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Famous Milk Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...ery time the arrangement of the dishes is altered.—R. B. [back]
Note 16. Sowens, with butter instead of milk to them, is always the Halloween Supper.—R. B. [back]...Read more of this...



by Smart, Christopher
...he snail and wilk;
Be good to him that pulls thy plough; 
Due food and care, due rest, allow 
 For her that yields thee milk. 

 XLIII 
Rise up before the hoary head, 
And God's benign commandment dread, 
 Which says thou shalt not die: 
"Not as I will, but as Thou wilt," 
Pray'd He Whose conscience knew no guilt; 
 With Whose bless'd pattern vie. 

 XLIV 
Use all thy passions!—love is thine, 
And joy, and jealousy divine; 
 Thine hope's eternal fort, 
And care thy le...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...t array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms.
Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders
Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence
Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended.
Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farm-yard, 
Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness;
Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn-doors,
Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season wa...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...day. 
I am a motor. 
I am cramming in the sugar. 
I am running up the hallways. 
I am squeezing out the milk. 
I am dissecting the dictionary. 
I am God, la de dah. 
Peanut butter is the American food. 
We all eat it, being patriotic. 

Ms. Dog is out fighting the dollars, 
rolling in a field of bucks. 
You've got it made if you take the wafer, 
take some wine, 
take some bucks, 
the green papery song of the office. 
What a jell...Read more of this...



by Nash, Ogden
...tt,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...urts, and noise of towns; 
Contented breathes his native air, 
In his own grounds. 

II. 
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
In winter fire. 

III. 
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find 
Hours, days, and years slide swift away, 
In health of body, peace of mind, 
Quiet by day, 

IV. 
Sound sleep by night; study and ease 
Together mix'd; sweet recreati...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense 
Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats 
Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even, 
Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play. 
To satisfy the sharp desire I had 
Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved 
Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once, 
Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent 
Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen. 
About the mossy trunk I wound me soon; 
For, high from ground, the branches would ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...nfernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony 
 floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and 
 milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are
 barley groats I scatter on the Reactor's core, 
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate
 close by, my breath near deathless ever at your
 side
to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your
 mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with
 Diamond Truth! O...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over ...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't any Santa Claus.


Another trick that tickled Jabez
Was crying 'Boo' at little babies.
He brushed his teeth, they said in town,
Sideways instead of up and down.
Yet people pardoned every sin,
And viewed his antics with a grin,
Til...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...om-cats light little candles, 
And O, the stories and the scandals, 
And O, the songs and Christmas carols, 
And O, the milk from little barrels. 
They light a fire fit for roasting 
(And how good mouse-meat smells when toasting), 
Then down they sit to merry feast 
While moon goes west and sun comes east.

Sometimes they make so merry there 
Old lawyer comes to head of stair 
To 'fend with fist and poker took firm 
His parchments channeled by the bookworm, 
And all h...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...bed in darkness is not made,
3.86 And I in black oblivion's den long laid.
3.87 Of Marrow full my bones, of Milk my breasts,
3.88 Ceas'd by the gripes of Serjeant Death's Arrests:
3.89 Thus I have said, and what I've said you see,
3.90 Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.

Middle Age. 


4.1 Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I've seen,
4.2 And now am grown more staid that have been green,
4.3 What they have done, the same wa...Read more of this...

by Nwakanma, Obi
...west. 
But above, Monadnock looms 
like some angry Moloch, her 
white nipple seizing the space

drained of all milk... 

A she-devil beckoning to worshippers 
seductive - her arm stretching outwards -
to this lonely pilgrim
lost in the mist: 

Behold the school of wild bucks 
Behold the meeting of incarnate 
spirits -
Behold the lost souls bearing tapers 
in rags of rich damask, 
Down Thomas - the saint of 
unbelievers - down the road to blis...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ead extremity,
     The Taghairm called; by which, afar,
     Our sires foresaw the events of war.
     Duncraggan's milk-white bull they slew,'—

     Malise.

     'Ah! well the gallant brute I knew!
     The choicest of the prey we had
     When swept our merrymen Gallangad.
     His hide was snow, his horns were dark,
     His red eye glowed like fiery spark;
     So fierce, so tameless, and so fleet,
     Sore did he cumber our retreat,
     And kept our st...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...y brother fool, the king of fools! 
Conceits himself as God that he can make 
Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk 
From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs, 
And men from beasts--Long live the king of fools!' 

And down the city Dagonet danced away; 
But through the slowly-mellowing avenues 
And solitary passes of the wood 
Rode Tristram toward Lyonnesse and the west. 
Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt 
With ruby-circled neck, but evermore 
Past, as a...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...gent* and small. *slim, neat
A seint* she weared, barred all of silk, *girdle
A barm-cloth* eke as white as morning milk *apron
Upon her lendes*, full of many a gore**. *loins **plait
White was her smock*, and broider'd all before, *robe or gown
And eke behind, on her collar about
Of coal-black silk, within and eke without.
The tapes of her white volupere* *head-kerchief 
Were of the same suit of her collere;
Her fillet broad of silk, and set full high:
And ...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...ons, like a crab on wet sand."

As I worked, watching the rotting waves come
past the bow that scissor the sea like milk,
I swear to you all, by my mother's milk,
by the stars that shall fly from tonight's furnace,
that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home;
I loved them as poets love the poetry
that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.

You ever look up from some lonely beach
and see a far schooner? Well, when I write
this poem, each phrase go be soaked in s...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence kill and kill? It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street. The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good: O let me ...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...damn lot of it to you."
*
She sighs. The paper trembles as she presses down 
The pink wax seal. Outside, a milk mist clears
From the shimmering valley. If I were her guardian
Angel, I'd divide myself. One half would holler
Don't! Stay on an even keel! Don't dollop over
All you are, to a man who'll go to town 
On his next little fling. If he's entranced today 
By the way you finger your silk throat inside your collar,
Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Sally, ...Read more of this...

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