Famous Hose Poems by Famous Poets

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

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All the Worlds a Stage

by William Shakespeare
 All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like...Read more of this...

Good-By Now or Pardon My Gauntlet

by Ogden Nash
 Bring down the moon for genteel Janet;
She's too refined for this gross planet.
She wears garments and you wear clothes,
You buy stockings, she purchases hose.
She say That is correct, and you say Yes,
And she disrobes and you undress.
Confronted by a mouse or moose,
You turn green, she turns chartroose.
Her speech is new-minted, freshly quarried;
She has a fore-head, you have a forehead.
Nor...Read more of this...

The Dreamer

by Robert William Service
 The lone man gazed and gazed upon his gold,
His sweat, his blood, the wage of weary days;
But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold
All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze.
The evening sky was sinister and cold;
The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow;
The uncommiserating land, so old,
So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe,
Peered through its ragged...Read more of this...

The City Planners

by Margaret Atwood
 Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being...Read more of this...

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

by Ezra Pound
 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es. IV. 

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre 

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...

Happy the Labrer

by Jane Austen
 Happy the lab'rer in his Sunday clothes!
In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn'd hose,
Andhat upon his head, to church he goes;
As oft, with conscious pride, he downward throws
A glance upon the ample cabbage rose
That, stuck in button-hole, regales his nose,
He envies not the gayest London beaux.
In church he takes his seat among the rows,
Pays to the place the reverence he...Read more of this...

Baile And Aillinn

by William Butler Yeats
 ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so
that their hearts were broken and they died.

 I hardly hear the curlew cry,
 Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
 Before my thoughts begin to run
...Read more of this...

A Ballad (thesis For A Doctors Degree)

by Andrei Voznesensky
 My doc announced yesterday : 
 "You may have talent, though it's hidden, 
 your beak, however, is frost-bitten, 
 so stick at home on a cold day". 

 The nose, eh? 

 As irretrievable as time, 
 conforming to the laws of medicine, 
 your nose, like that of any person, 
 keep growing 
 steadily, 
 with...Read more of this...

The Foreigner

by Amy Lowell
 Have at you, you Devils!
My back's to this tree,
For you're nothing so nice
That the hind-side of me
Would escape your assault.
Come on now, all three!
Here's a dandified gentleman,
Rapier at point,
And a wrist which whirls round
Like a circular joint.
A spatter of blood, man!
That's just to anoint
And make supple your limbs.
'Tis a pity the silk
Of your waistcoat is stained.
Why! Your heart's full...Read more of this...

Sly Dick

by Thomas Chatterton
 Sharp was the frost, the wind was high 
And sparkling stars bedeckt the sky 
Sly Dick in arts of cunning skill'd, 
Whose rapine all his pockets fill'd, 
Had laid him down to take his rest 
And soothe with sleep his anxious breast. 
'Twas thus a dark infernal sprite 
A native of the blackest night, 
Portending mischief to devise 
Upon...Read more of this...

I Had A Little Husband

by Mother Goose
I had a little husband no bigger than my thumb,
I put him in a pint pot, and there I bid him drum,
I bought a little handkerchief to wipe his little nose,
And a pair of little garters to tie his little hose....Read more of this...

The Clepington Catastrophe

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas on a Monday morning, and in the year of 1884,
That a fire broke out in Bailie Bradford's store,
Which contained bales of jute and large quantities of waste,
Which the brave firemen ran to extinguish in great haste. 

They left their wives that morning without any dread,
Never thinking, at the burning pile, they would be killed dead
By the falling of...Read more of this...

Britannias Pastorals

by William Browne
 Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch...Read more of this...

275. Song—The Laddie's dear sel'

by Robert Burns
 THERE’S a youth in this city, it were a great pity
 That he from our lassies should wander awa’;
For he’s bonie and braw, weel-favor’d witha’,
 An’ his hair has a natural buckle an’ a’.


His coat is the hue o’ his bonnet sae blue,
 His fecket is white as the new-driven snaw;
His hose they are blae, and his shoon like...Read more of this...

The Night-Fire

by Claude McKay
 No engines shrieking rescue storm the night, 
And hose and hydrant cannot here avail; 
The flames laugh high and fling their challenging light, 
And clouds turn gray and black from silver-pale. 
The fire leaps out and licks the ancient walls, 
And the big building bends and twists and groans. 
A bar drops from its place; a rafter falls 
Burning...Read more of this...

512. Song—Guid ale keeps the heart aboon

by Robert Burns
 Chorus—O gude ale comes and gude ale goes;
Gude ale gars me sell my hose,
Sell my hose, and pawn my shoon—
Gude ale keeps my heart aboon!


I HAD sax owsen in a pleugh,
And they drew a’ weel eneugh:
I sell’d them a’ just ane by ane—
Gude ale keeps the heart aboon!
 O gude ale comes, &c.


Gude ale hauds me bare and busy,
Gars...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

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...

To Mary Pickford

by Vachel Lindsay
 MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)


Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the movmg-picture play,
You have been my valentine.

Once a free-limbed page in hose,
Baby-Rosalind in flower,
Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
How our reverent passion rose,
How our fine desire you won.
Kitchen-wench another day,
Shapeless, wooden every way.
Next, a fairy from the sun.

Once you walked a...Read more of this...

On Mistress Nicely a Pattern for Housekeepers

by Thomas Hood
 She was a woman peerless in her station, 
With household virtues wedded to her name; 
Spotless in linen, grass-bleached in her fame; 
And pure and clear-starched in her conversation; 
Thence in my Castle of Imagination 
She dwells for evermore, the dainty dame, 
To keep all airy draperies from shame 
And all dream furnitures in preservation: 

There walketh she with...Read more of this...

Female Fashions for 1799

by Mary Darby Robinson
 A form, as any taper, fine ;
A head like half-pint bason ;
Where golden cords, and bands entwine,
As rich as fleece of JASON.

A pair of shoulders strong and wide,
Like country clown enlisting ;
Bare arms long dangling by the side,
And shoes of ragged listing !

Cravats like towels, thick and broad,
Long tippets made of bear-skin,
Muffs that a RUSSIAN might applaud,
And rouge to...Read more of this...

Pittypat and Tippytoe

by Eugene Field
 All day long they come and go--
Pittypat and Tippytoe;
Footprints up and down the hall,
Playthings scattered on the floor,
Finger-marks along the wall,
Tell-tale smudges on the door--
By these presents you shall know
Pittypat and Tippytoe.
How they riot at their play!
And a dozen times a day
In they troop, demanding bread--
Only buttered bread will do,
And the butter must be spread
Inches thick with sugar too!
And...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

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...

490. Song—The charming month of May

by Robert Burns
 IT was the charming month of May,
When all the flow’rs were fresh and gay.
One morning, by the break of day,
 The youthful, charming Chloe—
From peaceful slumber she arose,
Girt on her mantle and her hose,
And o’er the flow’ry mead she goes—
 The youthful, charming Chloe.


Chorus.—Lovely was she by the dawn,
 Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe,
Tripping o’er the pearly lawn,
 The youthful,...Read more of this...

The Miraculous Escape of Robert Allan the Fireman

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1858, and on October the fourteenth day,
That a fire broke out in a warehouse, and for hours blazed away;
And the warehouse, now destroyed, was occupied by the Messrs R. Wylie, Hill & Co.,
Situated in Buchanan Street, in the City of Glasgow. 

The flames burst forth about three o'clock in the afternoon,
And intimation of the...Read more of this...

Introduction To Poetry

by Billy Collins
 I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light 
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the...Read more of this...

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