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Famous Cow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...at made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. An...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan



...ars, 15 
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colour'd may, 
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 
Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; 20 
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine 
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; 
And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold, 
Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold. 

And nearer to the river's trem...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...give the air of a naked goddess
 to the plump ladies
of milk and sausage merchants?
But
 even if you wear silk panties,
cow + silk panties = cow.

Last night
 a window 
 was left open.
The naked Flemish goddesses caught cold.
All day
today,
 turning their bare
mountain-like pink behinds to the public,
 they coughed and sneezed...
I caught cold, too.
So as not to look silly smiling with a cold,
I tried to hide my sniffles
 from the visitors.


1...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...heir open dinner-kettles, and their wives
 waiting, 
The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard, 
The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured,
 native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown, after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance, 
The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair rumpl...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...sidering this one.
Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming
It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling
The next cow might have licked up out at pasture.
Could it have been another maple like it?
They hovered for a moment near discovery,
Figurative enough to see the symbol,
But lacking faith in anything to mean
The same at different times to different people.
Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept them
From thinking it could be a thing so bridal.
And anywa...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert



...implicity --
that charitive Euroclydon
of frightening disinterestedness
which the world hates,
admitting:

"I am such a cow,
if I had a sorrow,
I should feel it a long time;
I am not one of those
who have a great sorrow
in the morning
and a great joy at noon;"
which says: "I have encountered it
among those unpretentious
proteg?s of wisdom,
where seeming to parade
as the debater and the Roman,
the statesmanship
of an archaic Daniel Webster
persists to their simplicity of tempe...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne
...rs among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

(1961)...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...work.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in he...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...and startle with affright;
Much doth it scare the superstitious wight,
Who dreams of sorry luck, and sore dismay;
While cow-boys think the day a dream of night,
And oft grow fearful on their lonely way,
Fancying that ghosts may wake, and leave their graves by day.

Yet but awhile the slumbering weather flings
Its murky prison round— then winds wake loud;
With sudden stir the startled forest sings
Winter's returning song— cloud races cloud,
And the horizon throws away its ...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen
...Glory be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, s...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and ...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...tists, moralists, lawyers, and
 learn’d and
 polite persons! 
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated! 
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the
 mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of
 these, be
 put on a perfect equality with man and woman!
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the
 most
 filthy of diseases! 
Let marriage slip down amon...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...eep-dog *****;
'T is the creaking trees, and the singing breeze,
And the rustle of leaves in the road-side ditch.
A cow in a meadow shakes her bell
And the notes cut sharp through the autumn air,
Each chattering brook bears a fleet of leaves
Their cargo the rainbow, and just now where
The sun splashed bright on the road ahead
A startled rabbit quivered and fled.
O Uphill roads and roads that dip down!
You curl your sun-spattered length along,
And your march is beaten ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...ackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, 
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, 
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels, 
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl
 boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake. 

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent
 roots, 
And am stuc...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...pleted O."

C was vexed, "I'm much perplexed,
You criticise my shape.
I'm made like that, to help spell Cat
And Cow and Cool and Cape."

"He's right" said E; said F, "Whoopee!"
Said G, "'Ip, 'Ip, 'ooray!"
"You're dropping me," roared H to G.
"Don't do it please I pray."

"Out of my way," LL said to K.
"I'll make poor I look ILL."
To stop this stunt J stood in front,
And presto! ILL was JILL.

"U know," said V, "that W
Is twice the age of me.Read more of this...
by Milligan, Spike
...cene:
The tossing wake of billows aft,
The bending forests green,
The chickens sheltered under carts
In lee of barn the cows,
The skurrying swine with straw in mouth,
The wild spray from our bows!

"She balances!
She wavers!
Now let her go about!
If she misses stays and broaches to,
We're all"--then with a shout,]
"Huray! huray!
Avast! belay!
Take in more sail!
Lord, what a gale!
Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!"
"Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump!
Ho, hostler, he...Read more of this...
by Twain, Mark
...the top
Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now,
And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn
A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call
That late brought up the cattle; Emerson,
Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost
Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves
Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice
Since Milton, yet some register of wit
Wanting; -- all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked,
Your more or less, your little mole that marks
You brother and your...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...ness my sordidness hath found,
4.60 'Twas in the crop of my manured ground:
4.61 My fatted Ox, and my exuberous Cow,
4.62 My fleeced Ewe, and ever farrowing Sow.
4.63 To greater things I never did aspire,
4.64 My dunghill thoughts or hopes could reach no higher.
4.65 If to be rich, or great, it was my fate.
4.66 How was I broil'd with envy, and with hate?
4.67 Greater than was the great'st was my desire,
4.68 And greater still, ...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne
...ors, irreproachable gardens,

The estate lodge’s great oak doors opening to vistas

Of street on street, the fields and cows gone.

We peered through the polished windows at the hearth

We’d sat around, our hearts numb, all hope gone; but then

A quiet came we had not felt for years, a lens of silence

Enclosed us, a single leaf fell at my feet.



IV

The rat we tried to frighten, trap or poison, saw us off instead;

It seemed as if it grew beneath our very skins and...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...isadvise.)* *unless* *act unadvisedly
A wise wife, if that she can* her good, *knows
Shall *beare them on hand* the cow is wood, *make them believe*
And take witness of her owen maid
Of their assent: but hearken how I said.
"Sir olde kaynard,10 is this thine array?
Why is my neigheboure's wife so gay?
She is honour'd *over all where* she go'th, *wheresoever
I sit at home, I have no *thrifty cloth.* *good clothes*
What dost thou at my neigheboure's house?
Is she so...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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