Famous Merchandise Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Merchandise poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous merchandise poems. These examples illustrate what a famous merchandise poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Burns, Robert
...ls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding Industry, and sober Worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And all mechanics’ many-apron’d kinds.
Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet,
The lead and buoy are needful to the net:
The caput mortuum of gross desires
Makes a material for mere knights and squires;
The martial phosphorus is taught to flow,
She kneads the lumpish philo...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...into thy chest;
Thy flocks and herds increase, thy barns are pressed
With harvest, and thy stores can hardly hold
Their merchandise; unending trains are rolled
Along thy network rails of East and West;
Thy factories and forges never rest;
Thou art enriched in all things bought and sold!
But dost thou prosper? Better news I crave.
O dearest country, is it well with thee
Indeed, and is thy soul in health?
A nobler people, hearts more wisely brave,
And thoughts that lift ...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...ke a fair its ample beauty seems!
Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise:
What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise,
Down seething alleys what melodious din,
What clamor importuning from every booth!
At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in
Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...gales,And heaven as when no cloud its azure veils.A rich and goodly merchandise is hers;But soon the tempest wakes,And wind and wave to such mad fury stirs,That, driven on the rocks, in twain she breaks;My heart with pity aches,That a short hour should whelm, a small space hide,Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...O meadow lark, so wild and free,
It cannot be, it cannot be,
That men to merchandise your spell
Do close you in a wicker hell!
O hedgerow thrush so mad with glee,
it cannot be, it cannot be,
They rape you from your hawthorn foam
To make a cell of steel your home!
O blackbird in the orchard tree,
In cannot be, it cannot be,
That devils in a narrow cage
Would prison your melodic rage!
O you who live for liberty,
Can you believe ...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...p down and write
With thy finger in the dust.
O town in the midst of the seas,
With thy rafts of cedar trees,
Thy merchandise and thy ships,
Thou, too, art become as naught,
A phantom, a shadow, a thought,
A name upon men's lips....Read more of this...
by
Ingelow, Jean
...ouded deep
Under the drifting snow,
Or like some vessel wrecked upon the sand
Of torrid swamps, with all her merchandise,
And left to rot betwixt the sea and land,
My helpless spirit lies.
Rueing, I think for what then was I made;
What end appointed for—what use designed?
Now let me right this heart that was bewrayed—
Unveil these eyes gone blind.
My well-beloved friend, at noon to-day
Over our cliffs a white mist lay unfurled,
So thick, on...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ed panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.
O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green l...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...uin where they once had reigned;
But on the wreck, as on old shells,
The color of the rose remained.
His fictive merchandise I bought
For him to keep and show again,
Then led him slowly from the crush
Of his cold-shouldered fellow men.
“And so, Llewellyn,” I began—
“Not so,” he said; “not so at all:
I’ve tried the world, and found it good,
For more than twenty years this fall.
“And what the world has left of me
Will go now in a little while.”
And ...Read more of this...
by
Neruda, Pablo
...ces,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...e a look at
the used trout stream. The Cleveland Wrecking Yard has a
very long front window filled with signs and merchandise.
There was a sign in the window advertising a laundry
marking machine for $65. 00. The original cost of the mach-
ine was $175. 00. Quite a saving.
There was another sign advertising new and used two and
three ton hoists. I wondered how many hoists it would take
to move a trout stream.
There was anoth...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...r stern ambassadors.
How comes it then that from such high estate
We have thus fallen, save that Luxury
With barren merchandise piles up the gate
Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:
Else might we still be Milton's heritors....Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...XIX
The soul's Rialto hath its merchandise;
I barter curl for curl upon that mart,
And from my poet's forehead to my heart
Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,—
As purply black, as erst to Pindar's eyes
The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart
The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart, . . .
The bay-crown's shade, Beloved, I surmise,
Still lingers on thy curl...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...ks appears,
or in her eyes the fire of love does spark.
Fair when her breast like a rich laden bark
with precious merchandise she forth doth lay:
fair when that cloud of pride, which oft doth dark
her goodly light, with smiles she drives away.
But fairest she, when so she doth display
the gate with pearls and rubies richly dight
through which her words so wise do make their way
to bear the message of her gentle spright.
The rest be works of nature's wonderment...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...lone. I can be strong."
Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss
Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandise,
From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,
I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd'path Rise,
And stood beneath the wall. Eleven strokes went,
And to the door they came, contrariwise,
And met in clasp so close I had but bent
My lifted blade upon them to have let
Their two souls loose upon the firmament.
But something held my arm. "A m...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ly
Of his dispence, in place of privity.* where he would not be seen*
That found his master well in his chaffare,* *merchandise
For oftentime he found his box full bare.
For, soothely, a prentice revellour,
That haunteth dice, riot, and paramour,
His master shall it in his shop abie*, *suffer for
All* have he no part of the minstrelsy. *although
For theft and riot they be convertible,
All can they play on *gitern or ribible.* *guitar or rebeck*
Revel and truth...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...with our galley could compare!
Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold --
We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the hold;
The white foam spun behind us, and the black shark swam below,
As we gripped the kicking sweep-head and we made the galley go.
It was merry in the galley, for we revelled now and then --
If they wore us down like cattle, faith, we fought and loved like men!
As we snatched her through the water, so we snatched a minute...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...n trod
At beckoning of Trade's golden rod!
Alas when sighs are traders' lies,
And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes
Are merchandise!
O purchased lips that kiss with pain!
O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain!
O trafficked hearts that break in twain!
-- And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime?
So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime,
Men love not women as in olden time.
Ah, not in these cold merchantable days
Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays
The ...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...that desire we;
Press on us fast, and thenne will we flee.
With danger* utter we all our chaffare;** *difficulty **merchandise
Great press at market maketh deare ware,
And too great cheap is held at little price;
This knoweth every woman that is wise.
My fifthe husband, God his soule bless,
Which that I took for love and no richess,
He some time was *a clerk of Oxenford,* *a scholar of Oxford*
And had left school, and went at home to board
With my gossip,* dwelling i...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...row lengthens
in ever more intimate country. But we're talking bails,
stray cattle, brands. In the village of Merchandise Creek
there's a post in a ruined blacksmith shop that bears
a charred-in black-letter script of iron characters,
hooks, bars, conjoined letters, a weird bush syllabary.
It is the language of property seared into skin
but descends beyond speech into the muscles of cattle,
the world of feed as it shimmers in cattle minds.
My uncle, no...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Merchandise poems.