Famous Hoe Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Hoe poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hoe poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hoe poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Daih 's a moughty soothin' feelin'
Hits a dahky man,
'Long to'ds night.
W'en de row is mos' nigh ended,
Den he stops to fan,
'Long to'ds night.
De blue smoke f'om his cabin is a-callin' to him "Come;"
He smell de bacon cookin', an' he hyeah de fiah hum;
An' he 'mence to sing, 'dough wo'kin' putty nigh done made him dumb,
'Long to'ds night.
Wid his hoe erpon...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Mastah drink his ol' Made'a,
Missy drink huh sherry wine,
Ovahseah lak his whiskey,
But dat othah drink is mine,
Des' 'lasses an' watah, 'lasses an' watah.
Wen you git a steamin' hoe-cake
On de table, go way, man!
'D ain but one t'ing to go wid it,
'Sides de gravy in de pan,
Dat 's 'lasses an' watah, 'lasses an' watah.
W'en hit 's 'possum dat you eatin',
'Simmon beer...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I
Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.
I seldom read the papers, so I don't know what goes on.
I go to bed at sunset, and I leap alert at dawn,
To gossip with my garden, which I'll have...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Markham
BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened...Read more of this...
by
Wole Soyinka
Dedication
for Moremi, 1963
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life
As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.
The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you on...Read more of this...
by
Jane Kenyon
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
"The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat"-- A Diversity of Creatures
The Soldier may forget his Sword,
The Sailorman the Sea,
The Mason may forget the Word
And the Priest his Litany:
The Maid may forget both jewel and gem,
And the Bride her wedding-dress--
But the Jew shall forget Jerusalem
Ere we forget the Press!
Who once hath stood through the loaded...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Oh, I was born a lyric babe
(That last word is a bore -
It's only rhyme is astrolabe,"
Whose meaning I ignore.)
From cradlehood I lisped in numbers,
Made jingles even in my slumbers.
Said Ma: "He'll be a bard, I know it."
Said Pa: "let's hoe he will outgrow it."
Alas! I never did and so
A dreamer and a drone was I,
Who persevered in want...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Once from a big, big building,
When I was small, small,
The ***** folk in the windows
Would smile at me and call.
And in the hard wee gardens
Such pleasant men would hoe:
"Sir, may we touch the little girl's hair!"—
It was so red, you know.
They cut me coloured asters
With shears so sharp and neat,
They brought me grapes and plums and pears
And pretty cakes...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the
world—it is thin.
Moles are at work beneath us; they have tunneled the
sub-soil
With separate chambers; which at an appointed knock
Could be as one, could intersect and interlock. We walk
on the skin
Of life. No toil
Of rake or hoe, no lime, no phosphate, no rotation of
crops, no irrigation...Read more of this...
by
Sir Henry Newbolt
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand miles away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time O' Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi' sailor lads a-dancing' heel-an'-toe,
An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin',
He sees et arl so...Read more of this...
by
James Tate
Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on
his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands...Read more of this...
by
Richard Jones
All winter the fire devoured everything --
tear-stained elegies, old letters, diaries, dead flowers.
When April finally arrived,
I opened the woodstove one last time
and shoveled the remains of those long cold nights
into a bucket, ash rising
through shafts of sunlight,
as swirling in bright, angelic eddies.
I shoveled out the charred end of an oak log,
black and pointed like a pencil;
half-burnt pages
sacrificed
in the making...Read more of this...
by
Yosa Buson
Washing the hoe--
ripples on the water;
far off, wild ducks....Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)
Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes—
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers,...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,
And a disagreeable man was he.
He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,
And he cursed eternally.
He damned the sun, and he damned the stars,
And he blasted the winds in the sky.
He sent to Hell every green, growing thing,
And he raved at the birds as they fly.
His oaths were many,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, de grubbin'-hoe 's a-rustin' in de co'nah,
An' de plow 's a-tumblin' down in de fiel',
While de whippo'will 's a-wailin' lak a mou'nah
When his stubbo'n hea't is tryin' ha'd to yiel'.
In de furrers whah de co'n was allus wavin',
Now de weeds is growin' green an' rank an' tall;
An' de swallers roun' de whole place is a-bravin'
Lak dey thought deir folks...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
On the wide veranda white,
In the purple failing light,
Sits the master while the sun is lowly burning;
And his dreamy thoughts are drowned
In the softly flowing sound
Of the corn-songs of the field-hands slow returning.
Oh, we hoe de co'n
Since de ehly mo'n;
Now de sinkin' sun
Says de day is done.
O'er the fields with heavy tread,
Light of heart and high of head,
Though the halting...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
What is -- "Paradise" --
Who live there --
Are they "Farmers" --
Do they "hoe" --
Do they know that this is "Amherst" --
And that I -- am coming -- too --
Do they wear "new shoes" -- in "Eden" --
Is it always pleasant -- there --
Won't they scold us -- when we're homesick --
Or tell God -- how cross we are --
You...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
Gentlemen come every day
To count what my black hen doth lay.
If perchance she lays too many,
They fine my hen a pretty penny;
If perchance she fails to lay,
The gentlemen a bonus pay.
Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,
She’s cooperating now.
At first she didn’t understand
That milk production must be planned;
She didn’t understand at first
She either...Read more of this...
by
Heather McHugh
The literate are ill-prepared for this
snap in the line of life:
the day turns a trick
of twisted tongues and is
untiable, the month by no mere root
moon-ridden, and the yearly eloquences yielding more
than summer's part of speech times four. We better learn
the buried meaning in the grave: here
all we see of its alphabet is tracks
of predators, all we know of...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The track that led to Carmody's is choked and overgrown,
The suckers of the stringybark have made the place their own;
The mountain rains have cut the track that once we used to know
When first we rode to Carmody's, a score of years ago.
The shearing shed at Carmody's was slab and stringybark,
The press was just a...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
O the Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa;
An' he's the goodest man ever you saw!
He comes to our house every day,
An' waters the horses, an' feeds 'em hay;
An' he opens the shed -- an' we all ist laugh
When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf;
An' nen -- ef our hired girl says he can --
He milks the cow...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on
his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands...Read more of this...
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