10 Best Famous Chores Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Chores poems. This is a select list of the best famous Chores poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Chores poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of chores poems.

• All Famous Chores Poems

 Naked you are simple as one of your hands;
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round.
You've moon-lines, apple pathways
Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba;
You've vines and stars in your hair.
Naked you are spacious and yellow
As summer in a golden church.

Naked you are tiny as one of your nails;
Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born
And you withdraw to the underground world.

As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores;
Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.

 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time I met Wittgenstein, I was 
late. "The traffic was murder," I explained. 
He spent the next forty-five minutes 
analyzing this sentence. Then he was silent. 
I wondered why he had chosen a water tower
for our meeting. I also wondered how
I would leave, since the ladder I had used 
to climb up here had fallen to the ground. 

2. 

Wittgenstein served as a machine-gunner 
in the Austrian Army in World War I. 
Before the war he studied logic in Cambridge 
with Bertrand Russell. Having inherited 
his father's fortune (iron and steel), he 
gave away his money, not to the poor, whom 
it would corrupt, but to relations so rich 
it would not thus affect them. 

3. 

On leave in Vienna in August 1918 
he assembled his notebook entries 
into the Tractatus, Since it provided 
the definitive solution to all the problems 
of philosophy, he decided to broaden 
his interests. He became a schoolteacher, 
then a gardener's assistant at a monastery 
near Vienna. He dabbled in architecture. 

4. 

He returned to Cambridge in 1929, 
receiving his doctorate for the Tractatus, 
"a work of genius," in G. E. Moore's opinion. 
Starting in 1930 he gave a weekly lecture 
and led a weekly discussion group. He spoke 
without notes amid long periods of silence. 
Afterwards, exhausted, he went to the movies 
and sat in the front row. He liked Carmen Miranda. 

5. 

He would visit Russell's rooms at midnight 
and pace back and forth "like a caged tiger. 
On arrival, he would announce that when
he left he would commit suicide. So, in spite 
of getting sleepy, I did not like to turn him out." On 
such a night, after hours of dead silence, Russell said, 
"Wittgenstein, are you thinking about logic or about 
yours sins?" "Both," he said, and resumed his silence.

6. 

Philosophy was an activity, not a doctrine. 
"Solipsism, when its implications are followed out 
strictly, coincides with pure realism," he wrote. 
Dozens of dons wondered what he meant. Asked 
how he knew that "this color is red," he smiled
and said, "because I have learnt English." There 
were no other questions. Wittgenstein let the 
silence gather. Then he said, "this itself is the answer." 

7. 

Religion went beyond the boundaries of language, 
yet the impulse to run against "the walls of our cage," 
though "perfectly, absolutely useless," was not to be 
dismissed. A. J. Ayer, one of Oxford's ablest minds, 
was puzzled. If logic cannot prove a nonsensical 
conclusion, why didn't Wittgenstein abandon it, 
"along with the rest of metaphysics, as not worth 
serious attention, except perhaps for sociologists"? 

8. 

Because God does not reveal himself in this world, and 
"the value of this work," Wittgenstein wrote, "is that 
it shows how little is achieved when these problems 
are solved." When I quoted Gertrude Stein's line 
about Oakland, "there's no there there," he nodded. 
Was there a there, I persisted. His answer: Yes and No.
It was as impossible to feel another's person's pain 
as to suffer another person's toothache.

9. 

At Cambridge the dons quoted him reverently. 
I asked them what they thought was his biggest
contribution to philosophy. "Whereof one cannot 
speak, thereof one must be silent," one said.
Others spoke of his conception of important 
nonsense. But I liked best the answer John 
Wisdom gave: "His asking of the question 
`Can one play chess without the queen?'" 

10. 

Wittgenstein preferred American detective 
stories to British philosophy. He liked lunch 
and didn't care what it was, "so long as it was 
always the same," noted Professor Malcolm 
of Cornell, a former student, in whose house 
in Ithaca Wittgenstein spent hours doing 
handyman chores. He was happy then. 
There was no need to say a word.

 Brown lived at such a lofty farm
 That everyone for miles could see
His lantern when he did his chores
 In winter after half-past three.

And many must have seen him make
 His wild descent from there one night,
’Cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything,
 Describing rings of lantern light.

Between the house and barn the gale
 Got him by something he had on
And blew him out on the icy crust
 That cased the world, and he was gone!

Walls were all buried, trees were few:
 He saw no stay unless he stove
A hole in somewhere with his heel.
 But though repeatedly he strove

And stamped and said things to himself,
 And sometimes something seemed to yield,
He gained no foothold, but pursued
 His journey down from field to field.

Sometimes he came with arms outspread
 Like wings, revolving in the scene
Upon his longer axis, and
 With no small dignity of mien.

Faster or slower as he chanced,
 Sitting or standing as he chose,
According as he feared to risk
 His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,

He never let the lantern drop.
 And some exclaimed who saw afar
The figures he described with it,
 ”I wonder what those signals are

Brown makes at such an hour of night!
 He’s celebrating something strange.
I wonder if he’s sold his farm,
 Or been made Master of the Grange.”

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;
 He fell and made the lantern rattle
(But saved the light from going out.)
 So half-way down he fought the battle

Incredulous of his own bad luck.
 And then becoming reconciled
To everything, he gave it up
 And came down like a coasting child.

“Well—I—be—” that was all he said,
 As standing in the river road,
He looked back up the slippery slope
 (Two miles it was) to his abode.

Sometimes as an authority
 On motor-cars, I’m asked if I
Should say our stock was petered out,
 And this is my sincere reply:

Yankees are what they always were.
 Don’t think Brown ever gave up hope
Of getting home again because
 He couldn’t climb that slippery slope;

Or even thought of standing there
 Until the January thaw
Should take the polish off the crust.
 He bowed with grace to natural law,

And then went round it on his feet,
 After the manner of our stock;
Not much concerned for those to whom,
 At that particular time o’clock,

It must have looked as if the course
 He steered was really straight away
From that which he was headed for—
 Not much concerned for them, I say:

No more so than became a man—
 And politician at odd seasons.
I’ve kept Brown standing in the cold
 While I invested him with reasons;

But now he snapped his eyes three times;
 Then shook his lantern, saying, “Ile’s
’Bout out!” and took the long way home
 By road, a matter of several miles.

 Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth

Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark

In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts

Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s 

Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…

Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,

Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol

Hold no sway on ward one, nor even being

‘A six language master,’ on PICU madness is the only qualification.

There was the ‘shaving incident’ at school, which

Made him ready to walk out at fifteen, the alcohol

Defences at Oxford which shut us out then petered out

During the six years in India, studying Bengali at Shantiniketan.

He tottered from the plane, penniless and unshaven,

To hide away in the seediest bedsit Beeston could boast

Where night turned to day and vaguely he applied 

For jobs as clerk and court usher and drank in pubs with yobs.

When the crisis came – "I feel my head coming off my body’ –

I was ready and unready, making the necessary calls

To get a bed, to keep him on the ward, to visit and reassure 

Us both that some way out could be found.

The ‘Care Home’ was the next disaster, trying to cure

Schizophrenia with sticking plaster: "We don’t want 

Carers’ input, we call patients ‘residents’ and insist on chores

Not medication", then the letters of terrible abuse, the finding of a flat,

‘The discharge into the community.’

His ‘keyworker’ was the keyworker from hell: the more

Isaiah’s care fell apart the more she encouraged 

Him to blame us and ‘Make his life his own’, vital signs

Of decline ignored or consigned to files, ‘confidentiality’ reigned supreme.

Insidiously the way back to the ward unveiled

Over painful months, the self-neglect, the inappropriate remarks

In pubs, the neglected perforated eardrum, keeping

Company with his feckless cousins between their bouts in prison.

The pointless team meetings he was patted through,

My abrupt dismissal as carer at the keyworker’s instigation,

The admission we knew nothing of, the abscondings we were told of

And had to sort out, then the phone call from the ASW.

"We are about to section your son for six months, have you

Any comment?" Then the final absconding to London

From a fifteen minute break on PICU, to face his brother’s 

Drunken abuse, the police were kindness itself as they drove him to the secure unit.



Two nurses came by taxi from Leeds the next day to collect him 

The Newsam Centre’s like a hotel – Informality and first class treatment

Behind the locked doors he freezes before and whispers 

"Daddy, I was damned in hell but now I am God’s friend."

Note: PICU- Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

Beeston- An inner city area of Leeds

ASW- Approved Social Worker

 She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores

While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.

 To wed, or not to wed; that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The bills and house rent of a wedded fortune,
Or to say "nit" when she proposes,
And by declining cut her. To wed; to smoke
No more; And have a wife at home to mend
The holes in socks and shirts
And underwear and so forth. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To wed for life;
To wed; perchance to fight; ay, there's the rub;
For in that married life what fights may come,
When we have honeymooning ceased
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes the joy of single life.
For who would bear her mother's scornful tongue,
Canned goods for tea, the dying furnace fire;
The pangs of sleepless nights when baby cries;
The pain of barking shins upon a chair and
Closing waists that button down the back,
When he himself might all these troubles shirk
With a bare refusal? Who would bundles bear,
And grunt and sweat under a shopping load?
Who would samples match; buy rats for hair,
Cart cheese and crackers home to serve at night
For lunch to feed your friends; play pedro
After tea; sing rag time songs, amusing
Friendly neighbors. Buy garden tools
To lend unto the same. Stay home at nights
In smoking coat and slippers and slink to bed
At ten o'clock to save the light bills?
Thus duty does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of matrimony
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of chores;
And thus the gloss of marriage fades away,
And loses its attraction.

 Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is told, let us pay heed to the lesson.

Once on a time, long ago, lived in the State of Kentucky
One that was reckoned a witch--full of strange spells and devices;
Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic--
Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons, and plantains!
Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders--
These were the guides of that witch through the dank deeps of the forest.
Then, with her roots and her herbs, back to her cave in the morning
Ambled that hussy to brew spells of unspeakable evil;
And, when the people awoke, seeing that hillside and valley
Sweltered in swathes as of mist--"Look!" they would whisper in terror--
"Look! the old witch is at work brewing her spells of great evil!"
Then would they pray till the sun, darting his rays through the vapor,
Lifted the smoke from the earth and baffled the witch's intentions.

One of the boys at that time was a certain young person named Peter,
Given too little to work, given too largely to dreaming;
Fonder of books than of chores, you can imagine that Peter
Led a sad life on the farm, causing his parents much trouble.
"Peter!" his mother would call, "the cream is a'ready for churning!"
"Peter!" his father would cry, "go grub at the weeds in the garden!"
So it was "Peter!" all day--calling, reminding, and chiding--
Peter neglected his work; therefore that nagging at Peter!

Peter got hold of some books--how, I'm unable to tell you;
Some have suspected the witch--this is no place for suspicions!
It is sufficient to stick close to the thread of the legend.
Nor is it stated or guessed what was the trend of those volumes;
What thing soever it was--done with a pen and a pencil,
Wrought with a brain, not a hoe--surely 't was hostile to farming!

"Fudge on all readin'!" they quoth; or "that's what's the ruin of
Peter!"

So, when the mornings were hot, under the beech or the maple,
Cushioned in grass that was blue, breathing the breath of the blossoms,
Lulled by the hum of the bees, the coo of the ring-doves a-mating,
Peter would frivol his time at reading, or lazing, or dreaming.
"Peter!" his mother would call, "the cream is a'ready for churning!"
"Peter!" his father would cry, "go grub at the weeds in the garden!"
"Peter!" and "Peter!" all day--calling, reminding, and chiding--
Peter neglected his chores; therefore that outcry for Peter;
Therefore the neighbors allowed evil would surely befall him--
Yes, on account of these things, ruin would come upon Peter!

Surely enough, on a time, reading and lazing and dreaming
Wrought the calamitous ill all had predicted for Peter;
For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys--
"See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions!
See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow!
Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron!
She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices,
Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums;
Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders,
Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salamanders and toadstools;
Charming the bats from the flues, snaring the lizards by twilight,
Sucking the scorpion's egg and milking the breast of the adder!"

Peter derided these things held in such faith by the farmer,
Scouted at magic and charms, hooted at Jonahs and hoodoos--
Thinking and reading of books must have unsettled his reason!
"There ain't no witches," he cried; "it isn't smoky, but foggy!
I will go out in the wet--you all can't hender me, nuther!"

Surely enough he went out into the damp of the morning,
Into the smudge that the witch spread over woodland and meadow,
Into the fleecy gray pall brooding on hillside and valley.
Laughing and scoffing, he strode into that hideous vapor;
Just as he said he would do, just as he bantered and threatened,
Ere they could fasten the door, Peter had done gone and done it!
Wasting his time over books, you see, had unsettled his reason--
Soddened his callow young brain with semi-pubescent paresis,
And his neglect of his chores hastened this evil condition.

Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that shrill crying for Peter,
Up from the spring house the wail stealeth anon like a whisper,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
Such were the voices that whooped wildly and vainly for Peter
Decades and decades ago down in the State of Kentucky--
Such are the voices that cry now from the woodland and meadow,
"Peter--O Peter!" all day, calling, reminding, and chiding--
Taking us back to the time when Peter he done gone and done it!
These are the voices of those left by the boy in the farmhouse
When, with his laughter and scorn, hatless and bootless and sockless,
Clothed in his jeans and his pride, Peter sailed out in the weather,
Broke from the warmth of his home into that fog of the devil,
Into the smoke of that witch brewing her damnable porridge!

Lo, when he vanished from sight, knowing the evil that threatened,
Forth with importunate cries hastened his father and mother.
"Peter!" they shrieked in alarm, "Peter!" and evermore "Peter!"--
Ran from the house to the barn, ran from the barn to the garden,
Ran to the corn-crib anon, then to the smoke-house proceeded;
Henhouse and woodpile they passed, calling and wailing and weeping,
Through the front gate to the road, braving the hideous vapor--
Sought him in lane and on pike, called him in orchard and meadow,
Clamoring "Peter!" in vain, vainly outcrying for Peter.
Joining the search came the rest, brothers and sisters and cousins,
Venting unspeakable fears in pitiful wailing for Peter!
And from the neighboring farms gathered the men and the women,
Who, upon hearing the news, swelled the loud chorus for Peter.

Farmers and hussifs and maids, bosses and field-hands and niggers,
Colonels and jedges galore from cornfields and mint-beds and thickets,
All that had voices to voice, all to those parts appertaining,
Came to engage in the search, gathered and bellowed for Peter.
The Taylors, the Dorseys, the Browns, the Wallers, the Mitchells, the
Logans,
The Yenowines, Crittendens, Dukes, the Hickmans, the Hobbses, the Morgans;
The Ormsbys, the Thompsons, the Hikes, the Williamsons, Murrays, and
Hardins,

The Beynroths, the Sherleys, the Hokes, the Haldermans, Harneys, and
Slaughters--
All, famed in Kentucky of old for prowess prodigious at farming,
Now surged from their prosperous homes to join in that hunt for the
truant,
To ascertain where he was at, to help out the chorus for Peter.

Still on those prosperous farms where heirs and assigns of the people
Specified hereinabove and proved by the records of probate--
Still on those farms shall you hear (and still on the turnpikes
adjacent)
That pitiful, petulant call, that pleading, expostulant wailing,
That hopeless, monotonous moan, that crooning and droning for Peter.
Some say the witch in her wrath transmogrified all those good people;
That, wakened from slumber that day by the calling and bawling for Peter,
She out of her cave in a thrice, and, waving the foot of a rabbit
(Crossed with the caul of a coon and smeared with the blood of a chicken),
She changed all those folk into birds and shrieked with demoniac venom:
"Fly away over the land, moaning your Peter forever,
Croaking of Peter, the boy who didn't believe there were hoodoos,
Crooning of Peter, the fool who scouted at stories of witches,
Crying of Peter for aye, forever outcalling for Peter!"

This is the story they tell; so in good sooth saith the legend;
As I have told it to you, so tell the folk and the legend.
That it is true I believe, for on the breezes this morning
Come the shrill voices of birds calling and calling for Peter;
Out of the maple and beech glitter the eyes of the wailers,
Peeping and peering for him who formerly lived in these places--
Peter, the heretic lad, lazy and careless and dreaming,
Sorely afflicted with books and with pubescent paresis,
Hating the things of the farm, care of the barn and the garden,
Always neglecting his chores--given to books and to reading,
Which, as all people allow, turn the young person to mischief,
Harden his heart against toil, wean his affections from tillage.

This is the legend of yore told in the state of Kentucky
When in the springtime the birds call from the beeches and maples,
Call from the petulant thorn, call from the acrid persimmon;
When from the woods by the creek and from the pastures and meadows,
When from the spring house and lane and from the mint-bed and orchard,
When from the redbud and gum and from the redolent lilac,
When from the dirt roads and pikes cometh that calling for Peter;
Cometh the dolorous cry, cometh that weird iteration
Of "Peter" and "Peter" for aye, of "Peter" and "Peter" forever!
This is the legend of old, told in the tum-titty meter
Which the great poets prefer, being less labor than rhyming
(My first attempt at the same, my last attempt, too, I reckon!);
Nor have I further to say, for the sad story is ended.

 (for matt – 15)

in the first seven years you choose your howdah
having by then bare inklings of a journey
but where or why - confusion there to cloud a
judgement no more ready than a sore knee
to enter the lists of a whole life’s tourney -
but after this howdah-do (this introduction)
what’s to carry you where - from muddy fluxion

and glimpsing that a howdah does for two
(from seven years on the stirrings can be frantic)
you start to map the high ride (define the view)
and long for gilt and pomp (a touch of tantric)
relationships at best quite sycophantic
you dream of elephants clad in rich brocades
ideas to match your own fanfaronades

at fifteen then you’re really setting out
the sun’s dressed up to let you think life’s bright
your flag’s up front to give you extra clout
the chores are borne below (and out of sight)
you’ve made a noon of every slinking midnight
the continent is yours (let no one mock it)
yours the wheel to which all else a sprocket

in sri lanka in the kandy perahera 
every august in a festival procession
an elephant richly dressed (the stately bearer)
carries on its back in howdah-fashion
a casket (such the grandeur of its mission))
in which the buddha’s sacred tooth’s enshrined
an image that your journey brings to mind

that tooth’s the root of all deep human struggle
and life for each proceeds by that shrined truth
which (clearly seen) yet causes thought to boggle
in what dimension lies the total proof
that that enamelled shard is all-wise tooth
and not a figment of the brain’s rash wish
to puff dull want as in a cloud of hashish

old tooth (your truth) life’s slow (but rushing) voyage
that lonely cavalcade that buzzing dreams spell out
towards elusive man but keep you in your boy-age
a noble sense of self impugned by doubt
and yet (inside you caged) a regal shout
pomp should be there to honour your advancement
and you are right to sip from that entrancement

then be that casket the buddha’s tooth ennobles
have that howdah’s view of how dah world grows
choose your elephant well to ride your troubles
(let flag and rich brocade shine through such woes)
what others think can’t hurt what your heart knows
it’s a bumpy business this festive spirit’s trek
a well-sprung joy best cushion for your neck

 April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,
Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun,
Pensively,—only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.

 The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did your nightly chores,--
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow:
And ere the early bed-time came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

*

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,--
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea."
The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the somber green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where'er it fell
To make the coldness visible.