Famous Bucket Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bucket poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bucket poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bucket poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edgar Lee Masters
There is the caw of a crow,
And the hesitant song of a thrush.
There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away,
And the voice of a plowman on Shipley's hill.
The forest beyond the orchard is still
With midsummer stillness;
And along the road a wagon chuckles,
Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury.
And an old man sits under a tree asleep,
And an old woman...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.
Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one --
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
'Tis a...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare--
even to the sow that always ate her young--
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"The aristocratic ne'er-do-well in Canada frequently finds his way
into the ranks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police." -- Extract.
Hark to the ewe that bore him:
"What has muddied the strain?
Never his brothers before him
Showed the hint of a stain."
Hark to the tups and wethers;
Hark to the old gray ram:
"We're all of us white,...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Continuous wind long rain autumn numerous and confused Four seas eight wastes together one cloud Go horse come ox no longer distinguish Muddy Jing clear Wei how now distinguish Grain head grow ear millet ear black Farmer field wife without news City in ten litres rice exchange quilt silk Agree better consider both mutual worth ...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
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...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.
You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.
I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard...Read more of this...
by
Maggie Estep
Liner Notes - (from No More Mister Nice Girl)
I was having a foul day. Some
geezer harrassed me on the street and I got completely bent out of shape,
but the guy was huge so I just stuffed my retort. Went home to drink
coffee. No milk. I ripped through the cupboards and found Non Dairy Creamer.
It tasted like ****. I got...Read more of this...
by
John Lindley
Wheeling them in,
the yard gate at half-mast
with its ticking hinge,
the tin bucket with a hairnet of webs,
the privy door ajar,
the path gloved with moss
ploughed by metal
through a scalped tyre -
in the shadows of the hood,
in the ripped silk
of the rocking, buckled pram,
none of the dead clocks moving.
And carrying them in
to a kitchen table,
a near-lifetime’s Woodies
coating each cough,
he...Read more of this...
by
Spike Milligan
Somewhere at some time
They committed themselves to me
And so, I was!
Small, but I WAS!
Tiny, in shape
Lusting to live
I hung in my pulsing cave.
Soon they knew of me
My mother --my father.
I had no say in my being
I lived on trust
And love
Tho' I couldn't think
Each part of me was saying
A silent 'Wait for me
I will bring you love!'
I was taken
Blind, naked,...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood,...Read more of this...
by
David Berman
It had been four days of no weather
as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors.
They'd closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings
and my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud.
The evening edition carried the magic death of a child
backlit by a construction site sunrise on its front page.
I kept my back to her...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
The night's drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.
In the valley below me,
Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet,
The road lamps glow.
They are so cold, they might as well be dark.
Trucks and cars
Cough and drone down there between the golden
Coffins of greenhouses,...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
It was over at Coolgardie that a mining speculator,
Who was going down the township just to make a bit o' chink,
Went off to hire a camel from a camel propagator,
And the Afghan said he'd lend it if he'd stand the beast a drink.
Yes, the only price he asked him was to stand the beast a...Read more of this...
by
Chiyo-ni
morning glory!
the well bucket-entangled,
I ask for water
(trans. Donegan and Ishibashi)[2]...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.
Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.
Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans....Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.
If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the...Read more of this...
by
James Dickey
Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling
Under the bedroom floor. In...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
It was while we held our races --
Hurdles, sprints and steplechases --
Up in Dandaloo,
That a crowd of Sydney stealers,
Jockeys, pugilists and spielers
Brought some horses, real heelers,
Came and put us through.
Beat our nags and won our money,
Made the game by np means funny,
Made us rather blue;
When the racing was concluded,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.
It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.
The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules—he sings to you instead of ten span of mules.
A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
I met her on the Lachlan Side --
A darling girl I thought her,
And ere I left I swore I'd win
The free-selector's daughter.
I milked her father's cows a month,
I brought the wood and water,
I mended all the broken fence,
Before I won the daughter.
I listened to her father's yarns,
I did just what...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
'O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.'
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Boy draw water well shining Agile container rise hand Wet sprinkle not soak earth Sweep surpass like without broom Bright rosy clouds shining again pavilion Clear mist lift high window Lean fill cover path flower Dance end steps willow Difficulty world affair compel Hide away right time after Meet talk agree deep heart How can all restrain...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
1. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and...Read more of this...
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