Famous Nursing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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310. Tam o' Shanter: A Tale

...stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.


 This truth fand honest TAM O’ SHANTER,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses).


 O Tam! had’st thou but been sae wise,
As taen thy ain wife Kate’s advice!
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;
That frae Nov...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Dialogue between Old England and New

...n such manner
255 That all shall joy that thou display'dst thy banner,
256 And discipline erected so, I trust,
257 That nursing Kings shall come and lick thy dust.
258 Then Justice shall in all thy Courts take place
259 Without respect of persons or of case.
260 Then bribes shall cease, and suits shall not stick long,
261 Patience and purse of Clients for to wrong.
262 Then High Commissions shall fall to decay,
263 And Pursuivants and Catchpoles want their pay.
264 So shall t...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry Ohio

...In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of ******* in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop te...Read more of this...
by Wright, James

Dream On

...tails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't 
forget the good deeds, the charity work, 
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewilder...Read more of this...
by Tate, James

Dream On

...tails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't 
forget the good deeds, the charity work, 
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewilder...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward


Enoch Arden

...ass his days in peace among his own. 

Thus Enoch in his heart determined all:
Then moving homeward came on Annie pale,
Nursing the sickly babe, her latest-born.
Forward she started with a happy cry,
And laid the feeble infant in his arms;
Whom Enoch took, and handled all his limbs,
Appraised his weight and fondled fatherlike,
But had no heart to break his purposes
To Annie, till the morrow, when he spoke. 

Then first since Enoch's golden ring had girt
Her finger, Annie foug...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Incompatabilities

...cting.



Your mother’s growing cancer went diagnosed, but unremarked

Until the final days

She was too busy auxiliary nursing

Or working in the Lakeside Caf?.

It was her wages that put bread and jam

And baked beans into your stomachs.



Her final hospitalisation

Was the arena for your father’s last rage

Her fare interfering with the night’s drinking;



He fought in the Burma Campaign but won no medals.

Some kind of psychiatric discharge- ‘paranoia’

Lurked in his pa...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Letters To Friends

...your cradled rockings, knock by knock.



III

Debjani Chatterjee

In these doom-laden days

You are steady as a pilot nursing tired ships homeward

Through churning seas

Where grey gulls scream

Forlornly and for ever.

I am the red-neck,

Bear-headed blaster

Shifting sheer rock

To rape the ore of poetry’s plunder

Or bulldozing trees to glean mines of silver

While you sail serenely onward 

Ever the diplomat’s daughter

Toujours de la politesse.

IV

Daisy Abey

Daisy,...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Like A Scarf

...hing the gladiola.
I noticed the great calm of the clouds overhead.
And below, several nurses appeared to me in need of nursing.
The psychopaths were stirring from their naps,
I should say, their postprandial slumbers.
They were lumbering through the pines like inordinately sad moose.
Who could eat liverwurst at a time like this?
But, then again, what's a picnic without pathos?
Lacking a way home, I adjusted the flap in my head and duck-walked
down to the pond and into the po...Read more of this...
by Tate, James

Like A Scarf

...hing the gladiola.
I noticed the great calm of the clouds overhead.
And below, several nurses appeared to me in need of nursing.
The psychopaths were stirring from their naps,
I should say, their postprandial slumbers.
They were lumbering through the pines like inordinately sad moose.
Who could eat liverwurst at a time like this?
But, then again, what's a picnic without pathos?
Lacking a way home, I adjusted the flap in my head and duck-walked
down to the pond and into the po...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

No Buyers

...ment verge,
Parallel to the man:
She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries a like Turk's-head, but more in nursing-wise:
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things,
The rain clams her apron till it clings. --
So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
And nobody buys....Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Of Politics and Art

...young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers
Just stared into what they allowed
Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow's
One visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.

Today I listened to a woman say
That Melville might
Be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked, "And why not?"
The first responded, "Because there are
No women in his one novel."

And Mrs. Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above th...Read more of this...
by Dubie, Norman

Samson Agonistes

...r, that I may fetch thee
From forth this loathsom prison-house, to abide
With me, where my redoubl'd love and care
With nursing diligence, to me glad office,
May ever tend about thee to old age
With all things grateful chear'd, and so suppli'd,
That what by me thou hast lost thou least shalt miss.

Sam: No, no, of my condition take no care;
It fits not; thou and I long since are twain;
Nor think me so unwary or accurst 
To bring my feet again into the snare
Where once I have ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Tam OShanter

...stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o'Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter,
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses).

O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise,
As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice!
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum,
That frae November...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert

The Ballad of Persse OReilly

...ye devil, ye! up with the rann,
 the rhyming rann!

It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
 (Chorus) Woohoo, what'll she doo!
 The general lost her maidenloo!

He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded philosopher,
For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.
Begob, he's the crux of the catalogue
Of our antediluvial zoo,
 (Chorus...Read more of this...
by Joyce, James

The Changeling ( From The Tent on the Beach )

...ra Dalton
Looked the mother of his child.

With more than a lover's fondness
He stooped to her worn young face,
And the nursing child and the mother
He folded in one embrace.

"Blessed be God!" he murmured.
"Blessed be God!" she said;
"For I see, who once was blinded,--
I live, who once was dead.

"Now mount and ride, my goodman,
As thou lovest thy own soul!
Woe's me, if my wicked fancies
Be the death of Goody Cole!"

His horse he saddled and bridled,
And into the night rode ...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The Four Brothers

...all hollyhocks laughing glad to children in peaceful valleys, by the God of new mothers wishing peace to sit at windows nursing babies,
I swear only reckless men, ready to throw away their lives by hunger, deprivation, desperate clinging to a single purpose imperturbable and undaunted, men with the primitive guts of rebellion,
Only fighters gaunt with the red brand of labor’s sorrow on their brows and labor’s terrible pride in their blood, men with souls asking danger—only th...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

The Scholar Gypsy

...e has hope like thine!
Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,
Roaming the countryside, a truant boy,
Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,
And every doubt long blown by time away.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife— 
Fly hence, our contact fear!
Still fly, plunge deeper ...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Siege of Corinth

...mus lay; 
Christian or Moslem, which be they? 
Let their mothers see and say! 
When in cradled rest they lay, 
And each nursing mother smiled 
On the sweet sleep of her child, 
Little deem'd she such a day 
Would rend those tender limbs away. 
Not the matrons that them bore 
Could discern their offspring more; 
That one moment left no trace 
More of human form or face 
Save a scatter'd scalp or bone: 
And down came blazing rafters, strown 
Around, and many a falling stone, 
D...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

...it a try.
On his way to the castle
he met an old old woman.
Age, for a change, was of some use.
She wasn't stuffed in a nursing home.
She told him not to drink a drop of wine
and gave him a cloak that would make
him invisible when the right time came.
And thus he sat outside the dorm.
The oldest princess brought him some wine
but he fastened a sponge beneath his chin,
looking the opposite of Andy Gump.

The sponge soaked up the wine,
and thus he stayed awake.
He feigned sleep...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

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