Famous Bull Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Bull poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bull poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bull poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

See also:

Tortoise Shout

by D. H. Lawrence
 I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?

A...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Touch-The-Button Nell

by Robert William Service
 Beyond the Rocking Bridge it lies, the burg of evil fame,
The huts where hive and swarm and thrive the sisterhood of shame.
Through all the night each cabin light goes out and then goes in,
A blood-red heliograph of lust, a semaphore of sin.
From Dawson Town, soft skulking down, each lewdster seeks his mate;
And glad and bad, kimono clad, the wanton...Read more of this...

In heaven is seen the bull we name Parwin,

by Omar Khayyam
In heaven is seen the bull we name Parwin,
Beneath the earth another lurks unseen;
And thus to wisdom's eyes mankind appear
A drove of asses, two great bulls between!...Read more of this...

There hangs in the heavens a bull called Parwin

by Omar Khayyam
There hangs in the heavens a bull called Parwin
[Pleiades], and another bull is underneath the earth. To
the eyes of intelligence or those who live in certainty,
I show a herd of asses placed between two beeves....Read more of this...

Marksman Sam

by Marriott Edgar
 When Sam Small joined the regiment,
'E were no' but a raw recruit,
And they marched 'im away one wint'ry day,
'Is musket course to shoot.

They woke 'im up at the crack o' dawn,
Wi' many a nudge and shake,
'E were dreaming that t' Sergeant 'ad broke 'is neck,
And 'e didn't want to wake.

Lieutenant Bird came on parade,
And chided the lads for mooning,
'E...Read more of this...

Questionnaire

by Carl Sandburg
 HAVE I told any man to be a liar for my sake?
Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets?
Have I given any man an earful too much of my...Read more of this...

Lament

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 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...Read more of this...

Duello

by Robert William Service
 A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
They each would fire a single shot
In room of darkness pitchy,
And who was killed and who was not
Would hang on fingers twitchy.

The room was bare and dark as death,
And each ferocious fighter
Could hear his fierce opponent's breath
And clutched his pistol tighter.
The Gaston...Read more of this...

Young Love

by Andrew Marvell
 Come little Infant, Love me now,
While thine unsuspected years
Clear thine aged Fathers brow
From cold Jealousie and Fears.

Pretty surely 'twere to see
By young Love old Time beguil'd:
While our Sportings are as free
As the Nurses with the Child.

Common Beauties stay fifteen;
Such as yours should swifter move;
Whole fair Blossoms are too green
Yet for lust, but not for Love.

Love as much the snowy...Read more of this...

Up At A Villa— Down In The City

by Robert Browning
 (As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a...Read more of this...

Roast Leviathan

by Louis Untermeyer
"Old Jews!" Well, David, aren't we?
What news is that to make you see so red,
To swear and almost tear your beard in half?
Jeered at? Well, let them laugh.
You can laugh longer when you're dead.
What? Are you still too blind to see?
Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right,
The little goyim, with their angry stones.
You should be buried in the desert...Read more of this...

The New Hieroglyphics

by Les Murray
 In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2S O4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped...Read more of this...

Audley Court

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 ‘The Bull, the Fleece are cramm’d, and not a room
For love or money. Let us picnic there
At Audley Court.’

I spoke, while Audley feast

Humm’d like a hive all round the narrow quay,
To Francis, with a basket on his arm,
To Francis just alighted from the boat,
And breathing of the sea. ‘With all my heart,’
Said Francis. Then we shoulder’d thro’ the swarm,
And...Read more of this...

A Cock And Bull Story

by Mother Goose
The cock's on the housetop blowing his horn;
The bull's in the barn a-threshing of corn;
The maids in the meadows are making of hay;
The ducks in the river are swimming away....Read more of this...

The Bees and the Flies

by Rudyard Kipling
 "The Mother Hive"-- Actions and Reactions

A Farmer of the Augustan Age
Perused in Virgil's golden page
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Cyrene's son--
How the dank sea-god showed the swain
Means to restore his hives again.
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.

The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath,
Disposed the carcass in a...Read more of this...

Memories of West Street and Lepke

by Robert Lowell
Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming
in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,
I hog a whole house on Boston's 
"hardly passionate Marlborough Street,"
where even the man
scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,
has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,
and is "a young Republican."
I have a nine months' daughter,
young enough to be my granddaughter.
Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo...Read more of this...

The Farmers Daughter

by Robert William Service
 The Rector met a little lass
Who led a heifer by a rope.
Said he: "Why don't you go to Mass?
Do you not want to please the Pope?"

The village maiden made reply,
As on the rope she ceased to pull:
"My father said this morning I
Must take Paquerette to see the bull."

The Rector frowned. ";Tis wrong, I wist
To leave your prayer-book on the...Read more of this...

The Bull Of Bendylaw

by Sylvia Plath
 The black bull bellowed before the sea.
The sea, till that day orderly,
Hove up against Bendylaw.

The queen in the mulberry arbor stared
Stiff as a queen on a playing card.
The king fingered his beard.

A blue sea, four horny bull-feet,
A bull-snouted sea that wouldn't stay put,
Bucked at the garden gate.

Along box-lined walks in the florid sun
Toward the rowdy bellow and back again
The...Read more of this...

Bonny Dundee

by Sir Walter Scott
 To the Lords of Convention ’twas Claver’se who spoke. 
‘Ere the King’s crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke; 
So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me, 
Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. 
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses, and call up your men; 
Come open the West...Read more of this...

The Priestess of Panormita

by Aleister Crowley
 Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed...Read more of this...

Anna Dalassené

by Constantine P Cavafy
 In the golden bull that Alexios Comnenos issued
to prominently honor his mother,
the very sagacious Lady Anna Dalassené—
distinguished in her works, in her ways—
there are many words of praise:
here let us convey of them
a beautiful, noble phrase
"Those cold words 'mine' or 'yours' were never spoken."...Read more of this...

Baile And Aillinn

by William Butler Yeats
 ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so
that their hearts were broken and they died.

 I hardly hear the curlew cry,
 Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
 Before my thoughts begin to run
...Read more of this...

Christ Crucified

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Now ere I slept, my prayer had been that I might see my way
To do the will of Christ, our Lord and Master, day by day; 
And with this prayer upon my lips, I knew not that I dreamed, 
But suddenly the world of night a pandemonium seemed.
From forest, and from slaughter house, from bull ring, and from stall,...Read more of this...

The Bull Moose

by Alden Nowlan
 Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, 
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar, 
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.

Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head...Read more of this...

Male Fashions for 1799

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Crops like hedgehogs, high-crown'd hats,
Whispers like Jew MOSES ;
Padded collars, thick cravats,
And cheeks as red as roses.

Faces painted pink and brown ;
Waistcoats strip'd and gaudy ;
Sleeves thrice doubled thick with down,
And straps to brace the body.

Short great-coats that reach the knees,
Boots like French postillion ;
Worn the G----- race to please,
But laugh'd at by the million.

Square-toed shoes, with silken strings,
Pantaloons...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Bull poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace