Famous Miners Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Miners poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous miners poems. These examples illustrate what a famous miners poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lawson, Henry
...
When men shall camp in the dark and damp by the bough-marked battery,
Between the forts and the open ports where the miners watch the sea;
And talk perhaps of their boy-scout days, as they sit in their shelters rude,
While motors race to the distant bays with ammunition and food.
When the city alight shall wait by night for news from a far-out post,
And men ride down from the farming town to patrol the lonely coast –
Till they hear the thud of a distant gun, or t...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ead."
When the coach lurches over the county boundary,
If not Hughes’ voice then Heaney’s or Hill’s
Ringing like miners’ boots flinging sparks
From the flagstones, piercing the lens of winter,
Jutting like tongues of crooked rock
Lapping a mossed slab, an altar outgrown,
Dumped when the trumpeting hosannas
Had finally riven the air of the valley.
And I, myself, what did I make of it?
The voices coming into my head
Welcoming kin, alive or dead, my eyes
Jerk...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...enny Carrister, a heroine bold,
Who lived in Australia, at a gold mine called Lucknow,
And Jenny was beloved by the the miners, somehow.
Jenny was the only daughter of the old lady who owned the mine-
And Jenny would come of an evening, like a gleam of sunshine,
And by the presence of her bright face and cheery voice,
She made the hearts of the unlucky diggers rejoice.
There was no pride about her, and day after day,
She walked with her young brother, who was alwa...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.
Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they are I never saw.
I have seen three White Horse taverns,
One in Illinois, one...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...
And Marthy's younkit wuz their first, wich, bein' how it meant
The first on Red Hoss Mountain, wuz truly a' event!
The miners sawed off short on work ez soon ez they got word
That Dock Devine allowed to Casey what had just occurred;
We loaded up an' whooped around until we all wuz hoarse
Salutin' the arrival, wich weighed ten pounds, uv course!
Three years, and sech a pretty child!--his mother's counterpart!
Three years, an' sech a holt ez he had got on every heart!
A peert...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.
Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado
Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks.
Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy
With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain.
They killed swearing to remember
The shot and charred wives and children
In the burnt camp of Ludlow,
And Louis Tikas, the laughing Greek,
Plugged with a bullet, clubbed with a gun butt.
As a home war
...Read more of this...
by
Butler, Ellis Parker
...flapper has her night key.
Chopin is jazzed into melody.
A child is a “kiddie” and not a “brat.”
Bosses and miners at last agree—
And the Turk has bought him a derby hat.
All firewaters are bravely banned.
There is a ballot for every she.
The hairpin now is a contraband.
A New York mayor gets some sympathy.
My dealer brings some coal to me.
The plumber is an aristocrat.
In Miami all millionaires may be—
And the Turk has bought him a de...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...nkin' 'nd perceed at oncet to name his favorite toddy!"
It wuzn't long afore the news had spread the country over,
And miners come a-flockin' in like honey-bees to clover;
It kind uv did 'em good, they said, to feast their hungry eyes on
That picture uv Our Lady in the camp uv Blue Horizon.
But one mean cuss from ****** Crick passed criticisms on 'er,--
Leastwise we overheerd him call her Pettibone's madonner,
The which we did not take to be respectful to a lady,
So we h...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...Daniel Boone,
Then westward chased the painted moon.
She passed with wild young feet
On to Kansas wheat,
On to the miners' west,
The echoing cañons' guest,
Then the Pacific sand,
Waking,
Thrilling,
The midnight land....
On Adams street and Jefferson —
Flames coming up from the ground!
On Jackson street and Washington —
Flames coming up from the ground!
And why, until the dawning sun
Are flames coming up from the ground?
Because, through drowsy Springfiel...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...n places
Along the Appalachian chain,
I saw steel arms handling coal and iron,
And I saw the white-cauliflower faces
Of miners’ wives waiting for the men to come home from the day’s work.
I made color studies in crimson and violet
Over the dust and domes of culm at sunset....Read more of this...
by
Clare, John
...hills where they seek for
freedom still
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to kill
The little homeless miners- O it turns my bosom chill
When I think of old 'sneap green' puddocks nook and hilly
snow
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view
When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we's nothing
else to do
All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough
All vanished like the sun where t...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...e eye.
Then he clambered on the camel, and the while the beast was drinking
He explained with satisfaction to the miners standing by
That 'twas cheap, very cheap, as the dromedaries go.
But the camel kept on drinking and he filled his hold with water,
And the more he had inside him yet the more he seemed to need;
For he drank it by the gallon, and his girths grew taut and tauter,
And the miners muttered softly, "Yes he's very dry indeed!
But he's cheap, very ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e and
identity;)
Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground,
Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-plows are plowing;
Speak, O bard! point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we know
not
why;
For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting nothing,
Only flapping in the wind?
POET.
I hear and see not strips of cloth alone;
I hear again the tramp of ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...cape covers the ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding
appearance;
There is the mine, there are the miners;
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d; the hammers-men are at hand with
their
tongs
and hammers;
What always served, and always serves, is at hand.
Than this, nothing has better served—it has served all:
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek:
Served in building the buildings that last lon...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...u for them!
And here and hence, O Union, all the work and workmen thine!
The poets, women, sailors, soldiers, farmers, miners, students thine!
None separate from Thee—henceforth one only, we and Thou;
(For the blood of the children—what is it only the blood Maternal?
And lives and works—what are they all at last except the roads to Faith and Death?)
While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear Mother!
We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in Th...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the
steam-whistle;
See, ploughmen, ploughing farms—See, miners, digging mines—See, the
numberless factories;
See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See from among them,
superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in working dresses;
See, lounging through the shops and fields of The States, me, well-belov’d,
close-held by day and night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hi...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...kt Cockle and the Muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the Sea
Fell to the Dutch by just Propriety.
Glad then, as Miners that have found the Oar,
They with mad labour fish'd the Land to Shoar;
And div'd as desperately for each piece
Of Earth, as if't had been of Ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small Loads of Clay,
Less then what building Swallows bear away;
Transfursing into them their Dunghil Soul.
How did they rivet, with Gigantick Piles,
Thorough the Center the...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...ers, an' last, but not the least,
Wuz a chromo uv old Fremont,--we liked that best, you bet,
For there's lots uv us old miners that is votin' for him yet!
When Sorry Tom received the gang perlitely at the door,
He said that keerds would be allowed upon the second floor;
And then he asked us would we like a drop uv ody vee.
Connivin' at his meanin', we responded promptly, "Wee."
A conversazzhyony is a thing where people speak
The langwidge in the which they air partic...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
..."Umberto IV,"
the list goes on for pages, November gives
way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore.
Italian miners from Piemonte dig
under towns in western Pennsylvania
only to rediscover the same nightmare
they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels
all night by train with one suitcase and an orange.
She learns that mercy is something you can eat
again and again while the juice spills over
your chin, you can wipe it away with the back
of your ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ons.
The fisher-boys dropped sail and oar
To grimly stand the test,
Along that storm-swept Turkish shore,
With miners from the west.
The old state jealousies of yore
Are dead as Pharaoh's sow,
We're not State children any more --
We're all Australians now!
Our six-starred flag that used to fly
Half-shyly to the breeze,
Unknown where older nations ply
Their trade on foreign seas,
Flies out to meet the morning blue
With Vict'ry at the prow;
For that's...Read more of this...
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