Famous Barber Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Barber poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous barber poems. These examples illustrate what a famous barber poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Meredith
She issues radiant from her dressing-room,
Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere:
--By stirring up a lower, much I fear
How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom
That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls
Can make known women torturingly fair;
The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair,
Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls.
His art...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Said Cotton to Corn, t'other day,
As they met and exchang'd salute--
(Squire Corn in his carriage so gay,
Poor Cotton, half famish'd on foot):
"Great Squire, if it isn't uncivil
To hint at starvation before you,
Look down on a poor hungry devil,
And give him some bread, I implore you!"
Quoth Corn, then, in answer to Cotton,
Perceiving he meant to make free --
"Low fellow, you've...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Barber, barber, shave a pig.
How many hairs will make a wig?
Four and twenty; that's enough.
Give the barber a pinch of snuff....Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
It wasn't, says the customer, it was always overly waxed.
I tried putting a wick in it to burn...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
The fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn
Under the hand of the village barber,
And her in the angle of house and barn
His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.
At anchor she rides the sunny sod
As full to the gunnel of flowers growing
As ever she turned her home with cod
From George's bank when winds were blowing.
And I judge from that...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
IT’S going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along.
Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.
There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
MAMIE beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana
town and dreamed of romance and big things off
somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran.
She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down
where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and
when the newspapers came in on the morning mail
she knew there was a big Chicago...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
"Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
FROM those drear solitudes and frowsy cells,
Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells;
Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast,
And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
Where truant ’prentices, yet young in sin,
Blush at the curious stranger peeping in;
Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar,
Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more;
Where tiny thieves not destin’d yet to swing,
Beat hemp...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
"I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work."
He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly,...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
What conversazzhyonies wuz I really did not know,
For that, you must remember, wuz a powerful spell ago;
The camp wuz new 'nd noisy, 'nd only modrit sized,
So fashionable sossiety wuz hardly crystallized.
There hadn't been no grand events to interest the men,
But a lynchin', or a inquest, or a jackpot now an' then.
The wimmin-folks wuz mighty scarce, for wimmin, ez a...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1897, and on the night of Christmas day,
That ten persons' lives were taken sway,
By a destructive fire in London, at No. 9 Dixie Street,
Alas! so great was the fire, the victims couldn't retreat.
In Dixie Street, No. 9, if was occupied by two families,
Who were all quite happy, and sitting at their ease;
One of...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My brother Jim's a millionaire,
while I have scarce a penny;
His face is creased with lines of care,
While my mug hasn't any.
With inwardness his eyes are dim,
While mine laugh out in glee,
And though I ought to envy him,
I think he envies me.
He has a chateau, I a shack,
And humble I should be
To see his stately Cadillac
Beside my jalopy.
With chain of...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat",
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote",
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote.
And so his friends held meetings (Oh, narrow souls were theirs!)
To advertise their little selves and Joseph's own affairs.
They got up a collection for Joseph unawares.
They...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Nurse, won't you let him in?
He's barkin' an' scratchen' the door,
Makin' so dreffel a din
I jest can't sleep any more;
Out there in the dark an' the cold,
Hark to him scrape an' whine,
Breakin' his heart o' gold,
Poor little pooch o' mine.
Nurse, I was sat in ma seat
In front o' the barber shop,
When there he was lickin' ma feet
As if he...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
How thought you that this thing could captivate?
What are those graces that could make her dear,
Who is not worth the notice of a sneer,
To rouse the vapid devil of her hate?
A speech conventional, so void of weight,
That after it has buzzed about one's ear,
'Twere rich refreshment for a week to hear
The dentist...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
If people came to know where my king's palace is, it would vanish
into the air.
The walls are of white silver and the roof of shining gold.
The queen lives in a palace with seven courtyards, and she
wears a jewel that cost all the wealth of seven kingdoms.
But let me tell you, mother, in a whisper, where my king's
palace is.
It...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
We read in the press that Lord Northcote is here
To take up Lord Tennyson's mission.
'Tis pleasant to find they have sent us a Peer,
And a man of exalted position.
It's his business to see that the Radical horde
From loyalty's path does not swerve us;
But his tastes, and the task, don't seem quite in accord...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
(For S. A.)TO write one book in five years
or five books in one year,
to be the painter and the thing painted,
… where are we, bo?
Wait—get his number.
The barber shop handling is here
and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist,
and the flame orange scarf.
Yet there is more—he sleeps under bridges
with lonely crazy men; he sits in country
jails with bootleggers; he...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
The sky is crumbling into millions of paper dots
the wind blows in my face
so I duck into my favorite barber shop
and listen to Vivaldi and look in the mirror
reflecting the shopfront windows, Broadway
and 104th, and watch the dots blown by the wind
blow into the faces of the walkers outside
& here comes a thin old man swaddled in scarves,
he must...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
“Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing—machinery does everything,” said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I watched one day a parrot grey - 'twas in a barber shop.
"Cuckold!" he cried, until I sighed: "You feathered devil, stop!"
Then balefully he looked at me, and slid along his perch,
With sneering eye that seemed to pry me very soul to search.
So fierce, so bold, so grim, so cold, so agate was his stare:
And then that bird I...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Caesar, the amplifier voice, announces
Crime and reparation. In the barber shop
Recumbent men attend, while absently
The barber doffs the naked face with cream.
Caesar proposes, Caesar promises
Pride, justice, and the sun
Brilliant and strong on everyone,
Speeding one hundred miles an hour across the land:
Caesar declares the will. The barber firmly
Planes the stubble with a steady hand,
While all in barber chairs reclining,
In wet...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
It was a man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down,
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
" 'Ere! shave me beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the...Read more of this...
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