Famous Motherhood Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Bird Nesting

by Ellis Parker Butler
 O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree,
Eager and laughing, as in all our play,
To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay,
But silent fell before the mystery.

For, one brief moment there, we understood
By sudden sympathy too fine for words
That we were sisters to the brooding birds
And part, with them, in God’s great motherhood....Read more of this...

Room 7: The Coco-Fiend

by Robert William Service
 I look at no one, me;
I pass them on the stair;
Shadows! I don't see;
Shadows! everywhere.
Haunting, taunting, staring, glaring,
Shadows! I don't care.
Once my room I gain
Then my life begins.
Shut the door on pain;
How the Devil grins!
Grin with might and main;
Grin and grin in vain;
Here's where Heav'n begins:
Cocaine! Cocaine!

A whiff! Ah, that's the thing.
How it makes me gay!
Now I want to...Read more of this...

The Twins Of Lucky Strike

by Robert William Service
 I've sung of Violet de Vere, that slinky, minky dame,
Of Gertie of the Diamond Tooth, and Touch-the-Button Nell,
And Maye Lamore,--at eighty-four I oughta blush wi' shame
That in my wild and wooly youth I knew them ladies well.
And Klondike Kit, and Gumboot Sue, and many I've forgot;
They had their faults, as I recall, the same as you and me;
But come...Read more of this...

Completion

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When I shall meet God’s generous dispensers
Of all the riches in the heavenly store, 
Those lesser gods, who act as Recompensers
For loneliness and loss upon this shore, 
Methinks abashed, and somewhat hesitating, 
My soul its wish and longing will declare, 
Lest they reply: ‘Here are no bounties waiting: 
We gave on earth, your portion and your share.’

Then shall I...Read more of this...

Sweethearts of the Year

by Vachel Lindsay
 Sweetheart Spring

Our Sweetheart, Spring, came softly, 
Her gliding hands were fire, 
Her lilac breath upon our cheeks 
Consumed us with desire. 

By her our God began to build, 
Began to sow and till. 
He laid foundations in our loves 
For every good and ill. 
We asked Him not for blessing, 
We asked Him not for pain — 
Still, to...Read more of this...

The Gift of God

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Blessed with a joy that only she
Of all alive shall ever know,
She wears a proud humility
For what it was that willed it so -
That her degree should be so great
Among the favoured of the Lord
That she may scarcely bear the weight
Of her bewildering reward.

As one apart, immune, alone,
Or featured for the shining ones,
And like to none that she has...Read more of this...

To a Childless Woman

by Siegfried Sassoon
 You think I cannot understand. Ah, but I do... 
I have been wrung with anger and compassion for you. 
I wonder if you’d loathe my pity, if you knew. 

But you shall know. I’ve carried in my heart too long 
This secret burden. Has not silence wrought your wrong— 
Brought you to dumb and wintry middle-age, with grey 
Unfruitful...Read more of this...

Kittens

by Robert William Service
 A ray of sun strayed softly round,
For something to caress,
Until a resting place it found
Of joy and thankfulness;
'Twas Minette, our Angora cat,
With deep contented purr,
Relaxed in rapture on a mat,
Three kittens nuzzling her.

With tenderness the sunbeam kissed
her fur of silver-grey;
Her eyes held an ecstatic mist,
In boundless bliss she lay;
The sunny radiance seemed to hold
Her longer than it should,
As if...Read more of this...

Motherhood

by Georgia Douglas Johnson
                                                           ...Read more of this...

Bastard

by Robert William Service
 The very skies wee black with shame,
As near my moment drew;
The very hour before you cam
I felt I hated you.

But now I see how fair you are,
How divine your eyes,
It seems I step upon a star
To leap to Paradise.

What care I who your father was:
('Twas better no to know);

You're mine and mine alone because
I love and love you so.

What...Read more of this...

The Song of the Women

by Rudyard Kipling
 How shall she know the worship we would do her?
 The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
 Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
 Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
 Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
 Go...Read more of this...

The Last Meeting

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

Because the night was falling warm and still 
Upon a golden day at April’s end, 
I thought; I will go up the hill once more 
To find the face of him that I have lost, 
And speak with him before his ghost has flown
Far from the earth that might not keep him long. 

So down the road I went,...Read more of this...

Demeter And Persephone

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When...Read more of this...

The Revenge Of Hamish

by Sidney Lanier
 It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe;
In the print of her velvet flank on the...Read more of this...

May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 May is Mary's month, and I 
Muse at that and wonder why: 
Her feasts follow reason, 
Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day; 
But the Lady Month, May, 
Why fasten that upon her, 
With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter 
Than the most are must delight her? 
Is it opportunest 
And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her,...Read more of this...

The Black Virgin

by G K Chesterton
 One in thy thousand statues we salute thee 
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim 
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces 
Walk in a forest calling on one name 
And, most of all, how this thing may be so 
Who know thee not are mystified to know
That one cries "Here she stands" and one cries...Read more of this...

The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that 's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many...Read more of this...

The May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 May is Mary's month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
 Her feasts follow reason,
 Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
 Why fasten that upon her,
 With a feasting in her honour? 

Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
 Is it opportunest
 And flowers finds soonest? 

Ask of her, the...Read more of this...

Supernatural Songs

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn

Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know...Read more of this...

The Law Of The Yukon

by Robert William Service
 This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the...Read more of this...

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