Famous Father Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Father poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous father poems. These examples illustrate what a famous father poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Shakespeare, William
...from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis promised in the charity of age.
'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied
Love to myself and to no love beside.
'But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit--it was to gain my...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...br>
Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood
Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician,
Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters
Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song.
But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed,
Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith.
There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him
...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...roken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecst...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...verthrown.
Skeezix, you are me. La de dah.
You grow a beard but our drool is identical.
Forgive us, Father, for we know not.
Today is November 14th, 1972.
I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County,
U.S.A., and it rains steadily
in the pond like white puppy eyes.
The pond is waiting for its skin.
the pond is waiting for its leather.
The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain.
It begins:
Interrogator...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...he answer'd not, only complain'd,
With hectic lips, and eyes up-looking mild,
Thus wording timidly among the fierce:
"O Father! I am here the simplest voice,
And all my knowledge is that joy is gone,
And this thing woe crept in among our hearts,
There to remain for ever, as I fear:
I would not bode of evil, if I thought
So weak a creature could turn off the help
Which by just right should come of mighty Gods;
Yet let me tell my sorrow, let me tell
Of what I heard, and how it ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
... My pretty thing! then thou shalt sing, As merry as the birds in spring. Thy father cares not for my breast, 'Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest: 'Tis all thine own! and if its hue Be changed, that was so fair to view, 'Tis fair enough for thee, my dove! My beauty, little child, is flown; But thou will live with me in love, And ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel
Made Maple first take notice of her name.
She asked her father and he told her, "Maple—
Maple is right."
"But teacher told the school
There's no such name."
"Teachers don't know as much
As fathers about children, you tell teacher.
You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E.
You ask her if she knows a maple tree.
Well, you were named after a maple tree.
Your mother named you. You and she just saw...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...er-kettle.)
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west—the bride
was a red girl;
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they
had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper—he was drest mostly in skins—his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck—he held his bride by the hand;
She had long eyelashes—her head was bare—her coarse stra...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...>
4.19 If rich, I'm urged then to gather more
4.20 To bear me out i' th' world and feed the poor;
4.21 If a father, then for children must provide,
4.22 But if none, then for kindred near ally'd;
4.23 If Noble, then mine honour to maintain;
4.24 If not, yet wealth, Nobility can gain.
4.25 For time, for place, likewise for each relation,
4.26 I wanted not my ready allegation.
4.27 Yet all my powers for self-ends are not spent,
4....Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...simple thought which play'd
Upon those features then so frank and coy;
'Tis his, yet oh! not his: and o'er the joy
His fatherly pity bends in tears dismay'd.
Proud of his prime maybe he stand at best,
And lightly wear his strength, or aim it high,
In knowledge, skill and courage self-possest:--
Yet in the pictured face a charm doth lie,
The one thing lost more worth than all the rest,
Which seeing, he fears to say This child was I.
40
Tears of love, tears of joy a...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ld come again;
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come,
And heal the world of all their wickedness!
"O Father!" asked the maiden, "might it come
To me by prayer and fasting?" "Nay," said he,
"I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow."
And so she prayed and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew, through her, and I thought
She might have risen and floated when I saw her.
`For on a day she sent to speak with me.
And when she came to ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...Scarcely even a howl or a groan,
As the man they called "Ho!" told his story of woe
In an antediluvian tone.
"My father and mother were honest, though poor--"
"Skip all that!" cried the Bellman in haste.
"If it once becomes dark, there's no chance of a Snark--
We have hardly a minute to waste!"
"I skip forty years," said the Baker, in tears,
"And proceed without further remark
To the day when you took me aboard of your ship
To help you in hunting the Snark.Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...that passion's name?
XX.
Impatient of the silent horn,
Now on the gale her voice was borne:—
'Father!' she cried; the rocks around
Loved to prolong the gentle sound.
Awhile she paused, no answer came;—
'Malcolm, was thine the blast?' the name
Less resolutely uttered fell,
The echoes could not catch the swell.
'A stranger I,' the Huntsman said,
Advancing from the hazel shade.
The maid, alarmed, with hast...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...[PL 6]ah fell. & formed a heaven
of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to
send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build
on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he, who dwells
in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fet...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...insides..." She had a temper that came close to insanity, she had a temper that some
call insanity. Her father had died of alcohol and her mother had run off leaving the
girls alone. The girls went to a relative who placed them in a convent. The convent had
been an unhappy place, more for Cass than the sisters. The girls were jealous of Cass and
Cass fought most of them. She had razor marks all along her left arm from defending
herself in two f...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
..., did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own & then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before m...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...here, now there;
And several people swore from out the press
They knew him perfectly; and one could swear
He was his father: upon which another
Was sure he was his mother's cousin's brother:
LXXVII
Another, that he was a duke, or a knight,
An orator, a lawyer, or a priest,
A nabob, a man-midwife; but the wight
Mysterious changed his countenance at least
As oft as they their minds; though in full sight
He stood, the puzzle only was increased;
The man was a phanta...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...st who sighs
Outside one's door on the night one dies.'
'Not,' Lady Jean explained, 'at all
Like the ghost at my father's place, St. Kitts,
That clanks and screams in the great West Hall
And frightens strangers out of their wits.'
I smiled politely, not thinking I
Would hear one midnight that long sad sigh.
I saw the gardens, after our tea
(Crumpets and marmalade, toast and cake)
And Drake's Walk, leading down to the sea;
Lady Jean was startled I'd he...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...f anything that is not flat! They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'
FIRST VOICE:
I am calm. I am calm. It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors. It ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...s kind were you."
And then the face became younger,
And I recognized him once more.
And then I said, "Holy Father,
Accept a slave of yours."
x x x
I came over to the pine forest.
It is hot, and the road is not short.
He pushed back the door and came out
Greyhaired, luminous, short.
He looked at me, insolent bastard,
And muttered at once, "Christ's bride!
Do not envy success of the happy,
A place for you there does hide.
...Read more of this...
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