Famous Fruitful Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Oysters

by Jonathan Swift
 Charming oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle,
And rouse up your mettle:
They'll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They'll please to the life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she ****, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke
The First Elegy


Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me 
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel...Read more of this...

Ode To Ethiopia

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
O Mother Race! to thee I bring
This pledge of faith unwavering,
This tribute to thy glory.
I know the pangs which thou didst feel,
When Slavery crushed thee with its heel,
With thy dear blood all gory.
Sad days were those—ah, sad indeed!
But through the land the fruitful seed
Of better times was growing.
The plant of freedom upward sprung,
And spread its leaves so fresh and young—
Its...Read more of this...

Ode To The Johns Hopkins University

by Sidney Lanier
 How tall among her sisters, and how fair, --
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair
As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands
Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands!
In four brief cycles round the punctual sun
Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won
This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
Howbeit she was born
Unnoised as any stealing summer morn.
From far the sages saw,...Read more of this...

The Sower

by William Cowper
 (Matthew, xiii.3)

Ye sons of earth prepare the plough,
Break up your fallow ground;
The sower is gone forth to sow,
And scatter blessings round.

The seed that finds a stony soil
Shoots forth a hasty blade;
But ill repays the sower's toil,
Soon wither'd, scorch'd, and dead.

The thorny ground is sure to balk
All hopes of harvest there;
We find a tall and sickly stalk,
But not the fruitful...Read more of this...

The Owl And The Sparrow

by John Trumbull
 In elder days, in Saturn's prime,
Ere baldness seized the head of Time,
While truant Jove, in infant pride,
Play'd barefoot on Olympus' side,
Each thing on earth had power to chatter,
And spoke the mother tongue of nature.
Each stock or stone could prate and gabble,
Worse than ten labourers of Babel.
Along the street, perhaps you'd see
A Post disputing with a Tree,
And mid their arguments...Read more of this...

The Pilgrims

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass
Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was
That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be?
For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing.
--Our lady of love by you is unbeholden;
For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden
Treasure of hair, nor face nor...Read more of this...

Loving In Truth And Fain In Verse My Love To Show

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain,
—Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain— 
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see...Read more of this...

The Boston Athenaeum

by Amy Lowell
 Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,
How often in some distant gallery,
Gained by a little painful spiral stair,
Far from the halls and corridors where throng
The crowd of casual readers, have I passed
Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor
Of some retired nook, all lined with books,
Where reverie and quiet reign supreme!
Above, below, on every side, high shelved
From careless grasp...Read more of this...

Justice Denied In Massachusetts

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Let us abandon then our gardens and go home
And sit in the sitting-room
Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under this cloud?
Sour to the fruitful seed
Is the cold earth under this cloud,
Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon but cannot
conquer;
We have bent the blades of our hoes against the stalks of them.

Let us go home, and sit...Read more of this...

Sonnet IX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET IX. Quando 'l pianeta che distingue l' ore. WITH A PRESENT OF FRUIT IN SPRING.  When the great planet which directs the hoursTo dwell with Taurus from the North is borne,Such virtue rays from each enkindled horn,Rare beauty instantly all nature dowers;Nor this alone, which meets our sight, that flowersRead more of this...

To Blossoms

by Robert Herrick
 Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here a-while,
To blush and gently smile;
And go at last.

What, were ye born to be
An hour or half's delight;
And so to bid good-night?
'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth,
Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where...Read more of this...

Night

by William Morris
 I am Night: I bring again
Hope of pleasure, rest from pain:
Thoughts unsaid 'twixt Life and Death
My fruitful silence quickeneth....Read more of this...

Prothalamion

by Edmund Spenser
CALM was the day, and through the trembling air 
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play¡ª 
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay 
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair; 
When I, (whom sullen care, 5 
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay 
In princes' court, and expectation vain 
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away 
Like empty shadows, did...Read more of this...

The Three Glorious Days

by Victor Hugo
 ("Frères, vous avez vos journées.") 
 
 {I., July, 1830.} 


 Youth of France, sons of the bold, 
 Your oak-leaf victor-wreaths behold! 
 Our civic-laurels—honored dead! 
 So bright your triumphs in life's morn, 
 Your maiden-standards hacked and torn, 
 On Austerlitz might lustre shed. 
 
 All that your fathers did re-done— 
 A people's rights...Read more of this...

On The Critical Attitude

by Bertolt Brecht
 The critical attitude
Strikes many people as unfruitful
That is because they find the state
Impervious to their criticism
But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude
Is merely a feeble attitude. Give criticism arms
And states can be demolished by it.

Canalising a river
Grafting a fruit tree
Educating a person
Transforming a state
These are instances of fruitful criticism
And at the same time instances of art....Read more of this...

30. Song—Composed in August

by Robert Burns
 NOW westlin winds and slaught’ring guns
 Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather;
The moorcock springs on whirring wings
 Amang the blooming heather:
Now waving grain, wide o’er the plain,
 Delights the weary farmer;
And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night,
 To muse upon my charmer.


The partridge loves the fruitful fells,
 The plover loves the mountains;
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells,
 The...Read more of this...

Deliverance from a Fit of Fainting

by Anne Bradstreet
 Worthy art Thou, O Lord, of praise, 
But ah! It's not in me. 
My sinking heart I pray Thee raise 
So shall I give it Thee.

My life as spider's webb's cut off, 
Thus fainting have I said, 
And living man no more shall see 
But be in silence laid.

My feeble spirit Thou didst revive, 
My doubting Thou didst chide,...Read more of this...

Holy Thursday (Experience)

by William Blake
 Is this a holy thing to see.
In a rich and fruitful land.
Babes reduced to misery.
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns
It is eternal...Read more of this...

Astrophel and Stella: I

by Sir Philip Sidney
 ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: I
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves,...Read more of this...

Truth And Error

by Robert Herrick
 Twixt truth and error, there's this difference known
Error is fruitful, truth is only one....Read more of this...

To The Nile

by John Keats
 Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely...Read more of this...

Liberty

by James Whitcomb Riley
 New Castle, July 4, 1878

or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
And...Read more of this...

Freedom And The World

by Victor Hugo
 {Inscription under a Statue of the Virgin and Child, at Guernsey.—The 
 poet sees in the emblem a modern Atlas, i.e., Freedom supporting the 
 World.} 
 
 ("Le peuple est petit.") 


 Weak is the People—but will grow beyond all other— 
 Within thy holy arms, thou fruitful victor-mother! 
 O Liberty, whose conquering flag is never furled—...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts XLIV: Where Is Heaven

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is
beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day
and night; it is not of the earth.
But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and
space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust.
Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet...Read more of this...

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