10 Best Famous Mores Poems

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

• All Famous Mores Poems

 Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
 On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
 Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
 Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
 In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
 Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
 Made impure,
By the Sunderbunds unwholesome, by the swamp
 Moist and damp;
And the City and the Viceroy, as we see,
 Don't agree.
Once, two hundered years ago, the trader came
 Meek and tame.
Where his timid foot first halted, there he stayed,
 Till mere trade
Grew to Empire, and he sent his armies forth
 South and North
Till the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
 Was his own.
Thus the midday halt of Charnock -- more's the pity!
 Grew a City.
As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed,
 So it spread --
Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built
 On the silt --
Palace, byre, hovel -- poverty and pride --
 Side by side;
And, above the packed and pestilential town,
 Death looked down.
But the Rulers in that City by the Sea
 Turned to flee --
Fled, with each returning spring-tide from its ills
 To the Hills.
From the clammy fogs of morning, from the blaze
 Of old days,
From the sickness of the noontide, from the heat,
 Beat retreat;
For the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
 Was their own.
But the Merchant risked the perils of the Plain
 For his gain.
Now the resting-place of Charnock, 'neath the palms,
 Asks an alms,
And the burden of its lamentation is, Briefly, this:
"Because for certain months, we boil and stew,
 So should you.
Cast the Viceroy and his Council, to perspire
 In our fire!"
And for answer to the argument, in vain
 We explain
That an amateur Saint Lawrence cannot fry:
 "All must fry!"
That the Merchant risks the perils of the Plain
 For gain.
Nor can Rulers rule a house that men grow rich in,
 From its kitchen.
Let the Babu drop inflammatory hints
 In his prints;
And mature -- consistent soul -- his plan for stealing
 To Darjeeling:
Let the Merchant seek, who makes his silver pile,
 England's isle;
Let the City Charnock pitched on -- evil day!
 Go Her way.
Though the argosies of Asia at Her doors
 Heap their stores,
Though Her enterprise and energy secure
 Income sure,
Though "out-station orders punctually obeyed"
 Swell Her trade --
Still, for rule, administration, and the rest,
 Simla's best.

  1

You, once a belle in Shreveport,
with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
still have your dresses copied from that time,
and play a Chopin prelude
called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections
float like perfume through the memory."

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake,
heavy with useless experience, rich
with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,
crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge
of mere fact. In the prime of your life.

Nervy, glowering, your daughter
wipes the teaspoons, grows another way.

 2

Banging the coffee-pot into the sink
she hears the angels chiding, and looks out
past the raked gardens to the sloppy sky.
Only a week since They said: Have no patience.

The next time it was: Be insatiable.
Then: Save yourself; others you cannot save.
Sometimes she's let the tapstream scald her arm,
a match burn to her thumbnail,

or held her hand above the kettle's snout
right inthe woolly steam. They are probably angels,
since nothing hurts her anymore, except
each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.

 3

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
The beak that grips her, she becomes. And Nature,
that sprung-lidded, still commodious
steamer-trunk of tempora and mores
gets stuffed with it all: the mildewed orange-flowers,
the female pills, the terrible breasts
of Boadicea beneath flat foxes' heads and orchids.
Two handsome women, gripped in argument,
each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream
across the cut glass and majolica
like Furies cornered from their prey:
The argument ad feminam, all the old knives
that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours,
ma semblable, ma soeur!

 4

Knowing themselves too well in one another:
their gifts no pure fruition, but a thorn,
the prick filed sharp against a hint of scorn...
Reading while waiting
for the iron to heat,
writing, My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--
in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum,
or, more often,
iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird,
dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.

 5

Dulce ridens, dulce loquens,
she shaves her legs until they gleam
like petrified mammoth-tusk.

 6

When to her lute Corinna sings
neither words nor music are her own;
only the long hair dipping 
over her cheek, only the song
of silk against her knees
and these 
adjusted in reflections of an eye.

Poised, trembling and unsatisfied, before
an unlocked door, that cage of cages,
tell us, you bird, you tragical machine--
is this fertillisante douleur? Pinned down
by love, for you the only natural action,
are you edged more keen
to prise the secrets of the vault? has Nature shown
her household books to you, daughter-in-law,
that her sons never saw?

 7

"To have in this uncertain world some stay
which cannot be undermined, is
of the utmost consequence."
 Thus wrote
a woman, partly brave and partly good,
who fought with what she partly understood.
Few men about her would or could do more,
hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore.

 8

"You all die at fifteen," said Diderot,
and turn part legend, part convention.
Still, eyes inaccurately dream
behind closed windows blankening with steam.
Deliciously, all that we might have been,
all that we were--fire, tears,
wit, taste, martyred ambition--
stirs like the memory of refused adultery
the drained and flagging bosom of our middle years.

 9

Not that it is done well, but
that it is done at all? Yes, think
of the odds! or shrug them off forever.
This luxury of the precocious child,
Time's precious chronic invalid,--
would we, darlings, resign it if we could?
Our blight has been our sinecure:
mere talent was enough for us--
glitter in fragments and rough drafts.

Sigh no more, ladies.
 Time is male
and in his cups drinks to the fair.
Bemused by gallantry, we hear
our mediocrities over-praised,
indolence read as abnegation,
slattern thought styled intuition,
every lapse forgiven, our crime
only to cast too bold a shadow
or smash the mold straight off.
For that, solitary confinement,
tear gas, attrition shelling.
Few applicants for that honor.

 10

 Well,
she's long about her coming, who must be
more merciless to herself than history.
Her mind full to the wind, I see her plunge
breasted and glancing through the currents,
taking the light upon her
at least as beautiful as any boy
or helicopter,
 poised, still coming,
her fine blades making the air wince

but her cargo
no promise then:
delivered
palpable
ours.

 Full many a sinful notion
Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
Of apple-pie and cheese!

I'm glad my education
Enables me to stand
Against the vile temptation
Held out on every hand;
Eschewing all the tittles
With vanity replete,
I'm loyal to the victuals
Our grandsires used to eat!
I'm glad I've got three willing boys
To hang around and tease
Their mother for the filling joys
Of apple-pie and cheese!

Your flavored creams and ices
And your dainty angel-food
Are mighty fine devices
To regale the dainty dude;
Your terrapin and oysters,
With wine to wash 'em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul's devotion
To apple-pie and cheese!

The pie my Julia makes me
(God bless her Yankee ways!)
On memory's pinions takes me
To dear Green Mountain days;
And seems like I see Mother
Lean on the window-sill,
A-handin' me and brother
What she knows 'll keep us still;
And these feelings are so grateful,
Says I, "Julia, if you please,
I'll take another plateful
Of that apple-pie and cheese!"

And cheese! No alien it, sir,
That's brought across the sea,--
No Dutch antique, nor Switzer,
Nor glutinous de Brie;
There's nothing I abhor so
As mawmets of this ilk--
Give me the harmless morceau
That's made of true-blue milk!
No matter what conditions
Dyspeptic come to feaze,
The best of all physicians
Is apple-pie and cheese!

Though ribalds may decry 'em,
For these twin boons we stand,
Partaking thrice per diem
Of their fulness out of hand;
No enervating fashion
Shall cheat us of our right
To gratify our passion
With a mouthful at a bite!
We'll cut it square or bias,
Or any way we please,
And faith shall justify us
When we carve our pie and cheese!

De gustibus, 't is stated,
Non disputandum est.
Which meaneth, when translated,
That all is for the best.
So let the foolish choose 'em
The vapid sweets of sin,
I will not disabuse 'em
Of the heresy they're in;
But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese!

 THOU flatt’ring mark of friendship kind,
Still may thy pages call to mind
 The dear, the beauteous donor;
Tho’ sweetly female ev’ry part,
Yet such a head, and more the heart
 Does both the sexes honour:
She show’d her taste refin’d and just,
 When she selected thee;
Yet deviating, own I must,
 For sae approving me:
 But kind still I’ll mind still
 The giver in the gift;
 I’ll bless her, an’ wiss her
 A Friend aboon the lift.

 All hail to Mr Murphy, he is a hero brave,
That has crossed the mighty Atlantic wave,
For what purpose let me pause and think-
I answer, to warn the people not to taste strong drink. 

And, I'm sure, if they take his advice, they never will rue
The day they joined the Blue Ribbon Army in the year 1882;
And I hope to their colours they will always prove true,
And shout, Hurrah ! for Mr Murphy and the Ribbon of Blue. 

What is strong drink? Let me think-- I answer 'tis a thing
From whence the majority of evils spring,
And causes many a fireside with boisterous talk to ring,
And leaves behind it a deadly sting. 

Some people do say it is good when taken in moderation,
But, when taken to excess, it leads to tribulation,
Also to starvation and loss of reputation,
Likewise your eternal soul's damnation. 

The drunkard, he says he can't give it up,
For I must confess temptation's in the cup;
But he wishes to God it was banished from the land,
While he holds the cup in his trembling hand. 

And he exclaims in the agony of his soul --
Oh, God, I cannot myself control
From this most accurs'd cup!
Oh, help me, God, to give it up! 

Strong drink to the body can do no good;
It defiles the blood, likewise the food,
And causes the drunkard with pain to groan,
Because it extracts the marrow from the bone: 

And hastens him on to a premature grave,
Because to the cup he is bound a slave;
For the temptation is hard to thole,
And by it he will lose his immortal soul. 

The more's the pity, I must say,
That so many men and women are by it led astray,
And decoyed from the paths of virtue and led on to vice
By drinking too much alcohol and acting unwise. 

Good people all, of every degree,
I pray, ye all be warned by me:
I advise ye all to pause and think,
And never more to taste strong drink. 

Because the drunkard shall never inherit the kingdom of God
And whosoever God loves he chastens with his rod:
Therefore, be warned, and think in time,
And don't drink any more whisky, rum, or wine. 

But go at once-- make no delay,
And join the Blue Ribbon Army without dismay,
And rally round Mr Murphy, and make a bold stand,
And help to drive the Bane of Society from our land. 

I wish Mr Murphy every success,
Hoping he will make rapid progress;
And to the Blue Ribbon Army may he always prove true,
And adhere to his colours-- the beautiful blue.

 Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist the horizon's edge surrounds
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all—a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave
And memory's pride ere want to wealth did bow
Is both the shadow and the substance now
The sheep and cows were free to range as then
Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men
Cows went and came, with evening morn and night,
To the wild pasture as their common right
And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won
Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain
Then met the brook and drank and roamed again
The brook that dribbled on as clear as glass
Beneath the roots they hid among the grass
While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along
Free as the lark and happy as her song
But now all's fled and flats of many a dye
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye
Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay
As poet's visions of life's early day
Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done
And hedgrow-briars—flower-lovers overjoyed
Came and got flower-pots—these are all destroyed
And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft
Fence now meets fence in owners' little bounds
Of field and meadow large as garden grounds
In little parcels little minds to please
With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease
Each little path that led its pleasant way
As sweet as morning leading night astray
Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host
That travel felt delighted to be lost
Nor grudged the steps that he had ta-en as vain
When right roads traced his journeys and again -
Nay, on a broken tree he'd sit awhile
To see the mores and fields and meadows smile
Sometimes with cowslaps smothered—then all white
With daiseys—then the summer's splendid sight
Of cornfields crimson o'er the headache bloomd
Like splendid armys for the battle plumed
He gazed upon them with wild fancy's eye
As fallen landscapes from an evening sky
These paths are stopt—the rude philistine's thrall
Is laid upon them and destroyed them all
Each little tyrant with his little sign
Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine
But paths to freedom and to childhood dear
A board sticks up to notice 'no road here'
And on the tree with ivy overhung
The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung
As tho' the very birds should learn to know
When they go there they must no further go
Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade goodbye
And much they feel it in the smothered sigh
And birds and trees and flowers without a name
All sighed when lawless law's enclosure came
And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes
Have found too truly that they were but dreams.

My heart is sick awishing and awaiting:
  The lad took up his knapsack, he went, he went his way;
And I looked on for his coming, as a prisoner through the grating
  Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day.
On the wild purple mountains, all alone with no other,
  The strong terrible mountains he longed, he longed to be;
And he stooped to kiss his father, and he stooped to kiss his mother,
  And till I said, "Adieu, sweet Sir," he quite forgot me.
He wrote of their white raiment, the ghostly capes that screen them,
  Of the storm winds that beat them, their thunder-rents and scars,
And the paradise of purple, and the golden slopes atween them,
  And fields, where grow God's gentian bells, and His crocus stars.
He wrote of frail gauzy clouds, that drop on them like fleeces,
  And make green their fir forests, and feed their mosses hoar;
Or come sailing up the valleys, and get wrecked and go to pieces,
  Like sloops against their cruel strength: then he wrote no more.
O the silence that came next, the patience and long aching!
  They never said so much as "He was a dear loved son;"
Not the father to the mother moaned, that dreary stillness breaking:
  "Ah! wherefore did he leave us so—this, our only one."
They sat within, as waiting, until the neighbors prayed them,
  At Cromer, by the sea-coast, 'twere peace and change to be;
And to Cromer, in their patience, or that urgency affrayed them,
  Or because the tidings tarried, they came, and took me.
It was three months and over since the dear lad had started:
  On the green downs at Cromer I sat to see the view;
On an open space of herbage, where the ling and fern had parted,
  Betwixt the tall white lighthouse towers, the old and the new.
Below me lay the wide sea, the scarlet sun was stooping,
  And he dyed the waste water, as with a scarlet dye;
And he dyed the lighthouse towers; every bird with white wing swooping
  Took his colors, and the cliffs did, and the yawning sky.
Over grass came that strange flush, and over ling and heather,
  Over flocks of sheep and lambs, and over Cromer town;
And each filmy cloudlet crossing drifted like a scarlet feather
  Torn from the folded wings of clouds, while he settled down.
When I looked, I dared not sigh:—In the light of God's splendor,
  With His daily blue and gold, who am I? what am I?
But that passion and outpouring seemed an awful sign and tender,
  Like the blood of the Redeemer, shown on earth and sky.
O for comfort, O the waste of a long doubt and trouble!
  On that sultry August eve trouble had made me meek;
I was tired of my sorrow—O so faint, for it was double
  In the weight of its oppression, that I could not speak!
And a little comfort grew, while the dimmed eyes were feeding,
  And the dull ears with murmur of water satisfied;
But a dream came slowly nigh me, all my thoughts and fancy leading
  Across the bounds of waking life to the other side.
And I dreamt that I looked out, to the waste waters turning,
  And saw the flakes of scarlet from wave to wave tossed on;
And the scarlet mix with azure, where a heap of gold lay burning
  On the clear remote sea reaches; for the sun was gone.
Then I thought a far-off shout dropped across the still water—
  A question as I took it, for soon an answer came
From the tall white ruined lighthouse: "If it be the old man's daughter
  That we wot of," ran the answer, "what then—who's to blame?"
I looked up at the lighthouse all roofless and storm-broken:
  A great white bird sat on it, with neck stretched out to sea;
Unto somewhat which was sailing in a skiff the bird had spoken,
  And a trembling seized my spirit, for they talked of me.
I was the old man's daughter, the bird went on to name him;
  "He loved to count the starlings as he sat in the sun;
Long ago he served with Nelson, and his story did not shame him:
  Ay, the old man was a good man—and his work was done."
The skiff was like a crescent, ghost of some moon departed,
  Frail, white, she rocked and curtseyed as the red wave she crossed,
And the thing within sat paddling, and the crescent dipped and darted,
  Flying on, again was shouting, but the words were lost.
I said, "That thing is hooded; I could hear but that floweth
  The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply.
"If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth,
  And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the glead and pye."
And he stooped to whet his beak on the stones of the coping;
  And when once more the shout came, in querulous tones he spake,
"What I said was 'more's the pity;' if the heart be long past hoping,
  Let it say of death, 'I know it,' or doubt on and break.
"Men must die—one dies by day, and near him moans his mother,
  They dig his grave, tread it down, and go from it full loth:
And one dies about the midnight, and the wind moans, and no other,
  And the snows give him a burial—and God loves them both.
"The first hath no advantage—it shall not soothe his slumber
  That a lock of his brown hair his father aye shall keep;
For the last, he nothing grudgeth, it shall nought his quiet cumber,
  That in a golden mesh of HIS callow eaglets sleep.
"Men must die when all is said, e'en the kite and glead know it,
  And the lad's father knew it, and the lad, the lad too;
It was never kept a secret, waters bring it and winds blow it,
  And he met it on the mountain—why then make ado?"
With that he spread his white wings, and swept across the water,
  Lit upon the hooded head, and it and all went down;
And they laughed as they went under, and I woke, "the old man's daughter."
  And looked across the slope of grass, and at Cromer town.
And I said, "Is that the sky, all gray and silver-suited?"
  And I thought, "Is that the sea that lies so white and wan?
I have dreamed as I remember: give me time—I was reputed
  Once to have a steady courage—O, I fear 'tis gone!"
And I said, "Is this my heart? if it be, low 'tis beating
  So he lies on the mountain, hard by the eagles' brood;
I have had a dream this evening, while the white and gold were fleeting,
  But I need not, need not tell it—where would be the good?
"Where would be the good to them, his father and his mother?
  For the ghost of their dead hope appeareth to them still.
While a lonely watch-fire smoulders, who its dying red would smother,
  That gives what little light there is to a darksome hill?"
I rose up, I made no moan, I did not cry nor falter,
  But slowly in the twilight I came to Cromer town.
What can wringing of the hands do that which is ordained to alter?
  He had climbed, had climbed the mountain, he would ne'er come down.
But, O my first, O my best, I could not choose but love thee:
  O, to be a wild white bird, and seek thy rocky bed!
From my breast I'd give thee burial, pluck the down and spread above thee;
  I would sit and sing thy requiem on the mountain head.
Fare thee well, my love of loves! would I had died before thee!
  O, to be at least a cloud, that near thee I might flow,
Solemnly approach the mountain, weep away my being o'er thee,
  And veil thy breast with icicles, and thy brow with snow!

 As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary -- 
For the plot was void of interest; 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact -- 
There I learnt the true location, distance, size and population 
Of each township, town, and village in the radius of the Act. 
And I learnt that Puckawidgee stands beside the Murrumbidgee, 
And the Booleroi and Bumble get their letters twice a year, 
Also that the post inspector, when he visited Collector, 
Closed the office up instanter, and re-opened Dungalear. 

But my languid mood forsook me, when I found a name that took me; 
Quite by chance I came across it -- "Come-by-Chance" was what I read; 
No location was assigned it, not a thing to help one find it, 
Just an N which stood for northward, and the rest was all unsaid. 

I shall leave my home, and forthward wander stoutly to the northward 
Till I come by chance across it, and I'll straightway settle down; 
For there can't be any hurry, nor the slightest cause for worry 
Where the telegraph don't reach you nor the railways run to town. 

And one's letters and exchanges come by chance across the ranges, 
Where a wiry young Australian leads a packhorse once a week, 
And the good news grows by keeping, and you're spared the pain of weeping 
Over bad news when the mailman drops the letters in a creek. 

But I fear, and more's the pity, that there's really no such city, 
For there's not a man can find it of the shrewdest folk I know; 
"Come-by-Chance", be sure it never means a land of fierce endeavour -- 
It is just the careless country where the dreamers only go. 

* * * * * * * 

Though we work and toil and hustle in our life of haste and bustle, 
All that makes our life worth living comes unstriven for and free; 
Man may weary and importune, but the fickle goddess Fortune 
Deals him out his pain or pleasure, careless what his worth may be. 

All the happy times entrancing, days of sport and nights of dancing, 
Moonlit rides and stolen kisses, pouting lips and loving glance: 
When you think of these be certain you have looked behind the curtain, 
You have had the luck to linger just a while in "Come-by-Chance".

 NO song nor dance I bring from yon great city,
That queens it o’er our taste—the more’s the pity:
Tho’ by the bye, abroad why will you roam?
Good sense and taste are natives here at home:
But not for panegyric I appear,
I come to wish you all a good New Year!
Old Father Time deputes me here before ye,
Not for to preach, but tell his simple story:
The sage, grave Ancient cough’d, and bade me say,
“You’re one year older this important day,”
If wiser too—he hinted some suggestion,
But ’twould be rude, you know, to ask the question;
And with a would-be roguish leer and wink,
Said—“Sutherland, in one word, bid them Think!”


 Ye sprightly youths, quite flush with hope and spirit,
Who think to storm the world by dint of merit,
To you the dotard has a deal to say,
In his sly, dry, sententious, proverb way!
He bids you mind, amid your thoughtless rattle,
That the first blow is ever half the battle;
That tho’ some by the skirt may try to snatch him,
Yet by the foreclock is the hold to catch him;
That whether doing, suffering, or forbearing,
You may do miracles by persevering.


 Last, tho’ not least in love, ye youthful fair,
Angelic forms, high Heaven’s peculiar care!
To you old Bald-pate smoothes his wrinkled brow,
And humbly begs you’ll mind the important-Now!
To crown your happiness he asks your leave,
And offers, bliss to give and to receive.


 For our sincere, tho’ haply weak endeavours,
With grateful pride we own your many favours;
And howsoe’er our tongues may ill reveal it,
Believe our glowing bosoms truly feel it.

 Shall I woo the one or other?
Both attract me--more's the pity!
Pretty is the widowed mother,
And the daughter, too, is pretty.

When I see that maiden shrinking,
By the gods I swear I'll get 'er!
But anon I fall to thinking
That the mother 'll suit me better!

So, like any idiot ass
Hungry for the fragrant fodder,
Placed between two bales of grass,
Lo, I doubt, delay, and dodder!