Famous Father Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Father poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous father poems. These examples illustrate what a famous father poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Butler Yeats
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.
Once, while he nodded on a chair,
At the moth-hour of eve,
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
'I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die';
And after cried he, 'God forgive!
My body spake, not I!'
He...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes....Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
Why didst thou carve thy speech laboriously,
And match and blend thy words with curious art?
For Song, one saith, is but a human heart
Speaking aloud, undisciplined and free.
Nay, God be praised, Who fixed thy task for thee!
Austere, ecstatic craftsman, set apart
From all who traffic in Apollo's mart,
On thy phrased paten shall the Splendour be!
Now, carelessly we throw a rhyme to...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like...Read more of this...
by
Annie Finch
HLF, August 8, 1918—August 22, 1997
“Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.”
—Hart Crane, “Voyages”
“If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly
past the long edge of the last human shore,
there are deep windows the waves haven't opened,
where night is...Read more of this...
by
Richard Jones
During the war, I was in China.
Every night we blew the world to hell.
The sky was purple and yellow
like his favorite shirt.
I was in India once
on the Ganges in a tourist boat.
There were soldiers,
some women with parasols.
A dead body floated by
going in the opposite direction.
My son likes this story
and requests it each year at Thanksgiving.
When he was twelve,
there was...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
"Are you deaf, Father William!" the young man said,
"Did you hear what I told you just now?
"Excuse me for shouting! Don't waggle your head
"Like a blundering, sleepy old cow!
"A little maid dwelling in Wallington Town,
"Is my friend, so I beg to remark:
"Do you think she'd be pleased if a book were sent down...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
"There where that ray touches the plain
And the shadows escape as if they really ran,
Warsaw stands, open from all sides,
A city not very old but quite famous.
"Farther, where strings of rain hang from a little cloud,
Under the hills with an acacia grove
Is Prague. Above it, a marvelous castle
Shored against a slope in accordance with old rules.
"What divides this land...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
Hey Father Death, I'm flying home
Hey poor man, you're all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going
Father Death, Don't cry any more
Mama's there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store
Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans
O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts'll ease your...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun
Which was my sin though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run
And do run still though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done Thou hast not done; 5
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
'The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
'The child is father to the man.'
No; what the poet did write ran,
'The man is father to the child.'
'The child is father to the man!'
How can he be? The words are wild....Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[written in a post-chaise.]
(* In the original, Schwager, which has the
twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.)
HASTEN thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead
Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,--
Striving and hoping, up, up!
Wide,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Far from Love the Heavenly Father
Leads the Chosen Child,
Oftener through Realm of Briar
Than the Meadow mild.
Oftener by the Claw of Dragon
Than the Hand of Friend
Guides the Little One predestined
To the Native Land....Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame;
But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys
Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
They thought him just little short of God;
Oh you should have heard the way they said his name –
‘Father.’
There seemed to be a loving little...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.
Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
In the eyes dream. The brow as if it could feel
something far off. Around the lips a great
freshness-seductive though there is no smile.
Under the rows of ornamental braid
on the slim Imperial officer's uniform:
the saber's basket-hilt. Both hands stay
folded upon it going nowhere calm
and now almost invisible as if they
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.
And all the...Read more of this...
by
Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.
Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,
and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deeds....Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I had a father once, the records say.
He has gone away down the long avenue
Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist
Of his breath, his firm signature no more.
No more holding down his hat in the wind,
Running to catch the last post, he has gone
Beyond the wind-shaped stones on the high wall.
His breath in that final coma came steady.
Stertorous,...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
"You are old, Father william," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
"You are...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
You are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
Not here with us on the hill --
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
You...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
COME up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother—here’s a letter from thy dear son.
2
Lo, ’tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
'The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
'The child is father to the man.'
No; what the poet did write ran,
'The man is father to the child.'
'The child is father to the man!'
How can he be? The words are wild....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Tis One by One -- the Father counts --
And then a Tract between
Set Cypherless -- to teach the Eye
The Value of its Ten --
Until the peevish Student
Acquire the Quick of Skill --
Then Numerals are dowered back --
Adorning all the Rule --
'Tis mostly Slate and Pencil --
And Darkness on the School
Distracts the Children's fingers --
Still the Eternal Rule
Regards least Cypherer...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crownèd sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store.
So then I...Read more of this...
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