10 Best Famous Sherbet Poems

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

• All Famous Sherbet Poems

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My mother, she told me no end,
‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’
Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!

If I’d known I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s,
Injections and drillin’s,
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine
In these molars of mine.
‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’

How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s methey are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

Taken from the The Works: The Classic Collection 2008.

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/

 'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, 
 refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the 
 terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and 
 grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
 liquor and women, 
And the night-fires going out, and the 
 lack of shelters, 
And the cities hostile and the towns 
 unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
 prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all 
 night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, 
 saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a 
 temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of 
 vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
 beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in 
 away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with 
 vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for 
 pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
 we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
 too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
 satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I 
 remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, 
 certainly, 
We had evidence and no doubt. I had 
 seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; 
 this Birth was 
Hard and bitter agony for us, like 
 Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
 Kingdoms, 
But no longer at ease here, in the old 
 dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their 
 gods.
I should be glad of another death.

 Empty chocolate boxes, a pillowcase with an orange at the bottom,

Nuts and tinsel with its idiosyncratic rustle and brilliant sheen

And the reflection in it of paper-chains hand-made and stuck with

Flour-paste stretching from the light-bowl to every corner of the room.

Father Christmas himself was plastic and his vast stomach painted red

With a bulging sack behind his back and he was stuck in the middle

Of a very large cake. The icing was royal and you could see the

Whites of many eggs in the glister of its surface and on the

Upright piano the music of Jingle Bells lay open.

With aching hands I wrote thank you notes for socks to sainted aunts

And played on Nutwood Common with Rupert until Tiger Lily’s father,

The Great Conjuror, waved his wand and brought me home to the last

Coal fire in Leeds, suddenly dying.

I got through a whole packet of sweet cigarettes with pink tips

Dipped in cochineal and a whole quarter of sherbet lemons at a sitting

And there was a full bottle of Portello to go at, the colour

Of violet ink and tasting of night air and threepenny bits

Which lasted until the last gas-lamp in Leeds went out.

I had collected enough cardboard milk-tops to make a set of

Matchstick spinners and with my box of Rainbow Chalks drew circles

On my top, red, white and Festival of Britain blue and made it spin

All the way to the last bin-yard in Leeds while they pulled it down.

I was a very small teddy-bear crouched on a huge and broken chair

Ready to be put out into the wide world and my mother was there

To see me off. The light in her eyes was out, there was no fire

In her heart and the binyard where I played was empty space.

 I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat,
Give me cantharids to eat,
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.

From all natures, sharp and slimy,
Salt and basalt, wild and tame,
Tree, and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
Bird and reptile be my game.

Ivy for my fillet band,
Blinding dogwood in my hand,
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
And the prussic juice to lull me,
Swing me in the upas boughs,
Vampire-fanned, when I carouse.

Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,
As you spin a cherry.
O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry,
O all you virtues, methods, mights;
Means, appliances, delights;
Reputed wrongs, and braggart rights;
Smug routine, and things allowed;
Minorities, things under cloud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me;
God! I will not be an owl,
But sun me in the Capitol.

 THE queen in the lofty hall takes her place,

The tapers around her are flaming;
She speaks to the page: "With a nimble pace

Go, fetch me my purse for gaming.

'Tis lying, I'll pledge,

On my table's edge."
Each nerve the nimble boy straineth,
And the end of the castle soon gaineth.

The fairest of maidens was sipping sherbet

Beside the queen that minute;
Near her mouth broke the cup,--and she got so wet!

The very devil seem'd in it

What fearful distress

'Tis spoilt, her gay dress.
She hastens, and ev'ry nerve straineth,
And the end of the castle soon gaineth.

The boy was returning, and quickly came,

And met the sorrowing maiden;
None knew of the fact,--and yet with Love's flame,

Those two had their hearts full laden.

And, oh the bliss

Of a moment like this!
Each falls on the breast of the other,
With kisses that well nigh might smother.

They tear themselves asunder at last,

To her chamber she hastens quickly,
To reach the queen the page hies him fast,

Midst the swords and the fans crowded thickly.

The queen spied amain

On his waistcoat a stain;
For nought was inscrutable to her,
Like Sheba's queen--Solomon's wooer.

To her chief attendant she forthwith cried

"We lately together contended,
And thou didst assert, with obstinate pride,

That the spirit through space never wended,--

That traces alone

By the present were shown,--
That afar nought was fashion'd--not even
By the stars that illumine you heaven.

"Now see! while a goblet beside me they drain'd,

They spilt all the drink in the chalice;
And straightway the boy had his waistcoat stain'd

At the furthermost end of the palace.--

Let them newly be clad!

And since I am glad
That it served as a proof so decided,
The cost will by me be provided."

1808.

 ("Si je n'était captive.") 
 
 {IX., July, 1828.} 


 Oh! were I not a captive, 
 I should love this fair countree; 
 Those fields with maize abounding, 
 This ever-plaintive sea: 
 I'd love those stars unnumbered, 
 If, passing in the shade, 
 Beneath our walls I saw not 
 The spahi's sparkling blade. 
 
 I am no Tartar maiden 
 That a blackamoor of price 
 Should tune my lute and hold to me 
 My glass of sherbet-ice. 
 Far from these haunts of vices, 
 In my dear countree, we 
 With sweethearts in the even 
 May chat and wander free. 
 
 But still I love this climate, 
 Where never wintry breeze 
 Invades, with chilly murmur, 
 These open lattices; 
 Where rain is warm in summer, 
 And the insect glossy green, 
 Most like a living emerald, 
 Shines 'mid the leafy screen. 
 
 With her chapelles fair Smyrna— 
 A gay princess is she! 
 Still, at her summons, round her 
 Unfading spring ye see. 
 And, as in beauteous vases, 
 Bright groups of flowers repose, 
 So, in her gulfs are lying 
 Her archipelagoes. 
 
 I love these tall red turrets; 
 These standards brave unrolled; 
 And, like an infant's playthings, 
 These houses decked with gold. 
 I love forsooth these reveries, 
 Though sandstorms make me pant, 
 Voluptuously swaying 
 Upon an elephant. 
 
 Here in this fairy palace, 
 Full of such melodies, 
 Methinks I hear deep murmurs 
 That in the deserts rise; 
 Soft mingling with the music 
 The Genii's voices pour, 
 Amid the air, unceasing, 
 Around us evermore. 
 
 I love the burning odors 
 This glowing region gives; 
 And, round each gilded lattice, 
 The trembling, wreathing leaves; 
 And, 'neath the bending palm-tree, 
 The gayly gushing spring; 
 And on the snow-white minaret, 
 The stork with snowier wing. 
 
 I love on mossy couch to sing 
 A Spanish roundelay, 
 And see my sweet companions 
 Around commingling gay,— 
 A roving band, light-hearted, 
 In frolicsome array,— 
 Who 'neath the screening parasols 
 Dance down the merry day. 
 But more than all enchanting 
 At night, it is to me, 
 To sit, where winds are sighing, 
 Lone, musing by the sea; 
 And, on its surface gazing, 
 To mark the moon so fair, 
 Her silver fan outspreading, 
 In trembling radiance there. 
 
 W.D., Tait's Edin. Magazine 


 

 L’orage qui s’attarde, le lit d?fait 

Yves Bonnefoy

Here am I, lying lacklustre in an unmade bed

A Sunday in December while all Leeds lies in around me 

In the silent streets, frost on roof slates, gas fires

And kettles whistle as I read Bonnefoy on the eternal.

Too tired to fantasize, unsummoned images float by,

Feebly I snatch at them to comply with the muse’s dictum: write.

The streets of fifties summers, kali from the corner shop,

Sherbet lemons and ice pops, the voice of Margaret at ten,

What times will have done to you, what men 

Used and abused you?

Solitary but not alone I read Lacan on desire

It is not a day I can visit the ward

Overcome by delusion’s shadow.