Famous Fig Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Rolling Stone

...For I know that the whole for good is planned,
 And I want to see it all.

To see it all, the wide world-way,
 From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
With never a one to say me nay,
 And none to cramp my soul.
In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
 But God! let me be free;
For once I know in the long ago,
 They made a slave of me.

In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
 Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
 Nor seek to understand.
To enjoy is...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William


A Song To David

...r to van, 
Applauded and embrac'd the man— 
 The man of God's own choice. 

 VI 
Valiant—the word, and up he rose; 
The fight—he triumph'd o'er the foes, 
 Whom God's just laws abhor; 
And, arm'd in gallant faith, he took 
Against the boaster, from the brook,
 The weapons of the war. 

 VII 
Pious—magnificent and grand; 
'Twas he the famous temple plann'd; 
 (The seraph in his soul:) 
Foremost to give his Lord His dues, 
Foremost to bless the welcome news, 
 And foremost to c...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Charmides

...I.

He was a Grecian lad, who coming home
With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily
Stood at his galley's prow, and let the foam
Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
And holding wave and wind in boy's despite
Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night.

Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear
Like a thin thread of gold against the sky,
And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Endymion: Book I

...derest at eventide
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom
Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees
Their golden honeycombs; our village leas
Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn;
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries
Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies
Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year
All its completion...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Fra Lippo Lippi

...baby when my mother died 
And father died and left me in the street. 
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two 
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks, 
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day, 
My stomach being empty as your hat, 
The wind doubled me up and down I went. 
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand, 
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew) 
And so along the wall, over the bridge, 
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there, 
While I stood mun...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


Morning News

...of hardened pocket bread
sit on the cupboard. There provisionally was
shelter, a plastic truck under the branches
of a fig tree. A knife flashed in the kitchen,
merely dicing garlic. Engines of war
move inexorably toward certain houses

while citizens sit safe in other houses
reading the newspaper, whose photographs
make sanitized excuses for the war.
There are innumerable kinds of bread
brought up from bakeries, baked in the kitchen:
the date, the latitude, tell which one w...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...d reproach us as unclean. 
So counselled he, and both together went 
Into the thickest wood; there soon they chose 
The fig-tree; not that kind for fruit renowned, 
But such as at this day, to Indians known, 
In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms 
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground 
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 
About the mother tree, a pillared shade 
High over-arched, and echoing walks between: 
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat, 
Sh...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Ravenna

...he Lord of war,
Gaston de Foix: for some untimely star
Led him against thy city, and he fell,
As falls some forest-lion fighting well.
Taken from life while life and love were new,
He lies beneath God's seamless veil of blue;
Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o'er his head,
And oleanders bloom to deeper red,
Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.

Look farther north unto that broken mound, -
There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb
Raised by a daughter's hand, in...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Salut au Monde

...the antelope, and the
 burrowing wolf. 

I see the high-lands of Abyssinia;
I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date, 
And see fields of teff-wheat, and see the places of verdure and gold. 

I see the Brazilian vaquero; 
I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata; 
I see the Wacho crossing the plains—I see the incomparable rider of horses with his lasso
 on
 his
 arm;
I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides. 

8
I see little...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of Solomon

...e singing of
           birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
           land;

22:002:013 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with
           the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair
           one, and come away.

22:002:014 O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret
           places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear
           thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, an...Read more of this...
by Bible, The

Song of the Broad-Axe

...elcome are all earth’s lands, each for its kind;
Welcome are lands of pine and oak; 
Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig; 
Welcome are lands of gold; 
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize—welcome those of the grape; 
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice;
Welcome the cotton-lands—welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato; 
Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies; 
Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings; 
Welcome the measureless graz...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Bistro Styx

...south.
"But are you happy?"Fearing, I whispered it
quickly."What?You know, Mother"--

she bit into the starry rose of a fig--
"one really should try the fruit here."
I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill....Read more of this...
by Dove, Rita

The Comedian As The Letter C

...rickly and much more condign than that 
454 He once thought necessary. Like Candide, 
455 Yeoman and grub, but with a fig in sight, 
456 And cream for the fig and silver for the cream, 
457 A blonde to tip the silver and to taste 
458 The rapey gouts. Good star, how that to be 
459 Annealed them in their cabin ribaldries! 
460 Yet the quotidian saps philosophers 
461 And men like Crispin like them in intent, 
462 If not in will, to track the knaves of thought. 
463 ...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

The Cremona Violin

...oon slowly dip from twig to twig.
If Theodore should chance to come, and blushes
Streamed over her. He would not care a fig,
He'd only laugh. She pushed aside a sprig
Of sharp-edged leaves and peered, then she uprose
Amid her bushes. "Sir," said she, "pray whose
Garden do you suppose you're watching? Why
Do you stand there? I really must insist
Upon your leaving. 'Tis unmannerly
To stay so long." The young man gave a twist
And turned about, and in the amethyst
Moonlight he sa...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Jumblies

...cried, `You'll all be drowned!'
They called aloud, `Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
  In a Sieve we'll go to sea!'
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
  In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,...Read more of this...
by Lear, Edward

The Lady of the Lake

...less flung
     Upon a stag's huge antlers swung;
     For all around, the walls to grace,
     Hung trophies of the fight or chase:
     A target there, a bugle here,
     A battle-axe, a hunting-spear,
     And broadswords, bows, and arrows store,
     With the tusked trophies of the boar.
     Here grins the wolf as when he died,
     And there the wild-cat's brindled hide
     The frontlet of the elk adorns,
     Or mantles o'er the bison's horns;
     Pennons...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Siege of Corinth

...rcass and limb! 
They were too busy to bark at him! 
From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, 
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; 
And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull, [4] 
As it slipped through their jaws, when their edge grew dull, 
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, 
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed; 
So well had they broken a lingering fast 
With those who had fall'n for that night's repast. 
And Alp k...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Vision of Judgment

...

So mix his body with the dust! It might 
Return to what it must far sooner, were 
The natural compound left alone to fight 
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; 
But the unnatural balsams merely blight 
What nature made him at his birth, as bare 
As the mere million's base unmarried clay — 
Yet all his spices but prolong decay. 

XII 

He's dead — and upper earth with him has done; 
He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, 
Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone 
For...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Under Siege

...artyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse 
I did not look 
For the virgins of immortality for I love life 
On earth, amid fig trees and pines, 
But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it 
With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure. 

*** 
The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations 
Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph 
How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me. 
I first, I the first one! 

*** 
The martyr en...Read more of this...
by Darwish, Mahmoud

Wild Grapes

...What tree may not the fig be gathered from?  
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew to be a little boyish girl
My brother could not always leave ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

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