Famous Bury Poems by Famous Poets

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

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What I Will Not Tell You

by Lam Quang My
The night is ill
	The moon nurses
Drunken cloud
	Wanders ahead
Wind pretends
	Great busyness 
Rain cries his eyes out
	In a worried night

Crowd in your door
	Doubt if to go: in or out.
Far road
	Moon grants wings to me

I collect dry petals
	of last year’s flowers
to bury under them
	the distance of my longing...Read more of this...

The Swagmans Rest

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We buried old Bob where the bloodwoods wave 
At the foot of the Eaglehawk; 
We fashioned a cross on the old man's grave 
For fear that his ghost might walk; 
We carved his name on a bloodwood tree 
With the date of his sad decease 
And in place of "Died from effects of spree" 
We wrote "May he rest...Read more of this...

Song of Saul Before His Last Battle

by George (Lord) Byron
 Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword 
Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord, 
Heed not the corse, though a king’s in your path: 
Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath! 

Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow, 
Should the soldiers of Saul look away from the foe, 
Stretch me that moment in...Read more of this...

The Shield Of A Greeting

by David Lehman
 for J.A., December 3, 1975


Ashes that survive the aftermath of fire
Bury the past bravely, retaining
Only those messages that are least decipherable
And therefore most desirable
To be sung by the bright-eyed few remaining
Voices of our frankly foolish choir....Read more of this...

Inheritance—His

by Audre Lorde
 I. 
My face resembles your face
less and less each day. When I was young
no one mistook whose child I was.
Features build coloring
alone among my creamy fine-boned sisters
marked me Byron's daughter.

No sun set when you died, but a door
opened onto my mother. After you left
she grieved her crumpled world aloft
an iron fist sweated with business symbols
a printed blotter dwell in...Read more of this...

Loot

by Rudyard Kipling
 If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
 If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
 You will understand this little song o' mine.
But the service rules are 'ard, an' from such we are debarred,
 For the same with English morals does not suit.
 (Cornet: Toot! toot!)
W'y,...Read more of this...

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

by Robert William Service
 Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!

Men from the sands of the Sunland; men from the woods of the West;
Men from the farms and the cities, into...Read more of this...

Gilhooleys Estate

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, Mr Gilhooley he turned up his toes, 
As most of you know, soon or late; 
And Jones was a lawyer, as everyone knows, 
So they took him to Gilhooley's Estate. 
Gilhooley in life had been living so free 
'Twas thought his possessions were great, 
So Jones, with a smile, says, "There's many a fee 
For me in Gilhooley's...Read more of this...

I Said Coffee

by Sharmagne Leland-St John
 I said coffee
I didn't say,
"would you
like to cup
my warm
soft breasts
in your
un-calloused,
long,
tapered,
ring less fingered
hands?"

I said coffee
I didn't say,
"would you
like to
run your tongue
along my neck
just below
my left ear-lobe?"

I said coffee
I didn't say,
"would you
like to
hold me
in your arms
and feel my heart
skip beats
as you press your
hard, lean body
up against mine
until I melt
into you
with desire?"

I said coffee
as we stood there
in the jasmine
scented night
my car...Read more of this...

The Old Apple-tree

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
There's a memory keeps a-runnin'
Through my weary head to-night,
An' I see a picture dancin'
In the fire-flames' ruddy light;
'Tis the picture of an orchard
Wrapped in autumn's purple haze,
With the tender light about it
That I loved in other days.
An' a-standin' in a corner
Once again I seem to see
The verdant leaves an' branches
Of an old apple-tree.
You perhaps would call it ugly,
An' I don't...Read more of this...

The Faceless Man

by Robert William Service
 I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
 I'm dead.

Look in my face -- no likeness can you see,
No tiny trace of him they knew as "me".
How terrible the change!
Even my eyes are strange.
So keyed are they to pain,
That if I chanced to meet
My mother in the street
She'd look at me...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Blasphemous Bill

by Robert William Service
 I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die--
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by...Read more of this...

A Warm Day In Winter

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
"Sunshine on de medders,
Greenness on de way;
Dat 's de blessed reason
I sing all de day."
Look hyeah! Whut you axin'?
Whut meks me so merry?
'Spect to see me sighin'
W'en hit's wa'm in Febawary?
'Long de stake an' rider
Seen a robin set;
W'y hit 'mence a-thawin',
Groun' is monst'ous wet.
Den you stan' dah wond'rin',
Lookin' skeert an' stary;
I's a right to caper
W'en hit's wa'm in Febawary.
Missis gone...Read more of this...

A Message to America

by Alan Seeger
 You have the grit and the guts, I know; 
You are ready to answer blow for blow 
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, 
But your honor ends with your own back-yard; 
Each man intent on his private goal, 
You have no feeling for the whole; 
What singly none would tolerate 
You let unpunished hit the state, 
Unmindful that each...Read more of this...

Admonitions To A Special Person

by Anne Sexton
 Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much...Read more of this...

A Years Spinning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 1
He listened at the porch that day,
 To hear the wheel go on, and on;
And then it stopped, ran back away,
 While through the door he brought the sun:
 But now my spinning is all done.

 2
He sat beside me, with an oath
 That love ne'er ended, once begun;
I smiled--believing for us both,
 What was the truth for only...Read more of this...

Nadowessian Death-Lament

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See, he sitteth on his mat
Sitteth there upright,
With the grace with which he sat
While he saw the light.

Where is now the sturdy gripe,--
Where the breath sedate,
That so lately whiffed the pipe
Toward the Spirit great?

Where the bright and falcon eye,
That the reindeer's tread
On the waving grass could spy,
Thick with dewdrops spread?

Where the limbs that used to dart
Swifter through the snow
Than...Read more of this...

November 6

by David Lehman
 Remember when Khrushchev said
"We will bury you!"
on the cover
of Time
I thought he was
employing a metaphor
as in "Braves Scalp Giants!"
on the back page
of the Daily News
I pictured the Russians
burying us under a mound
of all the rubble
that rubles could buy
when what he meant was
he had come not to praise Caesar
but to bury him...Read more of this...

Kaspar Is Dead

by Jean Arp
 alas our good kaspar is dead.
who will bury a burning flag in the wings of the clouds who will pull
black wool over our eyes day by day.
who will turn the coffee mills in the primal barrel.
who will lure the idyllic roe from his petrified paperbag.
who will sneeze oceanliners unbrellas windudders beekeepers spindles
of ozone who will pick clean the pyramids'...Read more of this...

Paper Boats

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running
stream.
In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of
the village where I live.
I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and
know who I am.
I load my little boats with shiuli flower from our garden, and
hope that these blooms...Read more of this...

The Ballad of Persse OReilly

by James Joyce
 Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
 (Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
 Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle
Now he's kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he'll be sent by...Read more of this...

The Child's Grave

by Edmund Blunden
I came to the churchyard where pretty Joy lies
On a morning in April, a rare sunny day;
Such bloom rose around, and so many birds' cries
That I sang for delight as I followed the way.

I sang for delight in the ripening of spring,
For dandelions even were suns come to earth;
Not a moment went by but a new lark took wing
To wait...Read more of this...

Garden Francies

by Robert Browning
 I. THE FLOWER'S NAME

Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait

by Linda Pastan
 After Adam Zagajewski



I am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.
On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
but in spring my head aches
from the flowery scents.
My husband fills a room with Mozart
which I turn off, embracing
the silence as if it were an empty page
waiting for me alone to fill it.
He digs...Read more of this...

Sestina: Here In Katmandu

by Donald Justice
 We have climbed the mountain.
There's nothing more to do.
It is terrible to come down
To the valley
Where, amidst many flowers,
One thinks of snow,

As formerly, amidst snow,
Climbing the mountain,
One thought of flowers,
Tremulous, ruddy with dew,
In the valley.
One caught their scent coming down.

It is difficult to adjust, once down,
To the absense of snow.
Clear days, from the valley,
One looks up at the mountain.
What...Read more of this...

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