Famous Haul Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Birth

by Paul Muldoon
 Seven o'clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year.
No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs,
a sterile cap and mask,
and taken my place at the head of the table

than the windlass-woman ply their shears
and gralloch-grub
for a footling foot, then, warming to their task,
haul into the inestimable

realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears
and...Read more of this...

Yes the Dead Speak to Us

by Carl Sandburg
 YES, the Dead speak to us.
This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness.

Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here
And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the other says the Dead spoke a No,...Read more of this...

Black Rook In Rainy Weather

by Sylvia Plath
 On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky,...Read more of this...

My Feet

by Gelett Burgess
 My Feet they haul me Round the House,
They Hoist me up the Stairs;
I only have to Steer them, and
They Ride me Everywheres!...Read more of this...

CIA Dope Calypso

by Allen Ginsberg
 In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought...Read more of this...

The Schoolmaster

by D. H. Lawrence
I

=A Snowy Day in School=

All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,
Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silence
Muffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that pass
Down the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly--

But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow light
Have shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,
Like full-blown...Read more of this...

Athabaska Dick

by Robert William Service
 When the boys come out from Lac Labiche in the lure of the early Spring,
To take the pay of the "Hudson's Bay", as their fathers did before,
They are all a-glee for the jamboree, and they make the Landing ring
With a whoop and a whirl, and a "Grab your girl", and a rip and a skip and a roar.
For the...Read more of this...

Fishing

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Wen I git up in de mo'nin' an' de clouds is big an' black,
Dey's a kin' o' wa'nin' shivah goes a-scootin' down my back;
Den I says to my ol' ooman ez I watches down de lane,
"Don't you so't o' reckon, Lizy, dat we gwine to have some rain?"
"Go on, man," my Lizy answah, "you cain't fool me, not a bit,
I...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...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs

by Carl Sandburg
 RUM tiddy um,
 tiddy um,
 tiddy um tum tum.
My knees are loose-like, my feet want to sling their selves.
I feel like tickling you under the chin—honey—and a-asking: Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road?
When the hens are a-laying eggs, and the roosters pluck-pluck-put-akut and you—honey—put new potatoes and gravy on the table, and there ain’t too much rain or...Read more of this...

Anchor Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 Heh! Walk her round. Heave, ah heave her short again!
 Over, snatch her over, there, and hold her on the pawl.
Loose all sail, and brace your yards back and full --
 Ready jib to pay her off and heave short all!
 Well, ah fare you well; we can stay no more with you, my love --
 Down, set down...Read more of this...

Walking the Dog

by Howard Nemerov
 Two universes mosey down the street
Connected by love and a leash and nothing else.
Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves
While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
Getting a secret knowledge through the nose
Almost entirely hidden from my sight.

We stand while he's enraptured by a bush
Till I can't stand our standing any more
And haul him off; for...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait

by Linda Pastan
 After Adam Zagajewski



I am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.
On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
but in spring my head aches
from the flowery scents.
My husband fills a room with Mozart
which I turn off, embracing
the silence as if it were an empty page
waiting for me alone to fill it.
He digs...Read more of this...

Casualty

by Seamus Heaney
 I

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too...Read more of this...

The Purse-Seine

by Robinson Jeffers
 Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
 of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net, 
 unable to see the phosphorescence of the 
 shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting 
 Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off 
 Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of...Read more of this...

Peleg Poague

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Horses and men are just alike.
There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
Black as a cat and trim as a deer,
With an eye of fire, keen to start,
And he could hit the fastest speed
Of any racer around Spoon River.
But just as you'd think he couldn't lose,
With his lead of fifty yards or more,
He'd rear himself and throw the rider,
And fall back...Read more of this...

Questions From A Worker Who Reads

by Bertolt Brecht
 Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finnished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of...Read more of this...

Malaria

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   A little breeze blew over the sea,
       And it came from far away,
   Across the fields of millet and rice,
   All warm with sunshine and sweet with spice,
   It lifted his curls and kissed him thrice,
       As upon the...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of One-Eyed Mike

by Robert William Service
 This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye,
As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky;
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of "hooch" was dry.

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong;
I vowed...Read more of this...

Names Of Horses

by Donald Hall
All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the...Read more of this...

The Aged Pilot Man

by Mark Twain
 On the Erie Canal, it was,
All on a summer's day,
I sailed forth with my parents
Far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day
There came a dreadful storm,
That piled the billows high about,
And filled us with alarm.

A man came rushing from a house,
Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray,
Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,
Snub up while yet...Read more of this...

The Yarn of the Loch Achray

by John Masefield
 The Loch Achray was a clipper tall
With seven-and-twenty hands in all.
Twenty to hand and reef and haul,
A skipper to sail and mates to bawl
'Tally on to the tackle-fall,
Heave now 'n' start her, heave 'n' pawl!'
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.

Her crew were shipped and they said 'Farewell,
So-long, my Tottie, my lovely gell;
We sail to-day...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Bolivar

by Rudyard Kipling
 Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again,
Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away --
We that took the Bolivar out across the Bay!

We put out from Sunderland loaded down with rails;
 We put back to Sunderland 'cause our cargo shifted;
We put out from Sunderland -- met the...Read more of this...

The Sycamores

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 In the outskirts of the village 
On the river's winding shores 
Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 
And another half-way told 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 
Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music 
At his violin's sound they grew, 
Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
Making Amphion's...Read more of this...

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