Famous Like A Son Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Mother to Son

by Langston Hughes
 Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor-”
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you...Read more of this...

The Red Son

by Carl Sandburg
 I LOVE your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you.
But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push, the endless mysterious command,
Saying:
"I leave you behind--
You for the little hills and the years...Read more of this...

Old Dr. Valentine To His Son

by Ogden Nash
 Your hopeless patients will live,
Your healthy patients will die.
I have only this word to give:
Wonder, and find out why...Read more of this...

The Carpenters Son

by A E Housman
 "Here the hangman stops his cart: 
Now the best of friends must part. 
Fare you well, for ill fare I: 
Live, lads, and I will die. 

"Oh, at home had I but stayed 
'Prenticed to my father's trade, 
Had I stuck to plane and adze, 
I had not been lost, my lads. 

"Then I might have built perhaps 
Gallows-trees...Read more of this...

Who were the Father and the Son

by Emily Dickinson
 Who were "the Father and the Son"
We pondered when a child,
And what had they to do with us
And when portentous told

With inference appalling
By Childhood fortified
We thought, at least they are no worse
Than they have been described.

Who are "the Father and the Son"
Did we demand Today
"The Father and the Son" himself
Would doubtless specify --

But had they the felicity
When we desired...Read more of this...

Jack Honest or the Widow and Her Son

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Jack Honest was only eight years of age when his father died,
And by the death of his father, Mrs Honest was sorely tried;
And Jack was his father's only joy and pride,
And for honesty Jack couldn't be equalled in the country-side. 

So a short time before Jack's father died,
'Twas loud and bitterly for Jack he cried,
And bade him sit down...Read more of this...

On My First Son

by Ben Jonson
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And if no...Read more of this...

The Muses Son

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe quotes the beginning of this song in 
his Autobiography, as expressing the manner in which his poetical 
effusions used to pour out from him.]

THROUGH field and wood to stray,
And pipe my tuneful lay,--

'Tis thus my days are pass'd;
And all keep tune with me,
And move in harmony,

And so on, to the last.

To wait I scarce have power
The garden's earliest...Read more of this...

Alexandre Dumas And His Son

by Dorothy Parker
 Although I work, and seldom cease,
At Dumas pere and Dumas fils,
Alas, I cannot make me care
For Dumas fils and Dumas pere....Read more of this...

Dockery And Son

by Philip Larkin
 'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell...Read more of this...

The Widow and Her Son XXI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Night fell over North Lebanon and snow was covering the villages surrounded by the Kadeesha Valley, giving the fields and prairies the appearance of a great sheet of parchment upon which the furious Nature was recording her many deeds. Men came home from the streets while silence engulfed the night. 

In a lone house near those villages lived a...Read more of this...

For My Son Noah Ten Years Old

by Robert Bly
Nigh and day arrive and day after day goes by 
And what is old remains old and what is young remains young and grows old.
The lumber pile does not grow younger nor the two-by-fours lose their darkness 
but the old tree goes on the barn stands without help so many years;
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.

The horse...Read more of this...

Marys Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 If you stop to find out what your wages will be
 And how they will clothe and feed you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Sea.
 For the Sea will never need you.

If you ask for the reason of every command,
 And argue with people about you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Land,
 For the Land...Read more of this...

Dream Song 40: Im scared a lonely. Never see my son

by John Berryman
 I'm scared a lonely. Never see my son,
easy be not to see anyone,
combers out to sea
know they're goin somewhere but not me.
Got a little poison, got a little gun,
I'm scared a lonely.

I'm scared a only one thing, which is me,
from othering I don't take nothin, see,
for any hound dog's sake.
But this is where I livin, where I rake
my leaves...Read more of this...

The Younger Son

by Robert William Service
 If you leave the gloom of London and you seek a glowing land,
 Where all except the flag is strange and new,
There's a bronzed and stalwart fellow who will grip you by the hand,
 And greet you with a welcome warm and true;
For he's your younger brother, the one you sent away
 Because there wasn't room for him at...Read more of this...

Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son

by Mother Goose
Tom, Tom, the piper's son,
Stole a pig, and away he run,
  The pig was eat,
  And Tom was beat,
And Tom ran crying down the street....Read more of this...

The Only Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew
 For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through.
 The fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam,
 And the Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream.
 The last ash fell from the...Read more of this...

Son

by W S Merwin
As the shadow closed on the face once my father's
Three times learning forward far off she called
Good night in a whisper from before I was born
later through the burial a wren went on singing

then it was that I left for the coast to live
a single long mountain close to the shore
from it the sun rose and everyone there asked me
who...Read more of this...

Song of the Son

by Jean Toomer
 Pour O pour that parting soul in song
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night
Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.
O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so proligate of pines,
Now hust before an epoch's sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have...Read more of this...

To my son

by John Matthew
 You will realize this wisdom,
When you are my age, and experience,
Gained from being in vexing situations,
Yet, being out of it. You do the same,
There is a joy in detachment,
Forsaking instant pleasures, pains,
For things deeper and enduring.

Don’t be a slave to the work,
Of smart slave-drivers in cubicles,
Instead explore the works of men,
Who have experienced the truths,
And distilled in their words,...Read more of this...

The Prodigal Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here come I to my own again, 
Fed, forgiven and known again, 
Claimed by bone of my bone again 
And cheered by flesh of my flesh. 
The fatted calf is dressed for me, 
But the husks have greater zest for me, 
I think my pigs will be best for me, 
So I'm off to the Yards afresh.

I never was...Read more of this...

Sailor Son

by Robert William Service
 When you come home I'll not be round
 To welcome you.
They'll take you to a grassy mound
 So neat and new;
Where I'll be sleeping--O so sound!
 The ages through.

I'll not be round to broom the hearth,
 To feed the chicks;
And in the wee room of your birth
 Your bed to fix;
Rose room that knew your baby mirth
 Your tiny...Read more of this...

Son

by Robert William Service
 He hurried away, young heart of joy, under our Devon sky!
And I watched him go, my beautiful boy, and a weary woman was I.
For my hair is grey, and his was gold; he'd the best of his life to live;
And I'd loved him so, and I'm old, I'm old; and he's all I had to give.

Ah yes, he was...Read more of this...

To my Lady Berkeley Afflicted upon her Son My Lord BERKELEYs Early Engaging in the Sea-Service

by Anne Killigrew
 SO the renowned Ithacensian Queen
In Tears for her Telemachus was seen, 
When leaving Home, he did attempt the Ire
Of rageing Seas, to seek his absent Sire: 
Such bitter Sighs her tender Breast did rend; 
But had she known a God did him attend, 
And would with Glory bring him safe again, 
Bright Thoughts would then have dispossess't her Pain....Read more of this...

Our Son

by Barry Tebb
 Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth

Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark

In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts

Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s 

Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…

Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,

Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol

Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...

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