Famous House To House Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous House To House poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous house to house poems. These examples illustrate what a famous house to house poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.
It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing...Read more of this...
by
Brooks, Gwendolyn
...rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house....Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...ascending to heaven.
Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides
Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children.
Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand
Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, descending,
Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor, and roofed each
Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and emblazoned its windows.
Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on t...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.
Notice what this poem is not doing.
A house, a house, a barn, the old
quarry, where the river shrugs--
how much of this place is yours?
Notice what this poem is not doing.
Every person gone has taken a stone
to hold, and ...Read more of this...
by
Stafford, William
...What wonder this?--we ask the lympid well,
O earth! of thee--and from thy solemn womb
What yieldest thou?--is there life in the abyss--
Doth a new race beneath the lava dwell?
Returns the past, awakening from the tomb?
Rome--Greece!--Oh, come!--Behold--behold! for this!
Our living world--the old Pompeii sees;
And built anew the town of Dorian Hercules!
Hou...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...You little box, held to me escaping
So that your valves should not break
Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
So that my enemies might go on talking to me,
Near my bed, to my pain
The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning,
Of their victories and of my cares,
Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden....Read more of this...
by
Brecht, Bertolt
...Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back, ...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...I
Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.
Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:
"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."
I have not slept for many, many days.
I close my eyes with weariness -- that's all.
...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or...Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...m-cats go by night,
And how when moonlight came they went
Among the chimneys black and bent,
From roof to roof, from house to house,
With little baskets full of mouse
All red and white, both joint and chnop
Like meat out of a butcher's shop;
Then all along the wall they creep
And everyone is fast asleep,
And honey-hunting moths go by,
And by the bread-batch crickets cry;
Then on they hurry, never waiting
To lawyer's backyard cellar grating
where Jaggard's cat, wi...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...calls
Far off; and then a child 'without a stitch'
Runs out of doors, flies back with piercing screech,
And soon from house to house is heard the cry
Of female sorrow, swelling loud and high,
Which makes the men blaspheme between their teeth.
Meanwhile, o'er fence and watery field beneath,
The little army moves through drizzling rain;
A 'Crowbar' leads the Sheriff's nag; the lane
Is enter'd, and their plashing tramp draws near,
One instant, outcry holds its breath to hear
...Read more of this...
by
Allingham, William
...,' says he, `a little plan
That suits this nineteenth century.
"`Instead of driving, as you do,
Six reindeer slow from house to house,
Let's build a Grand Trunk Railway through
From here to earth's last terminus.
"`We'll touch at every chimney-top
(An Elevated Track, of course),
Then, as we whisk you by, you'll drop
Each package down: just think, the force
"`You'll save, the time! -- Besides, we'll make
Our millions: look you, soon we will
Compete for freights -- and then ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for
a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in
it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there
are such things;
That they hold the talk of spi...Read more of this...
by
Kilmer, Joyce
...ll forth thy tale, and spare it not at all."
"So thrive I," quoth this Sompnour, "so I shall." --
So long he went from house to house, till he
Came to a house, where he was wont to be
Refreshed more than in a hundred places
Sick lay the husband man, whose that the place is,
Bed-rid upon a couche low he lay:
*"Deus hic,"* quoth he; "O Thomas friend, good day," *God be here*
Said this friar, all courteously and soft.
"Thomas," quoth he, "God *yield it you,* full oft *reward yo...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...The Sun kept setting -- setting -- still
No Hue of Afternoon --
Upon the Village I perceived
From House to House 'twas Noon --
The Dusk kept dropping -- dropping -- still
No Dew upon the Grass --
But only on my Forehead stopped --
And wandered in my Face --
My Feet kept drowsing -- drowsing -- still
My fingers were awake --
Yet why so little sound -- Myself
Unto my Seeming -- make?
How well I knew the Light before --
I could see it now --
'Tis Dying -...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Lent
(So oftentimes I to my gossip went,
For ever yet I loved to be gay,
And for to walk in March, April, and May
From house to house, to heare sundry tales),
That Jenkin clerk, and my gossip, Dame Ales,
And I myself, into the fieldes went.
Mine husband was at London all that Lent;
I had the better leisure for to play,
And for to see, and eke for to be sey* *seen
Of lusty folk; what wist I where my grace* *favour
Was shapen for to be, or in what place? *appointed
Therefore m...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...r less, too impressionable for more—
blackmaned, illmade
in a washed blue workshirt and coalblack trousers,
moving from house to house,
still seeking a boy's license
to see the countryside without arrival.
Hell?
Darling,
terror in happiness may not cure the hungry future,
the time when any illness is chronic,
and the years of discretion are spent on complaint—
until the wristwatch is taken from the wrist....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...punctuate the village
where our occupations are chasing
and being chaste, sleighing and sledding
and snowshoeing from house to house
in our conical, flamelike hats.
Even the barns are sliding in snow,
though the birches are all golden
and one maple blazes without being consumed.
Is it from a hill nearby we're watching,
or somewhere in the sky? Could we be flying
on slick runners down into the village?
Is that mare with the elegant legs
truly the size of a house,
and is th...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...'My father still reads the dictionary every day.
He says your life depends on your power to master words.'
Arthur Scargill
Sunday Times, 10 January 1982
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
With Byron three grav...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
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