Famous Beans Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Three Bares

by Robert William Service
 Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em clean
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine.
It worked all right. She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd do
With all that bucket load of high explosive residue.
She knew that it was dangerous to scatter it around,
For Grandpa liked to throw his lighted matches...Read more of this...

To Minnie

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 The red room with the giant bed 
Where none but elders laid their head; 
The little room where you and I 
Did for awhile together lie 
And, simple, suitor, I your hand 
In decent marriage did demand; 
The great day nursery, best of all, 
With pictures pasted on the wall 
And leaves upon the blind-- 
A pleasant room wherein...Read more of this...

Momma Welfare Roll

by Maya Angelou
 Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
Pudgy HANDS bunched on layered hips
Where bones idle under years of fatback
And lima beans.

Her jowls shiver in accusation
Of crimes cliched by Repetition. 
Her children, strangers
To childhood's TOYS, play
Best the games of darkened doorways,
Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
Other people's property.

Too fat to whore,
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks...Read more of this...

A Girls Garden

by Robert Frost
 A NEIGHBOR of mine in the village
 Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
 A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
 To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
 And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
 He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off...Read more of this...

Praying Drunk

by Andrew Hudgins
 Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman, whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love,...Read more of this...

The Table And The Chair

by Edward Lear
 Said the table to the chair,
"You can scarcely be aware
How I suffer from the heat
And from blisters on my feet!
If we took a little walk
We might have a little talk.
Pray, let us take the air!"
Said the table to the chair.

Said the chair unto the table,
"Now you know we are not able!
How foolishly you talk
When you know we cannot walk!"
Said...Read more of this...

The Englishman

by G K Chesterton
 St George he was for England, 
And before he killed the dragon 
He drank a pint of English ale 
Out of an English flagon. 
For though he fast right readily 
In hair-shirt or in mail, 
It isn't safe to give him cakes 
Unless you give him ale. 

St George he was for England, 
And right gallantly set free 
The...Read more of this...

Nine from Eight

by Sidney Lanier
I was drivin' my two-mule waggin,
With a lot o' truck for sale,
Towards Macon, to git some baggin'
(Which my cotton was ready to bale),
And I come to a place on the side o' the pike
Whar a peert little winter branch jest had throw'd
The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like,
And I seed, a leetle ways up the road,
A man squattin'...Read more of this...

A Pastoral Sung To The King

by Robert Herrick
 MONTANO, SILVIO, AND MIRTILLO, SHEPHERDS

MON. Bad are the times. SIL. And worse than they are we.
MON. Troth, bad are both; worse fruit, and ill the tree:
The feast of shepherds fail. SIL. None crowns the cup
Of wassail now, or sets the quintel up:
And he, who used to lead the country-round,
Youthful Mirtillo, here he comes, grief-drown'd.
AMBO. Let's cheer him up. SIL....Read more of this...

A Pastiche For Eve

by Weldon Kees
 Unmanageable as history: these
Followers of Tammuz to the land
That offered no return, where dust
Grew thick on every bolt and door. And so the world
Chilled, and the women wept, tore at their hair.
Yet, in the skies, a goddess governed Sirius, the Dog,
Who shines alike on mothers, lesbians, and whores.

What are we governed by? Dido and Carrie
Chapman Catt arrange themselves as...Read more of this...

The Shooting Of Dan McGrew

by Robert William Service
 A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and...Read more of this...

Dyspeptic Clerk

by Robert William Service
 I think I'll buy a little field,
Though scant am I of pelf,
And hold the hope that it may yield
A living for myself;
For I have toiled ten thousand days
With ledger and with pen,
And I am sick of city ways
And soured with city men.

So I will plant my little plot
With lettuce, beans and peas;
Potatoes too - oh quite a lot,
An pear...Read more of this...

In The Secular Night

by Margaret Atwood
 In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn...Read more of this...

My Boss

by Robert William Service
 My Boss keeps sporty girls, they say;
His belly's big with cheer.
He squanders in a single day
What I make in a year.
For I must toil with bloody sweat,
And body bent and scarred,
While my whole life-gain he could bet
Upon a single card.

By Boss is big and I am small;
I slave to keep him rich.
He'd look at me like scum and call
Me...Read more of this...

Hot Boiled Beans

by Mother Goose
Ladies and gentlemen come to supper--
Hot boiled beans and very good butter....Read more of this...

Bills Grave

by Robert William Service
 I'm gatherin' flowers by the wayside to lay on the grave of Bill;
 I've sneaked away from the billet, 'cause Jim wouldn't understand;
'E'd call me a silly fat'ead, and larf till it made 'im ill,
 To see me 'ere in the cornfield, wiv a big bookay in me 'and.

For Jim and me we are rough uns, but Bill was...Read more of this...

Parting from Abbot Zan

by Du Fu
 Hundred river daily east flow Traveller go again not rest My life bitter float drift What time have end limit Zan abbot Buddhism old Banish come capital Still by earth dust bother Fairly show emaciated appearance Willow twig morning in hand Bean fruit rain thereafter ripe This body like float cloud What can boundary south north Different...Read more of this...

Little Puddleton

by Robert William Service
 I

Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.

I seldom read the papers, so I don't know what goes on.
I go to bed at sunset, and I leap alert at dawn,
To gossip with my garden, which I'll have...Read more of this...

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

by Charles Bukowski
 call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the 
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the...Read more of this...

Men Of The High North

by Robert William Service
 Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
 Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
 Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
 Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
 Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.

Men of the...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

Noctambule

by Robert William Service
 Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been...Read more of this...

Winter Promises

by Marge Piercy
 Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks, 
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, 
purple neon flawless glistening 
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast 
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk, 
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew 
will never wilt, roses weighing down 
a bush never touched by black spot, 
brave little fruit trees shouldering up 
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit: 

I...Read more of this...

Portent

by Robert William Service
 Courage mes gars:
La guerre est proche.

I plant my little plot of beans,
I sit beneath my cyprus tree;
I do not know what trouble means,
I cultivate tranquillity . . .
But as to-day my walk I made
In all serenity and cheer,
I saw cut in an agave blade:
"Courage, my comrades, war is near!"

Seward I went, my feet were slow,
Awhile I dowsed upon the...Read more of this...

Bachin'

by Badger Clark
  Our lives are hid; our trails are strange;
    We're scattered through the West
  In canyon cool, on blistered range
    Or windy mountain crest.
  Wherever Nature drops her ears
    And bares her claws to scratch,
  From Yuma to the north frontiers,
    You'll likely find...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Beans poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace