The Whiskey Taster’s Flavor Guide

Famous Cream Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Those who, through knowledge, are the cream of the

by Omar Khayyam
Those who, through knowledge, are the cream of the
world; who, with intelligence scan the heights of the
heavens, they also, like the firmament, have their heads
turned in their search for divine knowledge, and are
taken with vertigo and dimness of sight.
309...Read more of this...

A Sad Child

by Margaret Atwood
 You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that...Read more of this...

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

August

by Elinor Wylie
 Why should this ***** insolently stride 
Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? 
Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, 
Lie heaps of smouldering daisies, sombre-eyed, 
Their copper petals shriveled up with pride, 
Hot with a superfluity of heat, 
Like a great brazier borne along the street 
By captive leopards, black and burning pied.

Are there no water-lilies, smooth...Read more of this...

No Sunday Chicken

by Robert William Service
 I could have sold him up because
 His rent was long past due;
And Grimes, my lawyer, said it was
 The proper thing to do:
But how could I be so inhuman?
 And me a gentle-woman.

Yet I am poor as chapel mouse,
 Pinching to make ends meet,
And have to let my little house
 To buy enough to eat:
Why, even now to...Read more of this...

A Thanksgiving to God for His House

by Robert Herrick
 Lord, Thou hast given me a cell 
Wherein to dwell; 
An little house, whose humble roof 
Is weather-proof; 
Under the spars of which I lie 
Both soft and dry; 
Where Thou my chamber for to ward 
Hast set a guard 
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep 
Me, while I sleep. 
Low is my porch as is my fate,...Read more of this...

When Ida Puts Her Armor On

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When Ida puts her armor on
 And draws her trusty blade
The turnips in the bin turn pale,
 The apples are afraid.
The quiet kitchen city wakes
 And consternation feels,
And quick the tocsin pealeth forth
 In long potato peels.

When Ida puts her armor on
 The pots and pans succumb,
A wooden spoon her drum-stick is,
 A mixing pan her drum;
She charges on...Read more of this...

Bill The Bomber

by Robert William Service
 The poppies gleamed like bloody pools through cotton-woolly mist;
The Captain kept a-lookin' at the watch upon his wrist;
And there we smoked and squatted, as we watched the shrapnel flame;
'Twas wonnerful, I'm tellin' you, how fast them bullets came.
'Twas weary work the waiting, though; I tried to sleep a wink,
For waitin' means a-thinkin', and it doesn't do to think.
So I...Read more of this...

The Rum Tum Tugger

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat...Read more of this...

Lucky

by Tony Hoagland
 If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.

Into the big enamel tub
half-filled with water
which I had made just right,
I lowered the childish skeleton
she had become.

Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorry ruin...Read more of this...

Cloud

by Sandra Cisneros
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. 
-Thich Nhat Hanh 

Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and
murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadows of a cloud cross-
ing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried
into a...Read more of this...

Bleezers Ice Cream

by Jack Prelutsky
 I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI
TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY
CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW
CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW
TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER...Read more of this...

A Subalterns Love Song

by John Betjeman
 Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad...Read more of this...

Band Concert

by Carl Sandburg
 BAND concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.

Cowboy rags and ****** rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato...Read more of this...

Pray And Prosper

by Robert Herrick
 First offer incense; then, thy field and meads
Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads.
The spangling dew dredged o'er the grass shall be
Turn'd all to mell and manna there for thee.
Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil,
Shall run as rivers all throughout thy soil.
Would'st thou to sincere silver turn thy mould?
--Pray once, twice pray; and turn thy...Read more of this...

Miracle Ice Cream

by Adrienne Rich
 Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart....Read more of this...

Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria

by Langston Hughes
 Fine living . . . a la carte?
 Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

 LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
 new Waldorf-Astoria:

 "All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
 has turned you down this winter?
 Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
 world. ....Read more of this...

The Paper Windmill

by Amy Lowell
 The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane 
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of 
the square
glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and 
pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown 
water
of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string 
of galliots
piled with crimson cheeses. The little...Read more of this...

Cinderella

by Anne Sexton
 You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at...Read more of this...

The Charm Of 5:30

by David Berman
 It's too nice a day to read a novel set in England.

We're within inches of the perfect distance from the sun,
the sky is blueberries and cream,
and the wind is as warm as air from a tire.
Even the headstones in the graveyard
 Seem to stand up and say "Hello! My name is..."

It's enough to be sitting here on my porch,
thinking...Read more of this...

In The Secular Night

by Margaret Atwood
 In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn...Read more of this...

The Lily In A Crystal

by Robert Herrick
 You have beheld a smiling rose
When virgins' hands have drawn
O'er it a cobweb-lawn:
And here, you see, this lily shows,
Tomb'd in a crystal stone,
More fair in this transparent case
Than when it grew alone,
And had but single grace.

You see how cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry;
Or some fine tincture, like to this,
Which draws the sight thereto,
More by...Read more of this...

Kafkas Hat

by Richard Brautigan
 With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.
It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling....Read more of this...

Corporal Stare

by Robert Graves
 Back from the line one night in June, 
I gave a dinner at Bethune— 
Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal 
Money could buy or batman steal. 
Five hungry lads welcomed the fish
With shouts that nearly cracked the dish; 
Asparagus came with tender tops, 
Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops. 
Said Jenkins, as my hand he shook, 
“They’ll put this...Read more of this...

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

by Wallace Stevens
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Cream poems.

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