Famous Market Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Market poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous market poems. These examples illustrate what a famous market poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Walt Whitman
1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride to-day through Manhattan.
Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers,
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching;
But...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took -- the same as me!
The market-girls an' fishermen,
The shepherds an' the sailors, too,
They 'eard old songs turn up again,
But kep' it quiet -- same as you!
They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,
Home again, home again, jiggety jog.
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Home again, home again, market is done....Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely
contemptible, the dangled
Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;
But limitary pain -- the rock under the tower
and the hewn coping
That takes thunder at the head of the turret-
Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish
carving himself
With knives will seem to have conquered the world.
The...Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
Leave your home behind, lad,
And reach your friends your hand,
And go, and luck go with you
While Ludlow tower shall stand.
Oh, come you home of Sunday
When Ludlow streets are still
And Ludlow bells are calling
To farm and lane and mill,
Or come you home of Monday
When Ludlow market hums
And Ludlow chimes are...Read more of this...
by
Ntozake Shange
somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff ?not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street? but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff
like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin? this is mine/this aint yr stuff/?now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self
somebody almost walked...Read more of this...
by
Jonas Mekas
Mondays, way before dawn,
before even the first hint of blue in the windows,
we'd hear it start, off the road past our place,
over on the highway nearby,
in a clatter of market-bound traffic.
Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl,
or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the pace,
or sitting up high, on raised seats
(the women all wore...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.
Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
BY sunny market-place and street
Wherever I go my drum I beat,
And wherever I go in my coat of red
The ribbons flutter about my head.
I seek recruits for wars to come -
For slaughterless wars I beat the drum,
And the shilling I give to each new ally
Is hope to live and courage to die.
I know that new recruits shall come
Wherever I...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Who was there had seen us
Wouldn't bid him run?
Heavy lay between us
All our sires had done.
There he was, a-springing
Of a pious race,
Setting hags a-swinging
In a market-place;
Sowing turnips over
Where the poppies lay;
Looking past the clover,
Adding up the hay;
Shouting through the Spring song,
Clumping down the sod;
Toadying, in sing-song,
To a crabbed god.
There I was, that came of
Folk of mud and name-
I that...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Loving me with my shows off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what's more, see toenails and
all ten stages, root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Rosenberg
In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,
On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry,
He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.
But when one, fearless, turned and clawed...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
In distant New Zealand, whose tresses of gold
The billows are ceaselessly combing,
Away in a village all tranquil and old
I came on a market where porkers were sold --
A market for pigs in the gloaming.
And Maoris in plenty in picturesque rig
The lands of their forefathers roaming,
Were weighing their swine, whether little or big,...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me,
mother dear?
The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all
wet, and you don't mind it.
Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother
to come home from school.
What has happened to you that you look so strange?
Haven't you got a...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
No more noisy, loud words from me---such is my master's will.
Henceforth I deal in whispers.
The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.
Men hasten to the King's market. All the buyers and sellers are there.
But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Among the market greens,
a bullet
from the ocean
depths,
a swimming
projectile,
I saw you,
dead.
All around you
were lettuces,
sea foam
of the earth,
carrots,
grapes,
but
of the ocean
truth,
of the unknown,
of the
unfathomable
shadow, the
depths
of the sea,
the abyss,
only you had survived,
a pitch-black, varnished
witness
to deepest night.
Only you, well-aimed
dark bullet
from the abyss,
mangled at one tip,
but constantly
reborn,
at anchor in the current,
winged fins
windmilling
in the swift
flight
of
the
marine
shadow,
a mourning arrow,
dart of the sea,
olive, oily fish.
I saw you dead,
a deceased...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the
forest.
O child, do not go out!
The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads
against the dismal sky; the crows with their dragged wings are
silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river
is haunted by a deepening gloom.
Our cow is lowing loud, ties...Read more of this...
by
William Vaughn Moody
After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I
Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
When one of them passed through the market place
of Seleucia, toward the hour that night falls
as a tall and perfectly handsome youth,
with the joy of immortality in his eyes,
with his scented black hair,
the passers-by would stare at him
and one would ask the other if he knew him,
and if he were a Greek of Syria, or a stranger. But some,
who...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
God who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, "Sit aloof;"
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,—
Ever...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Plane Tales From the Hills
Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these
You bid me please?
The Three in One, the One in Three ? Not so!
To my own Gods I go.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
Lispeth.
When the earth was sick and the skies were grey,
And the woods were...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
Chorus.—O WHISTLE, an’ I’ll come to ye, my lad,
O whistle, an’ I’ll come to ye, my lad,
Tho’ father an’ mother an’ a’ should gae mad,
O whistle, an’ I’ll come to ye, my lad.
But warily tent when ye come to court me,
And come nae unless the back-yett be a-jee;
Syne up the back-stile, and let naebody see,
And come as ye were...Read more of this...
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