Famous Baby Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Baby poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous baby poems. These examples illustrate what a famous baby poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Baby Vamps

by Carl Sandburg
 BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
 Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks,
Wherever figure...Read more of this...

Baby Dolly

by Mother Goose
Hush, baby, my dolly, I pray you don't cry,
And I'll give you some bread, and some milk by-and-by;
Or perhaps you like custard, or, maybe, a tart,
Then to either you're welcome, with all my heart....Read more of this...

A Baby In The House

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I knew that a baby was hid in that house,
Though I saw no cradle and heard no cry;
But the husband was tip-toeing 'round like a mouse,
And the good wife was humming a soft lullaby;
And there was a look on the face of the mother,
That I knew could mean only one thing, and no other.

The mother, I said to myself,...Read more of this...

The Death Baby

by Anne Sexton
 1. DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How...Read more of this...

Hey Baby

by Maggie Estep
 Liner Notes - (from No More Mister Nice Girl)

I was having a foul day. Some
geezer harrassed me on the street and I got completely bent out of shape,
but the guy was huge so I just stuffed my retort. Went home to drink
coffee. No milk. I ripped through the cupboards and found Non Dairy Creamer.
It tasted like ****. I got...Read more of this...

Puttin' The Baby Away

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Eight of 'em hyeah all tol' an' yet
Dese eyes o' mine is wringin' wet;
My haht's a-achin' ha'd an' so',
De way hit nevah ached befo';
My soul's a-pleadin', "Lawd, give back
Dis little lonesome baby black,
Dis one, dis las' po' he'pless one
Whose little race was too soon run."
Po' Little Jim, des fo' yeahs ol'
A-layin' down so still an' col'.
Somehow hit don' seem ha'dly...Read more of this...

Baby Picture

by Anne Sexton
 It's in the heart of the grape
where that smile lies.
It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair
where that smile lies.
It's in the clerical collar of the dress
where that smile lies.
What smile?
The smile of my seventh year,
caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,
a kind of cancer of the background
and also in the assorted features.
It's like a...Read more of this...

Dream Song 131: Come touch me baby in his waking dream

by John Berryman
 Come touch me baby in his waking dream
disordered Henry murmured. I'll read you Hegel
and that will hurt your mind
I can't remember when you were unkind
but I will clear that block, I'll set you on fire
along with our babies

to save them up the high & ruined stairs,
my growing daughters. I am insane, I think,
they say & act so.
But then they...Read more of this...

Bye, Baby Bunting

by Mother Goose
Bye, baby bunting,
Father's gone a-hunting,
Mother's gone a-milking,
Sister's gone a-silking,
And brother's gone to buy a skin
To wrap the baby bunting in....Read more of this...

Baby Face

by Carl Sandburg
 WHITE MOON comes in on a baby face.
The shafts across her bed are flimmering.

Out on the land White Moon shines,
Shines and glimmers against gnarled shadows,
All silver to slow twisted shadows
Falling across the long road that runs from the house.

Keep a little of your beauty
And some of your flimmering silver
For her by the window to-night
Where you come in, White Moon....Read more of this...

Baby Charley

by Sidney Lanier
 He's fast asleep. See how, O Wife,
Night's finger on the lip of life
Bids whist the tongue, so prattle-rife,
Of busy Baby Charley.

One arm stretched backward round his head,
Five little toes from out the bed
Just showing, like five rosebuds red,
-- So slumbers Baby Charley.

Heaven-lights, I know, are beaming through
Those lucent eyelids, veined with blue,
That shut away from mortal view
Large eyes of...Read more of this...

Baby Lazarus

by Jackie Kay
 When I got home
I went out into the garden
Liking it when the frost bit
My old brown boots
And dug a hole the size of a baby
And buried the clothes
I'd bought anyway, just in case.

A week later I stood at my window
And saw the ground move
And swell the promise of a crop;
That's when she started crying.

I gave her a service then
Sang...Read more of this...

Sleep, Baby, Sleep

by Mother Goose
  Sleep, baby, sleep,
Our cottage vale is deep:
The little lamb is on the green,
With woolly fleece so soft and clean--
  Sleep, baby, sleep.
  Sleep, baby, sleep,
Down where the woodbines creep;
Be always like the lamb so mild,
A kind, and sweet, and gentle child.
  Sleep, baby, sleep....Read more of this...

Baby Tortoise

by D. H. Lawrence
 You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your...Read more of this...

For Baby

by Mother Goose
You shall have an apple,
YOU shall have a plum,
You shall have a rattle,
When papa comes home....Read more of this...

A Baby Asleep after Pain

by D. H. Lawrence
 As a drenched, drowned bee 
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower, 
So clings to me 
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears 
And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm 
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk. 
My sleeping baby hangs upon my life, 
Like a burden she hangs...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 45. The baby new to earth and sky

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that "this is I":
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of "I," and "me,"
And finds "I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch."
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory...Read more of this...

A Baby Running Barefoot

by D. H. Lawrence
 When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, 
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass 
Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
For a...Read more of this...

Baby Sitter

by Robert William Service
 From torrid heat to frigid cold
 I've rovered land and sea;
And now, with halting heart I hold
 My grandchild on my knee:
Yet while I've eighty years all told,
 Of moons she has but three.

She sleeps, that fragile miniature
 Of future maidenhood;
She will be wonderful, I'm sure,
 As over her I brood;
She is so innocent, so pure,
 I know she...Read more of this...

Portrait of a Baby

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 He lay within a warm, soft world 
Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled, 
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red, 
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled 
To vanish in the grey-green gloom, 
Perspectiveless and shadowy. 
A bulging world that had no walls, 
A flowing world, most like the sea, 
Compassing all infinity 
Within a shapeless, ebbing room, 
An endless tide...Read more of this...

Dance, Little Baby

by Mother Goose
Dance, little Baby, dance up high!
Never mind, Baby, Mother is by.
Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There, little Baby, there you go!
Up to the ceiling, down to the ground,
Backwards and forwards, round and round;
Dance, little Baby and Mother will sing,
With the merry coral, ding, ding, ding!...Read more of this...

Little Brown Baby

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, 
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh -- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib -- you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf -- dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
Bein' so sticky an...Read more of this...

Baby Toes

by Carl Sandburg
 THERE is a blue star, Janet,
Fifteen years’ ride from us,
If we ride a hundred miles an hour.

There is a white star, Janet,
Forty years’ ride from us,
If we ride a hundred miles an hour.

Shall we ride
To the blue star
Or the white star?...Read more of this...

Cry, Baby

by Mother Goose
Cry, baby, cry,
Put your finger in your eye,
And tell your mother it wasn't I....Read more of this...

Rock-A-Bye, Baby

by Mother Goose
Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green;
Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen;
And Betty's a lady, and wears a gold ring;
And Johnny's a drummer, and drums for the king....Read more of this...

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