Famous Barn Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Barn poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous barn poems. These examples illustrate what a famous barn poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Eugene Field
Up yonder in Buena Park
There is a famous spot,
In legend and in history
Yclept the Waller Lot.
There children play in daytime
And lovers stroll by dark,
For 't is the goodliest trysting-place
In all Buena Park.
Once on a time that beauteous maid,
Sweet little Sissy Knott,
Took out her pretty doll to walk
Within the Waller Lot.
While thus she fared, from Ravenswood
Came Injuns o'er the plain,
And...Read more of this...
by
Jonas Mekas
You too return, along with days gone,
and flow again, my blue rivers,
to carry on the songs of washerwomen,
fishermen's nets and grey wooden bridges.
Clear blue nights, smelling warm,
streams of thin mist off the meadow drift in
with distinct hoof-stomps from a fettered horse.
To carry off rioting spring thaws,
willows torn loose and yellow lily cups,
with children's shrill riots.
The summer heat, its midday...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple
Leaping like Leopards to the Sky
Then at the feet of the old Horizon
Laying her spotted Face to die
Stooping as low as the Otter's Window
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler of Day is gone...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
The light by the barn that shines all night
pales at dawn when a little breeze comes.
A little breeze comes breathing the fields
from their sleep and waking the slow windmill.
The slow windmill sings the long day
about anguish and loss to the chickens at work.
The little breeze follows the slow windmill
and the chickens at work till the sun goes down--
Then the...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I've sung of Violet de Vere, that slinky, minky dame,
Of Gertie of the Diamond Tooth, and Touch-the-Button Nell,
And Maye Lamore,--at eighty-four I oughta blush wi' shame
That in my wild and wooly youth I knew them ladies well.
And Klondike Kit, and Gumboot Sue, and many I've forgot;
They had their faults, as I recall, the same as you and me;
But come...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
WHEN the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lowest chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
‘Come out! Come out!’--
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,--
How...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy's in the well!
Who put her in?
Little Tommy Lin.
Who pulled her out?
Little Johnny Stout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To try to drown poor pussy-cat.
Who never did him any harm,
But killed the mice in his father's barn!...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
"Tie stille, barn min!
Imorgen kommer Fin,
Fa'er din,
Og gi'er dich Esbern Snares öine og hjerte at lege med!"
Zealand Rhyme.
"BUILD at Kallundborg by the sea
A church as stately as church may be,
And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,"
Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.
And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said,
"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!"
And...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
So gradual in those summers was the going
of the age it seemed that the long days setting out
when the stars faded over the mountains were not
leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
glittered in the webs it appeared then that the clear morning
opening into the sky was something of ours
to have...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;
With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,
From out the forest to the open knoll
Where much...Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
"Farewell to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.
"The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
And my knife is in his side.
"My mother thinks us long away;
'Tis time the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Bly
Nigh and day arrive and day after day goes by
And what is old remains old and what is young remains young and grows old.
The lumber pile does not grow younger nor the two-by-fours lose their darkness
but the old tree goes on the barn stands without help so many years;
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.
The horse...Read more of this...
by
Norman Dubie
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights
He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns
And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience
Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look...Read more of this...
by
Nick Flynn
I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.
They jerk around the apartment like that
holding on to each other, their cheeks
almost touching. One is shirtless, the other
wears a suit, the one in the suit came in through a window
to steal documents or diamonds, it doesn't matter anymore
which, what's...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
A little boy went into a barn,
And lay down on some hay.
An owl came out, and flew about,
And the little boy ran away....Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
In borrowed boots which don't fit
and an old olive greatcoat,
I hunt the corn-fed rabbit,
game fowl, squirrel, starved bobcat,
anything small. I bring down
young deer wandered from the doe's
gaze, and reload, and move on
leaving flesh to inform crows.
At dusk they seem to suspect
me, burrowed in a corn field
verging their stream. The...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Song of the Soldiers
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye
Who watch us...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
The new ergonomics were delivered
just before lunchtime
so we ignored them.
Without revealing the particulars
let me just say that
lunch was most satisfying.
Jack and Roberta went with
the corned beef for a change.
Jack believes in alien abduction
and Roberta does not,
although she has had
several lost weekends lately
and one or two unexplained scars
on...Read more of this...
by
Walter de la Mare
Interr'd beneath this marble stone,
Lie saunt'ring Jack and idle Joan.
While rolling threescore years and one
Did round this globe their courses run;
If human things went ill or well;
If changing empires rose or fell;
The morning passed, the evening came,
And found this couple still the same.
They walk'd and eat, good folks: what then?
Why...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
The Farmer's Goose, who in the Stubble,
Has fed without Restraint, or Trouble;
Grown fat with Corn and Sitting still,
Can scarce get o'er the Barn-Door Sill:
And hardly waddles forth, to cool
Her Belly in the neighb'ring Pool:
Nor loudly cackles at the Door;
For Cackling shews the Goose is poor.
But when she must be turn'd to graze,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
SMOKE of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a long-tailed rider
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . .
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.
There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river;...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
When I was daft (as urchins are),
And full if fairy lore,
I aimed an arrow at a star
And hit - the barnyard door.
I've shot at heaps of stars since then,
but always it's the same -
A barnyard door has mocked me when
Uranus was my aim.
So, I'll shoot starward as of yore,
Though wide my arrows fall;
I'd rather hit a big barn door
Then...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
(with apologies to Frederic Taber Cooper)
I well recall (and who does not)
The circus bill-board hippopotamus,
whose wide distended jaws
For fear and terror were good cause.
That month, that vasty carmine cave,
Could munch with ease a Nubian slave;
In fact, the bill-board hippopot-
amus could bolt a house and lot!
Wide opened, that tremendous mouth
Obscured three-quarters of the south
Side of Schmidt’s barn, and promised me
Thrills,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
(Chirstmas Day, 1917)THE FIVE O’CLOCK prairie sunset is a strong man going to sleep after a long day in a cornfield.
The red dust of a rusty crimson is fixed with two fingers of lavender. A hook of smoke, a woman’s nose in charcoal and … nothing.
The timberline turns in a cover of purple. A grain elevator humps a shoulder....Read more of this...
by
Richard Hugo
for Hank and Nancy
Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow
from his cough. These limp days, his anger,
legend forty years from moon to Stevensville,
lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore.
Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam
unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves
of cottonwoods ride Burnt Fork creek away.
His geese grow fat without him. Same...Read more of this...
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