10 Best Famous Donkeys Poems

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

• All Famous Donkeys Poems

 My dearest Frank, I wish you joy
Of Mary's safety with a Boy,
Whose birth has given little pain
Compared with that of Mary Jane.--
May he a growing Blessing prove,
And well deserve his Parents' Love!--
Endow'd with Art's and Nature's Good,
Thy Name possessing with thy Blood,
In him, in all his ways, may we
Another Francis WIlliam see!--
Thy infant days may he inherit,
THey warmth, nay insolence of spirit;--
We would not with one foult dispense
To weaken the resemblance.
May he revive thy Nursery sin,
Peeping as daringly within,
His curley Locks but just descried,
With 'Bet, my be not come to bide.'--
Fearless of danger, braving pain,
And threaten'd very oft in vain,
Still may one Terror daunt his Soul,
One needful engine of Controul
Be found in this sublime array,
A neigbouring Donkey's aweful Bray.
So may his equal faults as Child,
Produce Maturity as mild!
His saucy words and fiery ways
In early Childhood's pettish days,
In Manhood, shew his Father's mind
Like him, considerate and Kind;
All Gentleness to those around,
And anger only not to wound.
Then like his Father too, he must,
To his own former struggles just,
Feel his Deserts with honest Glow,
And all his self-improvement know.
A native fault may thus give birth
To the best blessing, conscious Worth. 
As for ourselves we're very well;
As unaffected prose will tell.--
Cassandra's pen will paint our state,
The many comforts that await
Our Chawton home, how much we find
Already in it, to our mind;
And how convinced, that when complete
It will all other Houses beat
The ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise, or rooms distended.
You'll find us very snug next year,
Perhaps with Charles and Fanny near,
For now it often does delight us
To fancy them just over-right us.--

 Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman,
The early Mormons made a settlement
And built a stone baptismal font outdoors—
But Smith, or someone, called them off the mountain
To go West to a worse fight with the desert.
You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font.
Well, take me there."

 Someday I will."

 "Today."

"Huh, that old bathtub, what is that to see?
Let's talk about it."

 "Let's go see the place."

'To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do:
I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer,
And both of our united strengths, to do it."

"You've lost it, then?"

 "Not so but I can find it.
No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it.
The mountain may have shifted since I saw it
In eighty-five."

 "As long ago as that?"

"If I remember rightly, it had sprung
A leak and emptied then. And forty years
Can do a good deal to bad masonry.
You won't see any Mormon swimming in it.
But you have said it, and we're off to find it.
Old as I am, I'm going to let myself
Be dragged by you all over everywhere——"
"I thought you were a guide.”

 "I am a guide,
And that's why I can't decently refuse you."

We made a day of it out of the world,
Ascending to descend to reascend.
The old man seriously took his bearings,
And spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced
A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted,
Or stained by vegetation from above,
A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

"Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain,
At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle."

"I won't accept the substitute. It's empty.”

"So's everything."

"I want my fountain."

"I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty.
And anyway this tells me where I am.”

"Hadn't you long suspected where you were?"

"You mean miles from that Mormon settlement?
Look here, you treat your guide with due respect
If you don't want to spend the night outdoors.
I vow we must be near the place from where
The two converging slides, the avalanches,
On Marshall, look like donkey's ears.
We may as well see that and save the day."

"Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?"

"For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature?
You don't like nature. All you like is books.
What signify a donkey's cars and bottle,
However natural? Give you your books!
Well then, right here is where I show you books.
Come straight down off this mountain just as fast
As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet.
It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather."

Be ready, I thought, for almost anything.

We struck a road I didn't recognize,
But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes
In dust once more. We followed this a mile,
Perhaps, to where it ended at a house
I didn't know was there. It was the kind
To bring me to for broad-board paneling.
I never saw so good a house deserted.

"Excuse me if I ask you in a window
That happens to be broken, Davis said.
"The outside doors as yet have held against us.
I want to introduce you to the people
Who used to live here. They were Robinsons.
You must have heard of Clara Robinson,
The poetess who wrote the book of verses
And had it published. It was all about
The posies on her inner windowsill,
And the birds on her outer windowsill,
And how she tended both, or had them tended:
She never tended anything herself.
She was 'shut in' for life. She lived her whole
Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.
I'll show You how she had her sills extended
To entertain the birds and hold the flowers.
Our business first's up attic with her books."

We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass
Through a house stripped of everything
Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems.
Books, I should say!—-if books are what is needed.
A whole edition in a packing case
That, overflowing like a horn of plenty,
Or like the poetess's heart of love,
Had spilled them near the window, toward the light
Where driven rain had wet and swollen them.
Enough to stock a village library—
Unfortunately all of one kind, though.
They bad been brought home from some publisher
And taken thus into the family.
Boys and bad hunters had known what to do
With stone and lead to unprotected glass:
Shatter it inward on the unswept floors.
How had the tender verse escaped their outrage?
By being invisible for what it was,
Or else by some remoteness that defied them
To find out what to do to hurt a poem.
Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,
To send it sailing out the attic window
Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers,
Tried to improve on sailing like a tile
By flying like a bird (silent in flight,
But all the burden of its body song),
Only to tumble like a stricken bird,
And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved.
Books were not thrown irreverently about.
They simply lay where someone now and then,
Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet
And left it lying where it fell rejected.
Here were all those the poetess's life
Had been too short to sell or give away.

"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.

"Why not take two or three?"

 "Take all you want."
Good-looking books like that." He picked one fresh
In virgin wrapper from deep in the box,
And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.
He read in one and I read in another,
Both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering
The small book in my pocket. It was there.
The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven
At having eased her heart of one more copy—
Legitimately. My demand upon her,
Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.
In time she would be rid of all her books.

 Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!
She does not know the difference between the lights in the
streets and the stars.
When we play at eating with pebbles, she thinks they are real
food, and tries to put them into her mouth.
When I open a book before her and ask her to learn her a, b,
c, she tears the leaves with her hands and roars for joy at
nothing; this is your baby's way of doing her lesson.
When I shake my head at her in anger and scold her and call
her naughty, she laughs and thinks it great fun.
Everybody knows that father is away, but if in play I call
aloud "Father," she looks about her in excitement and thinks that
father is near.
When I hold my class with the donkeys that our washer man
brings to carry away the clothes and I warn her that I am the
schoolmaster, she will scream for no reason and call me dada.
Your baby wants to catch the moon. She is so funny; she calls
Ganesh Ganush.
Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!

 There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation,"
 So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
 Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
 On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated -- so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges --
 "Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost in wating for you. Go!"

So I went, worn out of patience; never told my nearest neighbours --
 Stole away with pack and ponies -- left 'em drinking in the town;
And the faith that moveth mountains didn't seem to help my labours
 As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.

March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning flanks and dodging shoulders,
 Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass;
Till I camped above the tree-line -- drifted snow and naked boulders --
 Felt free air astir to windward -- knew I'd stumbled on the Pass.

'Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the Norther found me --
 Froze and killed the plains-bred ponies; so I called the camp Despair
(It's the Railway Gap to-day, though). Then my Whisper waked to hound me: --
 "Something lost behind the Ranges. Over yonder! Go you there!"

Then I knew, the while I doubted -- knew His Hand was certain o'er me.
 Still -- it might be self-delusion -- scores of better men had died --
I could reach the township living, but. . . He knows what terror tore me . . .
 But I didn't . . . but I didn't. I went down the other side,

Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to aloes,
 And the aloes sprung to thickets and a brimming stream ran by;
But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water drained to shallows,
 And I dropped again on desert -- blasterd earth, and blasting sky. . . .

I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by 'em;
 I remember seeing faces, hearing voices, through the smoke;
I remember they were fancy -- for I threw a stone to try 'em.
 "Something lost behind the Ranges" was the only word they spoke.

But at last the country altered -- White Man's country past disputing --
 Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind --
There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting.
 Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.

Thence I ran my first rough survey -- chose my trees and blazed and ringed 'em --
 Week by week I pried and smhampled -- week by week my findings grew.
Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!
 But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!

Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snowslide shivers --
 Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
 And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!

'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em;
 Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em --
 Saw the plant to feed a people -- up and waiting for the power!

Well, I know who'll take the credit -- all the clever chaps that followed --
 Came, a dozen men together -- never knew my desert-fears;
Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water-holes I hollowed.
 They'll go back and do the talking. They'll be called the Pioneers!

They will find my sites of townships -- not the cities that I set there.
 They will rediscover rivers -- not my rivers heard at night.
By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there,
 By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright.

Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?
 Have I kept one single nugget -- (barring samples)? No, not I!
Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker.
 But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy.

Ores you'll find there; wood and cattle; water-transit sure and steady
 (That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors.
God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready,
 Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I've found it, and it's yours!

Yes, your "Never-never country" -- yes, your "edge of cultivation"
 And "no sense in going further" -- till I crossed the range to see.
God forgive me! No, I didn't. It's God's present to our nation.
 Anybody might have found it but -- His Whisper came to Me!

 Thistle and darnell and dock grew there, 
And a bush, in the corner, of may, 
On the orchard wall I used to sprawl 
In the blazing heat of the day; 

Half asleep and half awake, 
While the birds went twittering by, 
And nobody there my lone to share 
But Nicholas Nye. 

Nicholas Nye was lean and gray, 
Lame of leg and old, 
More than a score of donkey's years 
He had been since he was foaled; 
He munched the thistles, purple and spiked, 
Would sometimes stoop and sigh, 
And turn to his head, as if he said, 
"Poor Nicholas Nye!" 

Alone with his shadow he'd drowse in the meadow, 
Lazily swinging his tail, 
At break of day he used to bray,-- 
Not much too hearty and hale; 
But a wonderful gumption was under his skin, 
And a clean calm light in his eye, 
And once in a while; he'd smile:-- 
Would Nicholas Nye. 

Seem to be smiling at me, he would, 
From his bush in the corner, of may,-- 
Bony and ownerless, widowed and worn, 
Knobble-kneed, lonely and gray; 
And over the grass would seem to pass 
'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky, 
Something much better than words between me 
And Nicholas Nye. 

But dusk would come in the apple boughs, 
The green of the glow-worm shine, 
The birds in nest would crouch to rest, 
And home I'd trudge to mine; 
And there, in the moonlight, dark with dew, 
Asking not wherefore nor why, 
Would brood like a ghost, and as still as a post, 
Old Nicholas Nye.

 When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
All the green leaved little weddings' wives
In the coal black bush and let them grieve.

When I was a gusty man and a half
And the black beast of the beetles' pews
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of bitches),
Not a boy and a bit in the wick-
Dipping moon and drunk as a new dropped calf,
I whistled all night in the twisted flues,
Midwives grew in the midnight ditches,
And the sizzling sheets of the town cried, Quick!-
Whenever I dove in a breast high shoal,
Wherever I ramped in the clover quilts,
Whatsoever I did in the coal-
Black night, I left my quivering prints.

When I was a man you could call a man
And the black cross of the holy house,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of welcome),
Brandy and ripe in my bright, bass prime,
No springtailed tom in the red hot town
With every simmering woman his mouse
But a hillocky bull in the swelter
Of summer come in his great good time
To the sultry, biding herds, I said,
Oh, time enough when the blood runs cold,
And I lie down but to sleep in bed,
For my sulking, skulking, coal black soul!

When I was half the man I was
And serve me right as the preachers warn,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of downfall),
No flailing calf or cat in a flame
Or hickory bull in milky grass
But a black sheep with a crumpled horn,
At last the soul from its foul mousehole
Slunk pouting out when the limp time came;
And I gave my soul a blind, slashed eye,
Gristle and rind, and a roarers' life,
And I shoved it into the coal black sky
To find a woman's soul for a wife.

Now I am a man no more no more
And a black reward for a roaring life,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers),
Tidy and cursed in my dove cooed room
I lie down thin and hear the good bells jaw--
For, oh, my soul found a sunday wife
In the coal black sky and she bore angels!
Harpies around me out of her womb!
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!

 to the seaside
to the seaside
to the change and peace of mind
to the easy la-
zy holiday
the leave-it-all-behind

to the seaside
to the sunshine
to the body-littered sands
to the deckchairs
and the funfairs
and the burst-your-ears brass bands

to the ice-cream
to the wasp-stings
to the sand-in-every-meal
to the castles
and the donkeys
and the plates of jellied eel

to the bosoms
and the bottoms
to the bodies-in-the-raw
to the he-men
and the paunches
to the what-the-butler-saw

(to the catch-my-eye
the hold-me-tight
the kiss-me-in-the-park
to the will-you
wont-you-let-me
to the bathing-in-the-dark)

to the landladies
and gloomy rooms
and out-of-here-by-ten
to the drizzle 
and the boredom
and the going-round-the-bend

to the blisters
and the crying kids
the peeling aching backs
to the god-i-wish-
we'd-never-come-
i-wish-we'd-gone-to-jack's

to the getting-on
the train again
the joy of going home
to the roses 
in the garden
and the being-left-alone

to the no-food-
in-the-larder
and the not-an-open-shop
to the ashes
in the fireplace
and the week-old washing up

 A Donkey, whose talent for burdens was wondrous,
So much that you'd swear he rejoic'd in a load,
One day had to jog under panniers so pond'rous,
That -- down the poor Donkey fell smack on the road!

His owners and drivers stood round in amaze --
What! Neddy, the patient, the prosperous Neddy,
So easy to drive, through the dirtiest ways,
For every description of job-work so ready!

One driver (whom Ned might have "hail'd" as a "brother")
Had just been proclaiming his Donkey's renown
For vigour, for spirit, for one thing or another --
When, lo, 'mid his praises, the Donkey came down!

But, how to upraise him? - one shouts, t'other whistles,
While Jenky, the Conjurer, wisest of all,
Declar'd that an "over-production of thistles" --
(Here Ned gave a stare) -- "was the cause of his fall."

Another wise Solomon cries, as he passes --
"There, let him alone, and the fit will soon cease;
The beast has been fighting with other jack-asses,
And this is his mode of "transition to peace"."

Some look'd at his hoofs, and with learned grimaces,
Pronounc'd that too long without shoes he had gone --
"Let the blacksmith provide him a sound metal basis
(The wise-acres said), and he's sure to jog on."

Meanwhile, the poor Neddy, in torture and fear,
Lay under his panniers, scarce able to groan;
And -- what was still dolefuller - lending an ear
To advisers, whose ears were a match for his own.

At length, a plain rustic, whose wit went so far
As to see others' folly, roar'd out, as he pass'd --
"Quick -- off with the panniers, all dolts as ye are,
Or, your prosperous Neddy will soon kick his last!"

 Come all you little rouseabouts and climb upon my knee; 
To-day, you see, is Christmas Day, and so it’s up to me 
To give you some instruction like—a kind of Christmas tale— 
So name your yarn, and off she goes. What, “Jonah and the Whale”? 
Well, whales is sheep I’ve never shore; I’ve never been to sea, 
So all them great Leviathans is mysteries to me; 
But there’s a tale the Bible tells I fully understand, 
About the time the Patriarchs were settling on the land. 

Those Patriarchs of olden time, when all is said and done, 
They lived the same as far-out men on many a Queensland run— 
A lot of roving, droving men who drifted to and fro, 
The same we did out Queensland way a score of years ago. 

Now Isaac was a squatter man, and Jacob was his son, 
And when the boy grew up, you see, he wearied of the run. 
You know the way that boys grow up—there’s some that stick at home; 
But any boy that’s worth his salt will roll his swag and roam. 

So Jacob caught the roving fit and took the drovers’ track 
To where his uncle had a run, beyond the outer back; 
You see they made for out-back runs for room to stretch and grow, 
The same we did out Queensland way a score of years ago. 

Now, Jacob knew the ways of stock—that’s most uncommon clear— 
For when he got to Laban’s Run, they made him overseer; 
He didn’t ask a pound a week, but bargained for his pay 
To take the roan and strawberry calves—the same we’d take to-day. 

The duns and blacks and “Goulburn roans” (that’s brindles), coarse and hard, 
He branded them with Laban’s brand, in Old Man Laban’s yard; 
So, when he’d done the station work for close on seven year, 
Why, all the choicest stock belonged to Laban’s overseer. 

It’s often so with overseers—I’ve seen the same thing done 
By many a Queensland overseer on many a Queensland run. 
But when the mustering time came on old Laban acted straight, 
And gave him country of his own outside the boundary gate. 

He gave him stock, and offered him his daughter’s hand in troth; 
And Jacob first he married one, and then he married both; 
You see, they weren’t particular about a wife or so— 
No more were we up Queensland way a score of years ago. 

But when the stock were strong and fat with grass and lots of rain, 
Then Jacob felt the call to take the homeward road again. 
It’s strange in every creed and clime, no matter where you roam, 
There comes a day when every man would like to make for home. 

So off he set with sheep and goats, a mighty moving band, 
To battle down the homeward track along the Overland— 
It’s droving mixed-up mobs like that that makes men cut their throats. 
I’ve travelled rams, which Lord forget, but never travelled goats. 

But Jacob knew the ways of stock, for (so the story goes) 
When battling through the Philistines—selectors, I suppose— 
He thought he’d have to fight his way, an awkward sort of job; 
So what did Old Man Jacob do? of course, he split the mob. 

He sent the strong stock on ahead to battle out the way; 
He couldn’t hurry lambing ewes—no more you could to-day— 
And down the road, from run to run, his hand ’gainst every hand, 
He moved that mighty mob of stock across the Overland. 

The thing is made so clear and plain, so solid in and out, 
There isn’t any room at all for any kind of doubt. 
It’s just a plain straightforward tale—a tale that lets you know 
The way they lived in Palestine three thousand years ago. 

It’s strange to read it all to-day, the shifting of the stock; 
You’d think you see the caravans that loaf behind the flock, 
The little donkeys and the mules, the sheep that slowly spread, 
And maybe Dan or Naphthali a-ridin’ on ahead. 

The long, dry, dusty summer days, the smouldering fires at night; 
The stir and bustle of the camp at break of morning light; 
The little kids that skipped about, the camels’ dead-slow tramp— 
I wish I’d done a week or two in Old Man Jacob’s camp! 

But if I keep the narrer path, some day, perhaps, I’ll know 
How Jacob bred them strawberry calves three thousand years ago.

 Whenas—(I love that “whenas” word—
 It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
 The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey’s back
 Would carry thus a double load—
Father and son upon one jack,
 Galumphing down the Tibur Road.

II

Old is the tale—Aesop’s, I think—
 Of that famed miller and his son
Whose fortunes were so “on the blink”
 They had one donk, and only one;
You know the tale—the critic’s squawk
 (As pater that poor ass bestrode)—
“Selfish! To make thy fine son walk!”
 Perhaps that was on Tibur Road?

III

You will recall how dad got down
 And made the son the ass bestride:—
The critics shouted with a frown:
 “Shame, boy! pray let thy father ride!”
Up got the dad beside the son;
 The donkey staggered with the load
“Poor donk! For shame!” cried every one
 That walked the (was it?) Tibur Road.

IV

You know the end! Upon their backs
 Daddy and son with much ado
Boosted that most surprised of jacks,—
 He kicked, and off the bridge he flew;
“He! haw!” A splash! A gurgling sound—
 A long, last watery abode—
In Anio’s stream the donk was drowned—
 (If this occurred on Tibur Road.)

V

Let Donkey represent the Odes;
 The Miller represent G. M.;
The Son stand for G. F.; the loads
 Of Critics—I will do for them.
Now, then, this proposition made,
 (And my bum verses “Ah’d” and “Oh’d!”).
What Q. E. D. can be displayed
 Anent this “On the Tibur Road”?

VI

First, Horry’s dead and he don’t care,
 So cancel him, and let him snore;
His Donkey has been raised in air
 So oft he’s tough and calloused o’er;
Our Miller—dusty-headed man—
 Follows the best donk-boosting code:
Our Son—dispute it no one can—
 Sings gaily down the Tibur Road.

VII

This, then, must be this Critic’s scream:—
 The donk was boosted well and high,
And, ergo! falling in the stream,
 Isn’t and ain’t and can’t be dry;
Nor is your book. Which is to say
 It is no gloomy episode—
You’ve made a dead donk sweetly bray,
 And joyful is the Tibur Road.