Poems About Smell

Table of Contents

1. Smelling Contest

   by William Henry Dawson

   
   

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   Some day if your nose
   Should "get on a tear,"
   And cease doing business,
   And shut out the air,
   To exclude from its presence
   A strong-smelling pair,
   Would you keep your mouth shut?
   

   Or, suppose that instead
   Of this rank smelling pair,
   Your nose should find one
   Of them filling the air
   With his loud smelling odor,
   Then would it be fair
   That you keep your mouth shut?
   

   Now, this loud smelling pair,
   It's but fair that I state,
   Are the rank cigarette
   And his no less strong mate—
   Limberger cheese—
   Both smell to hell's gate:
   Would you keep your mouth shut?
   

   Now, would you sit still
   And let them impose
   Upon the olfactory
   Nerves of your nose,
   While your poor stomach threatened
   Its contents to disclose?
   Would you keep your mouth shut?
   

2. Smells

   by Christopher Morley

   
   

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   Why is it that the poets tell
   So little of the sense of smell?
   These are the odors I love well:
   

   The smell of coffee freshly ground;
   Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned;
   Or onions fried and deeply browned.
   

   The fragrance of a fumy pipe;
   The smell of apples, newly ripe;
   And printers' ink on leaden type.
   

   Woods by moonlight in September
   Breathe most sweet; and I remember
   Many a smoky camp-fire ember.
   

   Camphor, turpentine, and tea,
   The balsam of a Christmas tree,
   These are whiffs of gramarye ...
   A ship smells best of all to me!
   

3. XXII. Pennyroyal

   by Christopher Pearse Cranch

   Heavy with cares no winnowing hand could sift,
   Wrapt in a sadness never to be told,
   As o'er the fields and through the woods I strolled,
   Following with restless footstep but the drift
   Of the still August morn, so I might shift
   The scenery of my thoughts, and gild their old
   Monotonous fringes with a light less cold,
   I found the aromatic herb, whose swift
   And sweet associations bore me away
   To boyhood, when beneath an oak like this
   I culled the fragrant leaves. Crude childhood's bliss
   Was in the scent; but brighter smiled the day
   For memories no cold shade could overcast —
   Safe 'mid the unblighted treasures of the past.
   

4. At the Water

   by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

   
   

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   I liked to go to the branch today;
   I liked to play with the wiggletails there.
   And five little smells and one big smell
   Were going round in the air.
   

   One was the water, a little cold smell,
   And one was mud and that was more,
   And one was the smell of cool wet moss,
   And one was some fennel up on the shore.
   

   And the one big smell came out of the mint,
   And one was something I couldn't tell.
   And the five little ones and the big one
   All went together very well.
   

5. Locust Tree in Bloom

   by Hilda Conkling

   A bough of locust blossoms for my present,
   Or just a spray is enough for me!
   They smell like honeysuckle and poppies
   Twined together . . .
   Their buds hang like green fruit . . .
   They are shoes of the wind.
   

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