Famous Nursery Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Nursery poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous nursery poems. These examples illustrate what a famous nursery poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, *****,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."
That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be lig...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...
I've felt mean lately; mean's no name for it.
I just found what the matter was to-night:
I've been a-choking like a nursery tree
When it outgrows the wire band of its name tag.
I blamed it on the hot spell we've been having.
'Twas nothing but my foolish hanging back,
Not liking to own up I'd grown a size.
Number eighteen this is. What size do you wear?"
The Doctor caught his throat convulsively.
"Oh--ah--fourteen--fourteen."
"Fourteen! You say so!
I can remember ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...all things: we hear
news of the heart in weather of the Bear,
slide down the rungs of Cassiopeia's Chair,
still on the nursery floor, the Milky Way;
and, if we question one, must question all.
What is this ‘man'? How far from him is ‘me'?
Who, in this conch-shell, locked the sound of sea?
We are the tree, yet sit beneath the tree,
among the leaves we are the hidden bird,
we are the singer and are what is heard.
What is this ‘world'? Not Li Po's Gorge alone,
and yet, this too...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...There was a little man, and he had a little gun, And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead;He went to the brook, and saw a little duck, And shot it right through the head, head, head.He carried it home to his old wife Joan, And bade her a fire to make, make, make.To roast the little duck he had shot in the brook, ...Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...Higher than a house, higher than a tree.Oh! whatever can that be?...Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...A sunshiny showerWon't last half an hour....Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...night
We passed over
The bridge out
Of sight of
The streets, past
Hudswell Clark’s
Giant doors, past
The war day-nursery
We stopped at
The railway crossing
At the wheel
Which could not
Be turned and
Tried to turn it,
The huge steel rim
Shone, the crossing
Gates fast closed,
The line unused
For fifty years.
The moor stretched
Away to the feast’s
Imbroglio of giant
Wheels and ghost-rides,
Shies and penny-runs
And carousels.
30
We rose in a g...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...shore,
there are deep windows the waves haven't opened,
where night is reflected through decades of glass.
There is the nursery, there is the nanny,
there are my father’s unreachable eyes
turned towards the window. Is the child uneasy?
His is the death that is circling the stars.
In the deep room where candles burn soundlessly
and peace pours at last through the cells of our bodies,
three of us are watching, one of us is staring
with the wide gaze of a wild, wave-fed seal.
I...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Annie
...For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;For want of the horse, the rider was lost;For want of the rider, the battle was lost;For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost,And all for the want of a horseshoe nail....Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...honoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the h...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ted joys.
Where their vast courts, the mother-strumpets keep,
And, undisturb'd by watch, in silence sleep.
Near these a nursery erects its head,
Where queens are form'd, and future heroes bred;
Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry,
Where infant punks their tender voices try,
And little Maximins the gods defy.
Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear;
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst this monument of vanish'd m...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...nds, let us invite joy into our conversation,
Courtesy into our bedrooms,
Gentleness into our kitchen,
Care into our nursery.
The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain
We are a going-on people who will rise again.
And still we rise.
Poem read at the Million Man March...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...ug,
Dull victim of his pipe and mug;
Woe is me for my hopes' downfall!
Lord! is yon squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time out of mind this forge of ores,
Quarry of spars in mountain pores,
Old cradle, hunting ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear, and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;
Factory of river, and of rain;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skil...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ey warmth, nay insolence of spirit;--
We would not with one foult dispense
To weaken the resemblance.
May he revive thy Nursery sin,
Peeping as daringly within,
His curley Locks but just descried,
With 'Bet, my be not come to bide.'--
Fearless of danger, braving pain,
And threaten'd very oft in vain,
Still may one Terror daunt his Soul,
One needful engine of Controul
Be found in this sublime array,
A neigbouring Donkey's aweful Bray.
So may his equal faults as Child,
Produce ...Read more of this...
by
Austen, Jane
...to wish her stay,
Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers,
To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom,
Her nursery; they at her coming sprung,
And, touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew.
Yet went she not, as not with such discourse
Delighted, or not capable her ear
Of what was high: such pleasure she reserved,
Adam relating, she sole auditress;
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the Angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather; he, she knew, woul...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...Ride away, ride away, Johnny shall ride,And he shall have pussy-cat Tied to one side;And he shall have little dog Tied to the other,And Johnny shall ride To see his grandmother....Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...t the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --
the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests wher...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...d the rumor wild:
'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes
There isn't any Santa Claus!'
Slunk like a weasel of a marten
Through nursery and kindergarten,
Whispering low to every tot,
'There isn't any, no there's not!'
The children wept all Christmas eve
And Jabez chortled up his sleeve.
No infant dared hang up his stocking
For fear of Jabez' ribald mocking.
He sprawled on his untidy bed,
Fresh malice dancing in his head,
When presently with scalp-a-tingling,
Jabez heard a distant...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
......Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.
I am reassured. I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again. I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine. They do not belong to me.
I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. He does not speak a word.
He...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
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