Famous Miller Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Julia Miller

by Edgar Lee Masters
 We quarreled that morning,
For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,
And I was nervous and heavy with the child
Whose birth I dreaded.
I thought over the last letter written me
By that estranged young soul
Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
By marrying the old man.
Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
Across the blackness that came over my eyes
I see...Read more of this...

To G. M. W. And G. F. W

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Whenas—(I love that “whenas” word—
 It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
 The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey’s back
 Would carry thus a double load—
Father and son upon one jack,
 Galumphing down the Tibur Road.

II

Old is the tale—Aesop’s, I think—
 Of that famed miller and his son
Whose fortunes were so “on the...Read more of this...

By The Pacific Ocean

by Joaquin Miller
Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep.
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
The west is banked against the west.

Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten thousand foresters are told.
And all so still! so still the air
That...Read more of this...

How Robin and His Outlaws Lived in The Woods

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Robin and his merry men
: Lived just like the birds;
They had almost as many tracks as thoughts,
: And whistles and songs as words.

Up they were with the earliest sign
Of the sun's up-looking eye;
But not an archer breakfasted
Till he twinkled from the sky.

All the morning they were wont
To fly their grey-goose quills
At butts, or wands, or trees, or twigs,
Till theirs...Read more of this...

Letter To Kizer From Seattle

by Richard Hugo
 Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support
from North Carolina when I suddenly went ape
in the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I'm ashamed.
I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor
of impending success, winning some poetry prizes
or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got,
the softer the soft cry in my head: Don't believe them.
You were never good. Then...Read more of this...

310. Tam o' Shanter: A Tale

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...

Byron

by Joaquin Miller
 IN men whom men condemn as ill 
I find so much of goodness still, 
In men whom men pronounce divine 
I find so much of sin and blot, 
I do not dare to draw a line 
Between the two, where God has not....Read more of this...

215. Song—Hey the Dusty Miller

by Robert Burns
 HEY, the dusty Miller,
 And his dusty coat,
He will win a shilling,
 Or he spend a groat:
Dusty was the coat,
 Dusty was the colour,
Dusty was the kiss
 That I gat frae the Miller.


Hey, the dusty Miller,
 And his dusty sack;
Leeze me on the calling
 Fills the dusty peck:
Fills the dusty peck,
 Brings the dusty siller;
I wad gie my coatie
...Read more of this...

The Vanishing Red

by Robert Frost
 He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
'Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
When it's just that...Read more of this...

Late O Miller

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 LATE, O miller,
The birds are silent,
The darkness falls.
In the house the lights are lighted.
See, in the valley they twinkle,
The lights of home.
Late, O lovers,
The night is at hand;
Silence and darkness
Clothe the land....Read more of this...

The Yukon

by Joaquin Miller
 THE moon resumed all heaven now, 
She shepherded the stars below 
Along her wide, white steeps of snow, 
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how. 

She bared her full white breast, she dared 
The sun e'er show his face again. 
She seemed to know no change, she kept 
Carousal constantly, nor slept, 
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared...Read more of this...

From "Byron"

by Joaquin Miller
In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not....Read more of this...

The Page And The Millers Daughter

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 PAGE.

WHERE goest thou? Where?
Miller's daughter so fair!

Thy name, pray?--

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.

'Tis 
Lizzy.

PAGE.
Where goest thou? Where?
With the rake in thy hand?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
Father's meadows and land

To visit, I'm busy.

PAGE.
Dost go there alone?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
By this rake, sir, 'tis shown

That we're making the hay;
And the pears ripen fast
In the garden at last,

So I'll pick them to-day.

PAGE.
Is't a silent thicket I yonder view?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
Oh, yes!...Read more of this...

Hanchen the Maid of the Mill

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay. 

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In...Read more of this...

Seaward

by Joseph Brodsky
Darling you think it's love it's just a midnightjourney.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force 
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh stopit Bernie "
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures 
alias cigars smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches 
and the phones...Read more of this...

De Amicitiis

by Eugene Field
 Though care and strife
Elsewhere be rife,
Upon my word I do not heed 'em;
In bed I lie
With books hard by,
And with increasing zest I read 'em.

Propped up in bed,
So much I've read
Of musty tomes that I've a headful
Of tales and rhymes
Of ancient times,
Which, wife declares, are "simply dreadful!"

They give me joy
Without alloy;
And isn't that what books are made for?
And yet--and...Read more of this...

Farewell

by Wang Wei
 Farewell to the bushy clump close to the river
And the flags where the butter-bump hides in forever;
Farewell to the weedy nook, hemmed in by waters;
Farewell to the miller's brook and his three bonny daughters;
Farewell to them all while in prison I lie—
In the prison a thrall sees naught but the sky.

Shut out are the green fields and birds in...Read more of this...

Keepsake Mill

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Over the borders, a sin without pardon, 
Breaking the branches and crawling below, 
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden, 
Down by the banks of the river we go. 

Here is a mill with the humming of thunder, 
Here is the weir with the wonder of foam, 
Here is the sluice with the race running under--...Read more of this...

I threw my arms about those shoulders..

by Joseph Brodsky
 Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,
alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,
and the phones are...Read more of this...

January 2

by David Lehman
 The old war is over the new one has begun
between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday
in New York light is the variable and structure
the content according to Rodrigo Moynihan's
self-portraits at the Robert Miller Gallery where
the painter is serially pictured holding a canvas,
painting his mirror image, shirtless in summer,
with a nude, etc., it's two o'clock and I'm walking
at top speed...Read more of this...

XVII (Thinking Tangling Shadows...)

by Pablo Neruda
 Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude.
You are far away too, oh farther than anyone.
Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images,
burying lamps.

Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there!
Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes,
taciturn miller,
night falls on you face downward, far from the city.

Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life...Read more of this...

Sea-blown

by Joaquin Miller
 AH! there be souls none understand; 
Like clouds, they cannot touch the land. 
Unanchored ships, they blow and blow, 
Sail to and fro, and then go down 
In unknown seas that none shall know, 
Without one ripple of renown. 

Call these not fools, the test of worth 
Is not the hold you have of earth. 
Ay, there be gentlest...Read more of this...

26. John Barleycorn: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 THERE was three kings into the east,
 Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
 John Barleycorn should die.


They took a plough and plough’d him down,
 Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
 John Barleycorn was dead.


But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
 And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up...Read more of this...

The Dusty Miller

by Mother Goose
Margaret wrote a letter,
Sealed it with her finger,
Threw it in the dam
For the dusty miller.
Dusty was his coat,
Dusty was the siller,
Dusty was the kiss
I'd from the dusty miller.
If I had my pockets
Full of gold and siller,
I would give it all
To my dusty miller....Read more of this...

Crossing The Plains

by Joaquin Miller
What great yoked brutes with briskets low,
With wrinkled necks like buffalo,
With round, brown, liquid, pleading eyes,
That turn’d so slow and sad to you,
That shone like love’s eyes soft with tears,
That seem’d to plead, and make replies,
The while they bow’d their necks and drew
The creaking load; and looked at you.
Their sable briskets swept the ground,
Their cloven feet kept solemn sound.

Two sullen...Read more of this...

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