Famous My Father Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous My Father poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous my father poems. These examples illustrate what a famous my father poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Ogden Nash
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.
Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
God loves His lit-tle birds; for all
His ten-der care He shows;
A sin-gle spar-row can-not fall
But its Cre-a-tor knows.
They do not sow, nor reap the corn,
Gar-ner nor barn have they;
God gives them break-fast every morn,
And feeds them through the day.
And this we know; for in His Word,
Where all His ways we...Read more of this...
by
Patrick Kavanagh
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In...Read more of this...
by
Lisa Zaran
Death is not the final word.
Without ears, my father still listens,
still shrugs his shoulders
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer.
I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob,
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him
what does he think about the war in Iraq
and how does he...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I had a father once, the records say.
He has gone away down the long avenue
Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist
Of his breath, his firm signature no more.
No more holding down his hat in the wind,
Running to catch the last post, he has gone
Beyond the wind-shaped stones on the high wall.
His breath in that final coma came steady.
Stertorous,...Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
Now in the suburbs and the falling light
I followed him, and now down sandy road
Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet
Curdle of fields, where the plums
Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by one.
Mile after mile I followed, with skimming feet,
After the secret master of my blood,
Him, steeped in the odor of ponds, whose indomitable love
Kept me in chains. Strode...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Albert Guest
My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.
My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There's nothing that he cannot do,
He knows...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
In the eyes dream. The brow as if it could feel
something far off. Around the lips a great
freshness-seductive though there is no smile.
Under the rows of ornamental braid
on the slim Imperial officer's uniform:
the saber's basket-hilt. Both hands stay
folded upon it going nowhere calm
and now almost invisible as if they
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.
And all the...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
"There where that ray touches the plain
And the shadows escape as if they really ran,
Warsaw stands, open from all sides,
A city not very old but quite famous.
"Farther, where strings of rain hang from a little cloud,
Under the hills with an acacia grove
Is Prague. Above it, a marvelous castle
Shored against a slope in accordance with old rules.
"What divides this land...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Tis One by One -- the Father counts --
And then a Tract between
Set Cypherless -- to teach the Eye
The Value of its Ten --
Until the peevish Student
Acquire the Quick of Skill --
Then Numerals are dowered back --
Adorning all the Rule --
'Tis mostly Slate and Pencil --
And Darkness on the School
Distracts the Children's fingers --
Still the Eternal Rule
Regards least Cypherer...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Albert Guest
The long lines of diesels
groan toward evening
carrying off the breath
of the living.
The face of your house
is black,
it is your face, black
and fire bombed
in the first street wars,
a black tooth planted in the earth
of Michigan
and bearing nothing,
and the earth is black,
sick on used oils.
Did you look...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[written in a post-chaise.]
(* In the original, Schwager, which has the
twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.)
HASTEN thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead
Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,--
Striving and hoping, up, up!
Wide,...Read more of this...
by
Kobayashi Issa
With my father
I would watch dawn
over green fields....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Who were "the Father and the Son"
We pondered when a child,
And what had they to do with us
And when portentous told
With inference appalling
By Childhood fortified
We thought, at least they are no worse
Than they have been described.
Who are "the Father and the Son"
Did we demand Today
"The Father and the Son" himself
Would doubtless specify --
But had they the felicity
When we desired...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like...Read more of this...
by
Meena Alexander
Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well's mouth.
Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood.
You were bound to meteorology,
Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds.
The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm,
Fissured air baring the heart's intricate meshwork
Of want and need—
Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me.
Crossing Chand Bibi Road,
Named after...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
"Heavenly Father" -- take to thee
The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand
In a moment contraband --
Though to trust us -- seems to us
More respectful -- "We are Dust" --
We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity --...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
Father, part of his double interest
Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me,
His jointure in the knotty Trinity
He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest.
This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest,
Was from the world's beginning slain, and he
Hath made two Wills which with the Legacy
Of his and thy kingdom do thy Sons invest.
Yet such are...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.
The rain beats on the windows
And the raindrops...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
A man had just delivered a toad from his wife's armpit. He
held it by its legs and spanked it.
Do you love it? said his wife.
It's our child, isn't it?
Does that mean you can't love it? she said.
It's hard enough to love a toad, but when it turns out to be...Read more of this...
by
Richard Jones
During the war, I was in China.
Every night we blew the world to hell.
The sky was purple and yellow
like his favorite shirt.
I was in India once
on the Ganges in a tourist boat.
There were soldiers,
some women with parasols.
A dead body floated by
going in the opposite direction.
My son likes this story
and requests it each year at Thanksgiving.
When he was twelve,
there was...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Far from Love the Heavenly Father
Leads the Chosen Child,
Oftener through Realm of Briar
Than the Meadow mild.
Oftener by the Claw of Dragon
Than the Hand of Friend
Guides the Little One predestined
To the Native Land....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.
Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,
and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deeds....Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear,
If worth in me or ought I do appear,
Who can of right better demand the same
Than may your worthy self from whom it came?
The principal might yield a greater sum,
Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb;
My stock's so small I know not how to pay,
My...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
MY father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O,
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, O;
For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth regarding, O.
Then out into the world my course I did determine, O;
Tho’ to be rich was not my...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member My Father poems.