Famous Milking Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Milking poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous milking poems. These examples illustrate what a famous milking poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Katharine Tynan
A splendid place is London, with golden store,
For them that have the heart and hope and youth galore;
But mournful are its streets to me, I tell you true,
For I'm longing sore for Ireland in the foggy dew.
The sun he shines all day here, so fierce and fine,
With never a wisp of mist at all...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Willy, Willy Wilkin
Kissed the maids a-milking,
Fa, la, la!
And with his merry daffing
He set them all a-laughing,
Ha, ha, ha!...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
IN simmer, when the hay was mawn,
And corn wav’d green in ilka field,
While claver blooms white o’er the lea
And roses blaw in ilka beild!
Blythe Bessie in the milking shiel,
Says—“I’ll be wed, come o’t what will”:
Out spake a dame in wrinkled eild;
“O’ gude advisement comes nae ill.
“It’s ye hae wooers mony ane,
And lassie, ye’re but...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
I
The Trumpet-Vine Arbour
The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are
wide open,
And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
They bray and blare at the burning sky.
Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,
Trumpeted at the blue sky.
In long streaks of sound, molten metal,
The vine declares itself.
Clang! -- from its red and yellow trumpets.
Clang! -- from its long, nasal trumpets,
Splitting...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
I
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and...Read more of this...
by
Randall Jarrell
When the swans turned my sister into a swan
I would go to the lake, at night, from milking:
The sun would look out through the reeds like a swan,
A swan's red beak; and the beak would open
And inside there was darkness, the stars and the moon.
Out on the lake, a girl would laugh.
"Sister, here is your porridge,...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
The piper coming from far away is you
With a whitewash brush for a sporran
Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair
Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm
Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow,
Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting
With laughter, but keeping the drone going on
Interminably, between catches of breath.
*
The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Shepherd. That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.
Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
"Morning" -- means "Milking" -- to the Farmer --
Dawn -- to the Teneriffe --
Dice -- to the Maid --
Morning means just Risk -- to the Lover --
Just revelation -- to the Beloved --
Epicures -- date a Breakfast -- by it --
Brides -- an Apocalypse --
Worlds -- a Flood --
Faint-going Lives -- Their Lapse from Sighing --
Faith -- The Experiment...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
I asked nothing, only stood at the
edge of the wood behind the tree.
Languor was still upon the eyes
of the dawn, and the dew in the air.
The lazy smell of the damp grass
hung in the thin mist above the earth.
Under the banyan tree you were
milking the cow with your hands,
tender and fresh as butter.
And I was standing still.
I did...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.
“Where is Flanders?” was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.
“Where is Flanders?” was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.
A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Bye, baby bunting,
Father's gone a-hunting,
Mother's gone a-milking,
Sister's gone a-silking,
And brother's gone to buy a skin
To wrap the baby bunting in....Read more of this...
by
Kathleen Raine
A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives
Named the one indivisible soul of his glen;
For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities,
Immeasurable complexities of soul?
What are these isles but a song sung by island voices?
The herdsman sings ancestral memories
And the song makes the singer wise,
But only while he sings
Songs that were old when the old...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
’TWAS on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
That Charlie came to our town,
The young Chevalier.
Chorus.—An’ Charlie, he’s my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie, he’s my darling,
The young Chevalier.
As he was walking up the street,
The city for to view,
O there he spied a bonie lass
The window looking through,
An’ Charlie, &c.
Sae light’s he jumped...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
When man,
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.
This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
"Where are you going,
my pretty maid?
"
"I'm going a-milking,
sir,
" she said.
"May I go with you,
my pretty maid?
"
"You're kindly welcome,
sir,
" she said.
"What is your father,
my pretty maid?
"
"My father's a farmer,
sir,
" she said.
"What is your fortune,
my pretty maid?
"
"My face is my fortune,
sir,
" she said.
"Then I can't marry you,
my pretty maid.
"
"Nobody asked you,
sir,
" she...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
By this part of the century few are left who believe
in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
are sounds of shadows that possess no future
there is still game for the pleasure of killing
and there are pets for the children but the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
An hour before the sun goes down
Behind the ragged boughs,
I go across the little run
And bring the dusty cows;
And once I used to sit and rest
Beneath the fading dome,
For there was one that I loved best
Who'd bring the cattle home.
Our yard is fixed with double bails,
Round one the grass is...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
LACON. For a kiss or two, confess,
What doth cause this pensiveness,
Thou most lovely neat-herdess?
Why so lonely on the hill?
Why thy pipe by thee so still,
That erewhile was heard so shrill?
Tell me, do thy kine now fail
To fulfil the milking-pail?
Say, what is't that thou dost ail?
THYR. None of these; but out, alas!
A mischance is come to pass,
And I'll tell thee...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
Only one old post is standing --
Solid yet, but only one --
Where the milking, and the branding,
And the slaughtering were done.
Later years have brought dejection,
Care, and sorrow; but we knew
Happy days on that selection
Underneath old Bukaroo.
Then the light of day commencing
Found us at the gully's head,
Splitting timber for the...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
The first day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.
The second day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The third day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The fourth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Four...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
There's a drip of honeysuckle in the deep green lane;
There's old Martin jogging homeward on his worn old wain;
There are cherry petals falling, and a cuckoo calling, calling,
And a score of larks (God bless 'em) . . . but it's all pain, pain.
For you see I am not really there at all, not at all;
For you see I'm in...Read more of this...
by
T Wignesan
for Eric Mottram
"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,
Dann ist die Erde schön."
Goethe.
I
An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.
Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious...Read more of this...
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