Famous Cart Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Hock-cart or Harvest Home

by Robert Herrick
 To the Right Honourable Mildmay, Earl of Westmoreland

Come, sons of summer, by whose toil 
We are the lords of wine and oil; 
By whose tough labours, and rough hands, 
We rip up first, then reap our lands. 
Crown'd with the ears of corn, now come, 
And to the pipe sing Harvest Home. 
Come forth, my lord, and see the...Read more of this...

The Strayed Reveller

by Matthew Arnold
 1 Faster, faster, 
2 O Circe, Goddess,
3 Let the wild, thronging train 
4 The bright procession 
5 Of eddying forms, 
6 Sweep through my soul! 

7 Thou standest, smiling
8 Down on me! thy right arm,
9 Lean'd up against the column there,
10 Props thy soft cheek;
11 Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
12 The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
13 I held but now. 

14...Read more of this...

The Execution of James Graham Marquis of Montrose

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1650, and on the twenty-first of May,
The city of Edinburgh was put into a state of dismay
By the noise of drums and trumpets, which on the air arose,
That the great sound attracted the notice of Montrose. 

Who enquired at the Captain of the guard the cause of it,
Then the officer told him, as he...Read more of this...

The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart

by William Butler Yeats
 All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger...Read more of this...

Columns

by Rudyard Kipling
  (Mobile Columns of the Boer War)
Out o' the wilderness, dusty an' dry
 (Time, an' 'igh time to be trekkin' again!)
Oo is it 'eads to the Detail Supply?
 A sectioin, a pompom, an' six 'undred men.

'Ere comes the clerk with 'is lantern an' keys
 (Time, an 'igh time to be trekkin 'again!)
" Surplus of everything--draw what you please
 "For...Read more of this...

Honey Harvest

by Martin Armstrong
Late in March, when the days are growing longer
And sight of early green
Tells of the coming spring and suns grow stronger,
Round the pale willow-catkins there are seen
The year's first honey-bees
Stealing the nectar: and bee-masters know
This for the first sign of the honey-flow.

Then in the dark hillsides the Cherry-trees
Gleam white with loads of blossom where the gleams
Of piled snow lately hung,...Read more of this...

The Bachelors Soliloquy

by Edgar Albert Guest
 To wed, or not to wed; that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The bills and house rent of a wedded fortune,
Or to say "nit" when she proposes,
And by declining cut her. To wed; to smoke
No more; And have a wife at home to mend
The holes in socks and shirts
And underwear and so forth. 'Tis a...Read more of this...

The Carpenters Son

by A E Housman
 "Here the hangman stops his cart: 
Now the best of friends must part. 
Fare you well, for ill fare I: 
Live, lads, and I will die. 

"Oh, at home had I but stayed 
'Prenticed to my father's trade, 
Had I stuck to plane and adze, 
I had not been lost, my lads. 

"Then I might have built perhaps 
Gallows-trees...Read more of this...

Another On The Same

by John Milton
 Here lieth one who did most truly prove,
That he could never die while he could move,
So hung his destiny never to rot
While he might still jogg on, and keep his trot,
Made of sphear-metal, never to decay
Untill his revolution was at stay.
Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time:
And like an Engin mov'd with...Read more of this...

Bridge Over The Aire Book 3

by Barry Tebb
 THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART





1



The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days

Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two

Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?



I am the mad poet first love

You never got over

You are my blue-eyed

Madonna virgin bride

I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’

On the bark of every 

Wind-bent tree in 

East End Park



2



The park itself will blossom

And...Read more of this...

Spring Day

by Amy Lowell
 Bath
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is 
a smell of tulips and narcissus
in the air.
The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and 
bores through the water
in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It 
cleaves the water
into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.
Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of...Read more of this...

A little road not made of man

by Emily Dickinson
A little road not made of man,
Enabled of the eye,
Accessible to thill of bee,
Or cart of butterfly.

If town it have, beyond itself,
'T is that I cannot say;
I only sigh,--no vehicle
Bears me along that way....Read more of this...

A House upon the Height

by Emily Dickinson
 A House upon the Height --
That Wagon never reached --
No Dead, were ever carried down --
No Peddler's Cart -- approached --

Whose Chimney never smoked --
Whose Windows -- Night and Morn --
Caught Sunrise first -- and Sunset -- last --
Then -- held an Empty Pane --

Whose fate -- Conjecture knew --
No other neighbor -- did --
And what it was --...Read more of this...

The Princess (The Conclusion)

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 So closed our tale, of which I give you all 
The random scheme as wildly as it rose: 
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased 
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 
'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me, 
'What, if you drest it up poetically?' 
So prayed the men, the women: I gave...Read more of this...

Philip Le Barr

by Spike Milligan
 Philip Le Barr, 
Was knock down by a car, 
On the road to Mandalay.
He was knocked down again
By a dust cart in Spain
And again in Zanzibar.
So, 
He travled at night
In the pale moon light
Away from the traffic growl
But terrible luck
He was hit by a duck
Driven by an owl....Read more of this...

La Nuit Blanche

by Rudyard Kipling
 A much-discerning Public hold
 The Singer generally sings
 And prints and sells his past for gold.

 Whatever I may here disclaim,
 The very clever folk I sing to
 Will most indubitably cling to
 Their pet delusion, just the same.


I had seen, as the dawn was breaking
 And I staggered to my rest,
Tari Devi softly shaking
 From the Cart Road...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...

The Lads in Their Hundreds

by A E Housman
 The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair, 
There's men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold, 
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there, 
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old. 

There's chaps from the town and the...Read more of this...

Skipper Iresons Ride

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, -
On Apuleius' Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, -
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of...Read more of this...

The Death of the Hired Man

by Robert Frost
 Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. 'Silas is back.'
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. "Be kind,' she said.
She took the market things...Read more of this...

Bottle O

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I ain't the kind of bloke as takes to any steady job; 
I drives me bottle cart around the town; 
A bloke what keeps 'is eyes about can always make a bob -- 
I couldn't bear to graft for every brown. 
There's lots of handy things about in everybody's yard, 
There's cocks and hens a-runnin' to an' fro, 
And...Read more of this...

the arrival of spring (cathe waller)

by Rg Gregory
 on the last day of winter i went to bed
harsh winds rainstorms beating my head
houses trees with a sucked-out look
new year flaked from the old one's hook

then overnight such a change of heart
spring come home with her confectionery cart
hundreds-and-thousands strewn in the breeze
houses sampling them as well as the trees

people savouring them in punts on the river
earth knee-deep in...Read more of this...

The Owl And The Sparrow

by John Trumbull
 In elder days, in Saturn's prime,
Ere baldness seized the head of Time,
While truant Jove, in infant pride,
Play'd barefoot on Olympus' side,
Each thing on earth had power to chatter,
And spoke the mother tongue of nature.
Each stock or stone could prate and gabble,
Worse than ten labourers of Babel.
Along the street, perhaps you'd see
A Post disputing with a Tree,
And mid their arguments...Read more of this...

Advent

by Patrick Kavanagh
 We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we...Read more of this...

The Mountain

by Robert Frost
 The mountain held the town as in a shadow 
I saw so much before I slept there once: 
I noticed that I missed stars in the west, 
Where its black body cut into the sky. 
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall 
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. 
And yet between the town and...Read more of this...

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