Famous Farmers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The City Bushman

by Henry Lawson
 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

Totem

by Sylvia Plath
 The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,
It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.

Its running is useless.
At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,

Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs,
Swaying slightly in their thick suits,

White towers of Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.

There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's...Read more of this...

The Legend of Evil

by Rudyard Kipling
 I
This is the sorrowful story
 Told when the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
 Holding their neighbours' tails: --

"Our fathers lived in the forest,
 Foolish people were they,
They went down to the cornland
 To teach the farmers to play.

"Our fathers frisked in the millet,
 Our fathers skipped in the wheat,
Our fathers hung from the branches,
 Our fathers danced in...Read more of this...

Omaha

by Carl Sandburg
 RED barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha—the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.

Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs—and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.

A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears...Read more of this...

86. The Auld Farmer's New-Year-Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie

by Robert Burns
 A GUID New-year I wish thee, Maggie!
Hae, there’s a ripp to thy auld baggie:
Tho’ thou’s howe-backit now, an’ knaggie,
 I’ve seen the day
Thou could hae gaen like ony staggie,
 Out-owre the lay.


Tho’ now thou’s dowie, stiff, an’ crazy,
An’ thy auld hide as white’s a daisie,
I’ve seen thee dappl’t, sleek an’ glaizie,
 A bonie gray:
He should been tight that daur’t...Read more of this...

Phoebus with Admetus

by George Meredith
 WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, 
 Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, 
Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, 
 Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod! 
Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe 
 Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, 
How the rustic flute drew the silver...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...

Village in Late Summer

by Carl Sandburg
 LIPS half-willing in a doorway.
Lips half-singing at a window.
Eyes half-dreaming in the walls.
Feet half-dancing in a kitchen.
Even the clocks half-yawn the hours
And the farmers make half-answers....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...

Autumn

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging...Read more of this...

The Snow-Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come...Read more of this...

Three Blind Mice

by Mother Goose
Three blind mice! See how they run!
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
As three blind mice?...Read more of this...

The Warm and the Cold

by Ted Hughes
 Freezing dusk is closing
 Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
 That can no longer feel.
 But the carp is in its depth
 Like a planet in its heaven.
 And the badger in its bedding
 Like a loaf in the oven.
 And the butterfly in its mummy
 Like a viol in its case.
...Read more of this...

Were All Australians Now

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Australia takes her pen in hand 
To write a line to you, 
To let you fellows understand 
How proud we are of you. 
From shearing shed and cattle run, 
From Broome to Hobson's Bay, 
Each native-born Australian son 
Stands straighter up today. 

The man who used to "hump his drum", 
On far-out Queensland runs 
Is fighting side by side...Read more of this...

What Best I See In Thee

by Walt Whitman
 WHAT best I see in thee, 
Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways, 
Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle, 
Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, 
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia, swarm’d upon,
Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade; 
But...Read more of this...

The Poet And His Book

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Down, you mongrel, Death!
Back into your kennel!
I have stolen breath
In a stalk of fennel!
You shall scratch and you shall whine
Many a night, and you shall worry
Many a bone, before you bury
One sweet bone of mine!

When shall I be dead?
When my flesh is withered,
And above my head
Yellow pollen gathered
All the empty afternoon?
When sweet lovers pause and wonder
Whom am I that...Read more of this...

The peter-bird

by Eugene Field
 Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is...Read more of this...

A Message to Commissioner Li At Zizhou

by Wang Wei
 From ten thousand valleys the trees touch heaven; 
On a thousand peaks cuckoos are calling; 
And, after a night of mountain rain, 
From each summit come hundreds of silken cascades. 
...If girls are asked in tribute the fibre they weave, 
Or farmers quarrel over taro fields, 
Preside as wisely as Wenweng did.... 
Is fame to be only for the...Read more of this...

The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

by Les Murray
 To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah -...Read more of this...

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakeys Version Of Three Blind Mice

by Billy Collins
 And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find...Read more of this...

Joness Porvate Argyment

by Sidney Lanier
 That air same Jones, which lived in Jones,
He had this pint about him:
He'd swear with a hundred sighs and groans,
That farmers MUST stop gittin' loans,
And git along without 'em:

That bankers, warehousemen, and sich
Was fatt'nin' on the planter,
And Tennessy was rotten-rich
A-raisin' meat and corn, all which
Draw'd money to Atlanta:

And the only thing (says Jones) to do
Is, eat no meat that's...Read more of this...

This Is The Way

by Mother Goose
This is the way the ladies ride,
    Tri, tre, tre, tree,
    Tri, tre, tre, tree!
This is the way the ladies ride,
    Tri, tre, tre, tre, tri-tre-tre-tree!

This is the way the gentlemen ride,
    Gallop-a-trot,
    Gallop-a-trot!
This is the way the gentlemen ride,
    Gallop-a-gallop-a-trot!

This is...Read more of this...

The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief

by Rudyard Kipling
 O woe is me for the merry life
 I led beyond the Bar,
And a treble woe for my winsome wife
 That weeps at Shalimar.

They have taken away my long jezail,
 My shield and sabre fine,
And heaved me into the Central jail
 For lifting of the kine.

The steer may low within the byre,
 The Jat may tend his grain,
But there'll...Read more of this...

Corn Grinders

by Sarojini Naidu
 O little mouse, why dost thou cry 
While merry stars laugh in the sky? 


Alas! alas! my lord is dead! 
Ah, who will ease my bitter pain? 
He went to seek a millet-grain 
In the rich farmer's granary shed; 
They caught him in a baited snare, 
And slew my lover unaware: 
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.


O little deer,...Read more of this...

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