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Best Famous Pitchfork Poems

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

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Written by Patrick Kavanagh | Create an image from this poem

Epic

 I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul" And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel— "Here is the march along these iron stones" That was the year of the Munich bother.
Which Was more important? I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Til Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row.
Gods make their own importance.


Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

The Code

 There were three in the meadow by the brook 
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, 
With an eye always lifted toward the west 
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud 
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 
Flickering across its bosom.
Suddenly One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, Marched himself off the field and home.
One stayed.
The town-bred farmer failed to understand.
"What is there wrong?" "Something you just now said.
" "What did I say?" "About our taking pains.
" "To cock the hay?--because it's going to shower? I said that more than half an hour ago.
I said it to myself as much as you.
" "You didn't know.
But James is one big fool.
He thought you meant to find fault with his work.
That's what the average farmer would have meant.
James would take time, of course, to chew it over Before he acted: he's just got round to act.
" "He is a fool if that's the way he takes me.
" "Don't let it bother you.
You've found out something.
The hand that knows his business won't be told To do work better or faster--those two things.
I'm as particular as anyone: Most likely I'd have served you just the same.
But I know you don't understand our ways.
You were just talking what was in your mind, What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting.
Tell you a story of what happened once: I was up here in Salem at a man's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing the haying.
No one liked the boss.
He was one of the kind sports call a spider, All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit.
But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work Out of his hired help.
I'm not denying He was hard on himself.
I couldn't find That he kept any hours--not for himself.
Daylight and lantern-light were one to him: I've heard him pounding in the barn all night.
But what he liked was someone to encourage.
Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behind And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing-- Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.
I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks (We call that bulling).
I'd been watching him.
So when he paired off with me in the hayfield To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble.
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders Combed it down with a rake and says, 'O.
K.
' Everything went well till we reached the barn With a big catch to empty in a bay.
You understand that meant the easy job For the man up on top of throwing down The hay and rolling it off wholesale, Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.
You wouldn't think a fellow'd need much urging Under these circumstances, would you now? But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!' Thinks I, D'ye mean it? 'What was that you said?' I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake, 'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.
' He said it over, but he said it softer.
Never you say a thing like that to a man, Not if he values what he is.
God, I'd as soon Murdered him as left out his middle name.
I'd built the load and knew right where to find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for Like meditating, and then I just dug in And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust And caught sight of him treading-water-like, Keeping his head above.
'Damn ye,' I says, 'That gets ye!' He squeaked like a squeezed rat.
That was the last I saw or heard of him.
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.
As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck, And sort of waiting to be asked about it, One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old man?' 'I left him in the barn under the hay.
If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.
' They realized from the way I swobbed my neck More than was needed something must be up.
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.
They told me afterward.
First they forked hay, A lot of it, out into the barn floor.
Nothing! They listened for him.
Not a rustle.
I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the temple Before I buried him, or I couldn't have managed.
They excavated more.
'Go keep his wife Out of the barn.
' Someone looked in a window, And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchen Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so clean disgusted from behind There was no one that dared to stir him up, Or let him know that he was being looked at.
Apparently I hadn't buried him (I may have knocked him down); but my just trying To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so's not to meet me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay.
We saw him out After a while picking peas in his garden: He couldn't keep away from doing something.
" "Weren't you relieved to find he wasn't dead?" "No! and yet I don't know--it's hard to say.
I went about to kill him fair enough.
" "You took an awkward way.
Did he discharge you?" "Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.
"
Written by Philip Larkin | Create an image from this poem

Toads

 Why should I let the toad work
 Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
 And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils 
 With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
 That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, Losels, loblolly-men, louts- They don't end as paupers; Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardines- they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets - and yet No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough To shout Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that's the stuff That dreams are made on: For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, And cold as snow, And will never allow me to blarney My way of getting The fame and the girl and the money All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other One's spiritual truth; But I do say it's hard to lose either, When you have both.
Written by Robert Francis | Create an image from this poem

Silent Poem

 backroad leafmold stonewall chipmunk
underbrush grapevine woodchuck shadblow 

woodsmoke cowbarn honeysuckle woodpile
sawhorse bucksaw outhouse wellsweep 

backdoor flagstone bulkhead buttermilk
candlestick ragrug firedog brownbread 

hilltop outcrop cowbell buttercup
whetstone thunderstorm pitchfork steeplebush 

gristmill millstone cornmeal waterwheel
watercress buckwheat firefly jewelweed 

gravestone groundpine windbreak bedrock
weathercock snowfall starlight cockcrow
Written by Stephen Vincent Benet | Create an image from this poem

The Lover in Hell

 Eternally the choking steam goes up 
From the black pools of seething oil.
.
.
.
How merry Those little devils are! They've stolen the pitchfork From Bel, there, as he slept .
.
.
Look! -- oh look, look! They've got at Nero! Oh it isn't fair! Lord, how he squeals! Stop it .
.
.
it's, well -- indecent! But funny! .
.
.
See, Bel's waked.
They'll catch it now! .
.
.
Eternally that stifling reek arises, Blotting the dome with smoky, terrible towers, Black, strangling trees, whispering obscene things Amongst their branches, clutching with maimed hands, Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick Man piled to smite the sun.
And all around Are devils.
One can laugh .
.
.
but that hunched shape The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings! One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes; That face -- utterly evil, clouded round With evil like a smoke -- it turns smiles sour! .
.
.
And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain And sweating agony .
.
.
long agony .
.
.
Imperishable, unappeasable For ever .
.
.
well .
.
.
it droops the mouth.
Till I Look up.
There's one blue patch no smoke dares touch.
Sky, clear, ineffable, alive with light, Always the same .
.
.
Before, I never knew Rest and green peace.
She stands there in the sun.
.
.
.
It seems so quaint she should have long gold wings.
I never have got used -- folded across Her breast, or fluttering with fierce, pure light, Like shaken steel.
Her crown too.
Well, it's *****! And then she never cared much for the harp On earth.
Here, though .
.
.
She is all peace, all quiet, All passionate desires, the eloquent thunder Of new, glad suns, shouting aloud for joy, Over fresh worlds and clean, trampling the air Like stooping hawks, to the long wind of horns, Flung from the bastions of Eternity .
.
.
And she is the low lake, drowsy and gentle, And good words spoken from the tongues of friends, And calmness in the evening, and deep thoughts, Falling like dreams from the stars' solemn mouths.
All these.
They said she was unfaithful once.
Or I remembered it -- and so, for that, I lie here, I suppose.
Yes, so they said.
You see she is so troubled, looking down, Sorrowing deeply for my torments.
I Of course, feel nothing while I see her -- save That sometimes when I think the matter out, And what earth-people said of us, of her, It seems as if I must be, here, in heaven, And she -- .
.
.
Then I grow proud; and suddenly There comes a splatter of oil against my skin, Hurting this time.
And I forget my pride: And my face writhes.
Some day the little ladder Of white words that I build up, up, to her May fetch me out.
Meanwhile it isn't bad.
.
.
.
But what a sense of humor God must have!


Written by Edna St Vincent Millay | Create an image from this poem

The True Encounter

 "Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.
"Wolf! Wolf!"—and up would start Good neighbours, bringing spade And pitchfork to my aid.
At length my cry was known: Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone And was devoured in peace.