Famous Fork Poems by Famous Poets

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

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39. Ballad on the American War

...hiladelphia, man;
Wi’ sword an’ gun he thought a sin
 Guid Christian bluid to draw, man;
But at New York, wi’ knife an’ fork,
 Sir-Loin he hacked sma’, man.


Burgoyne gaed up, like spur an’ whip,
 Till Fraser brave did fa’, man;
Then lost his way, ae misty day,
 In Saratoga shaw, man.
Cornwallis fought as lang’s he dought,
 An’ did the Buckskins claw, man;
But Clinton’s glaive frae rust to save,
 He hung it to the wa’, man.


Then Montague, an’ Guilford too,
 Began to fear, ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Carol of Harvest for 1867

...arms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself, 
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, 
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, 
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, 
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voi...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Accordion

...t fit,
The golden harps of harmony to swell;
But with asbestos bellows, if the devil will permit,
I'll swing you to the fork-tailed imps of Hell.

Yes, I'll hank you, and I'll spank you,
And I'll everlasting yank you
To the cinder-swinging satellites of Hell....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Green Fields

...r and there he remained
 for the rest of his days seeing what he wanted to see
until the winter when he could no longer fork
 the earth in his garden and then he gave away
his house land everything and committed himself
 to a home to die in an old chateau where he lingered
for some time surrounded by those who had lost
 the use of body or mind and as he lay there he told me
that the wall by his bed opened almost every day
 and he saw what was really there and it was eternal l...Read more of this...
by Merwin, W S

Learning by Doing

...hining at others. Now and then it grunts,
And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds.
Rotten, they tell us, at the fork, and one
Big wind would bring it down. So what they do
They do, as usual, to do us good.
Whatever cannot carry its own weight 
Has got to go, and so on; you expect
To hear them talking next about survival
And the values of a free society.
For in the explanations people give
On these occasions there is generally some
Mean-spirited moral point, and everyo...Read more of this...
by Nemerov, Howard


Lucretius

...night! for thrice I heard the rain 
Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderbolt -- 
Methought I never saw so fierce a fork -- 
Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show'd 
A riotous confluence of watercourses 
Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it, 
Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.

"Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods, what dreams!
For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Perchance
We do but recollect the dreams that come
Just ere the waking. Terrible: for it ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Marigolds

...With a fork drive Nature out, 
She will ever yet return; 
Hedge the flowerbed all about, 
Pull or stab or cut or burn, 
She will ever yet return. 

Look: the constant marigold 
Springs again from hidden roots. 
Baffled gardener, you behold 
New beginnings and new shoots 
Spring again from hidden roots.
Pull or stab or cut or burn, 
They will ever yet return. 

Gard...Read more of this...
by Graves, Robert

Part 6 of Trout Fishing in America

...ir own.

 We left McCall the next day, the day after I lost the sock

guarantee, following the muddy water of the North Fork of

the Payette down and the clear water of the South Fork up.

 We stopped at Lowman and had a strawberry milkshake

and then drove back into the mountains along Clear Creek and

over the summit to Bear Creek

 There were signs nailed to the trees all along Bear

Creek, the signs said, "IF YOU FISH IN THIS CREEK,

WE'LL HIT YOU IN THE HEAD." I didn't w...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Song of the Broad-Axe

...gan, exhibition-house, library, 
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, 
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, 
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not, 
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States, 
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or sick, 
Manhattan steamboats and clippers, t...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

...ue, their eyes a bulbous red;
Their back were grey, and gross were they, and hideous of head.
And when with gusto and a fork the barman speared one out,
It must have gone four inches from its tail-tip to its snout.
Cried Deacon White with deep delight: "Say, isn't that a beaut?"
"I think it is," sniffed Major Brown, "a most disgustin' brute.
Its very sight gives me the pip. I'll bet my bally hat,
You're only spoofin' me, old chap. You'll never swallow that."
"The hell I won't...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Bistro Styx

...n its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming
like the heart plucked from the chest of a worthy enemy;
one touch with her fork sent pink juices streaming.

"Admiration for what?"Wine, a bloody
Pinot Noir, brought color to her cheeks."Why,
the aplomb with which we've managed
to support our Art"--meaning he'd convinced

her to pose nude for his appalling canvases,
faintly futuristic landscapes strewn
with carwrecks and bodies being chewed

by rabid cocker spaniels."I'd like to co...Read more of this...
by Dove, Rita

The Code

...dered cloud 
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly 
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, 
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. 
The town-bred farmer failed to understand. 
"What is there wrong?" 
"Something you just now said." 
"What did I say?" 
"About our taking pains." 
"To cock the hay?--because it's going to shower? 
I said that more than half an hour ago. 
I said it to myself as much as you." 
"You didn't...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Earthly Paradise: The Lady of the Land

...in this castle I was left alone:


"And then the doom foreseen upon me fell,
For Queen Diana did my body change
Into a fork-tongued dragon flesh and fell,
And through the island nightly do I range,
Or in the green sea mate with monsters strange,
When in the middle of the moonlit night
The sleepy mariner I do affright.


"But all day long upon this gold I lie
Within this place, where never mason's hand
Smote trowel on the marble noisily;
Drowsy I lie, no folk at my command,
W...Read more of this...
by Morris, William

The Interrogation Of The Man Of Many Hearts

...kick your foot on my stoop
and ask me to measure such things?

Never. Never. Not my real wife.
She's my real witch, my fork, my mare,
my mother of tears, my skirtful of hell,
the stamp of my sorrows, the stamp of my bruises
and also the children she might bear
and also a private place, a body of bones
that I would honestly buy, if I could buy,
that I would marry, if I could marry.

And should I torment you for that?
Each man has a small fate allotted to him
and yours is a pa...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Magpie Evening: A Prayer

...them wait.  Let them correctly choose the right turn 
Or the left, this entrance ramp, that exit, the last 
Confusing fork before the familiar driveway 
Three hundred miles and more from these bleak thunderheads.
Let them regather into the chairs exactly 
Matched to their numbers, blessing the bountiful or 
The meager with voices that soar toward renewal.
Let them have mercy on themselves.  Let my children,
Grown now, be repairing my faults with forgiveness.

© Gary...Read more of this...
by Fincke, Gary

The New Hieroglyphics

...t in water with this language
but it does promote international bird on shoulder.
This foretaste now lays its knife and fork parallel....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les

The Perch

...There is a fork in a branch
of an ancient, enormous maple,
one of a grove of such trees,
where I climb sometimes and sit and look out
over miles of valleys and low hills.
Today on skis I took a friend
to show her the trees. We set out
down the road, turned in at
the lane which a few weeks ago,
when the trees were almost empty
and the November snows had not ye...Read more of this...
by Kinnell, Galway

The Retired Cat

...he learn'd it of her master.
Sometimes ascending, debonair,
An apple-tree or lofty pear,
Lodg'd with convenience in the fork,
She watch'd the gardener at his work;
Sometimes her ease and solace sought
In an old empty wat'ring-pot;
There, wanting nothing save a fan
To seem some nymph in her sedan,
Apparell'd in exactest sort,
And ready to be borne to court.

But love of change, it seems, has place
Not only in our wiser race;
Cats also feel, as well as we,
That passion's force,...Read more of this...
by Cowper, William

Travels With John Hunter

...und its way home, 

where I now dodder and mend 
in thanks for devotion, for the ambulance 
this time, for the hospital fork lift, 
for pethidine, and this face of deity: 

not the foreknowledge of death 
but the project of seeing conscious life 
rescued from death defines and will 
atone for the human....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les

What Kind Of A Person

...he earth.
Low places, caves and wells
Frighten me. Mountain peaks
And tall buildings scare me.
I'm not like an inserted fork,
Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.

I'm not flat and sly
Like a spatula creeping up from below.
At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle
Mashing good and bad together
For a little taste
And a little fragrance.

Arrows do not direct me. I conduct
My business carefully and quietly
Like a long will that began to be written
The moment I was born.

s Now...Read more of this...
by Amichai, Yehuda

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