red.
Our journeying is done,
Guerdon and gold are won.’
Red were the written words they signed;
And, scenting blood, the wild dog whined.
They said: ‘Now ours is fame,
An honoured glorious name—
The name of pioneers,
And honour as of seers.’
They turned to take the homeward track,
And dreamed a joyous welcome back.
No man knows where they lie;
None heard their last death-cry;
Unmarked their grave by mound;
But at the last trump sound
Perchance some God who all things hears
Will give them praise as pioneers.
“The Real Question” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Folks is talkin’ ’bout de money, ’bout de silvah an’ de gold;
All de time de season ‘s changin’ an’ de days is gittin’ cold.
An’ dey ‘s wond’rin’ ’bout de metals, whethah we’ll have one er two.
While de price o’ coal is risin’ an’ dey ‘s two months’ rent dat ‘s due.
Some folks says dat gold ‘s de only money dat is wuff de name,
Den de othahs rise an’ tell ’em dat dey ought to be ashame,
An’ dat silvah is de only thing to save us f’om de powah
Of de gold-bug ragin’ ‘roun’ an’ seekin’ who he may devowah.
Well, you folks kin keep on shoutin’ wif yo’ gold er silvah cry,
But I tell you people hams is sceerce an’ fowls is roostin’ high.
An’ hit ain’t de so’t o’ money dat is pesterin’ my min’,
But de question I want answehed ‘s how to get at any kin’!
“Gold” by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
All day the mallet thudded, far below
My garret, in an old ramshackle shed
Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head
And rigid motions ever to and fro,
A figure like a puppet in a show
Before the window moved till day was dead,
Beating out gold to earn his daily bread,
Beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow on blow.
And I within my garret all day long
Unto that ceaseless thudding tuned my song,
Beating out golden words in tune and time
To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme.
But in my dreams all night, in that dark shed,
With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread.