Famous On The House Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous On The House poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous on the house poems. These examples illustrate what a famous on the house poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
I have a house I've lived in long:
I can't recall my going in.
'Twere better bartered for a song
Ere ruin, rot and rust begin.
When it was fresh and fine and fair,
I used it with neglect, I fear;
But now I husband it with care
And cherish it form year to year.
Oh do not put it to the flame
When I have gone,...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Command the roof, great Genius, and from thence
Into this house pour down thy influence,
That through each room a golden pipe may run
Of living water by thy benizon;
Fulfil the larders, and with strength'ning bread
Be ever-more these bins replenished.
Next, like a bishop consecrate my ground,
That lucky fairies here may dance their round;
And, after that, lay down some silver pence,
The master's charge...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
I am heaping the bones of the old mother
To build us a hold against the host of the air;
Granite the blood-heat of her youth
Held molten in hot darkness against the heart
Hardened to temper under the feet
Of the ocean cavalry that are maned with snow
And march from the remotest west.
This is the primitive rock, here in the wet
Quarry under the shadow...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
BY the City Dead-House, by the gate,
As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangor,
I curious pause—for lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought;
Her corpse they deposit unclaim’d—it lies on the damp brick pavement;
The divine woman, her body—I see the Body—I look on it alone,
That house once full of passion and beauty—all else...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air
At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north,
I have nothing to say except that it dapples my floor
and it would dapple me
if I lay on that floor, as-well-forthwith
I have done, trying well to mount a thought
not carelessly
in times forgotten, except by the New York Times
which can't forget. There is always the morgue.
There are men in the morgue.
These...Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
In the slant of the sun on the country-side,
Cattle and sheep trail home along the lane;
And a rugged old man in a thatch door
Leans on a staff and thinks of his son, the herdboy.
There are whirring pheasants? full wheat-ears,
Silk-worms asleep, pared mulberry-leaves.
And the farmers, returning with hoes on their shoulders,
Hail one another familiarly....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
No man saw awe, nor to his house
Admitted he a man
Though by his awful residence
Has human nature been.
Not deeming of his dread abode
Till laboring to flee
A grasp on comprehension laid
Detained vitality.
Returning is a different route
The Spirit could not show
For breathing is the only work
To be enacted now.
"Am not consumed," old Moses wrote,
"Yet saw him face to face" --
That very...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
VII. ? ON THE NEW HOT-HOUSE. Where lately harbor'd many a famous whore, A purging bill, now fix'd upon the door, Tells you it is a hot-house ; so it may, And still be a whore-house : they're synonyma. ...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
Go, little book,
To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,
Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:
And bid him look
Into thy pages: it may hap that he
May find that golden maidens dance through thee....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
If, like a ball, earth to my house were borne,
When drunk, I'd rate it at a barley-corn;
Last night they offered me in pawn for wine,
But the rude vintner laughed that pledge to scorn....Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
THE HOUSE
The cornerstone in Truth is laid,
The guardian walls of Honour made,
The roof of Faith is built above,
The fire upon the hearth is Love:
Though rains descend and loud winds call,
This happy house shall never fall.
THE DOORSTEAD
The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride:
The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside:
The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend:
This...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city's feet;
On one side sleep...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Bowers
We, who were long together homeless, raise
Brick walls, wood floors, a roof, and windows up
To what sustained us in those threatening days
Unto this end. Alas, that this bright cup
Be empty of the care and life of him
Who should have made it overflow its brim....Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
Wherein to dwell;
An little house, whose humble roof
Is weather-proof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry;
Where Thou my chamber for to ward
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch as is my fate,...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter --
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life --
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness -- then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Too little way the House must lie
From every Human Heart
That holds in undisputed Lease
A white inhabitant --
Too narrow is the Right between --
Too imminent the chance --
Each Consciousness must emigrate
And lose its neighbor once --...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
If other flowers adorn the house and the splendour of the countryside, the pure ponds shine still in the grass with the great eyes of water of their mobile face.
Who can say from what far-off and unknown distances so many new birds have come with sun on their wings?
In the garden, April has given way to July, and the blue...Read more of this...
by
Kobayashi Issa
Under my house
an inchworm
measuring the joists....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Near the wall of a house painted
to look like stone,
I saw visions of God.
A sleepless night that gives others a headache
gave me flowers
opening beautifully inside my brain.
And he who was lost like a dog
will be found like a human being
and brought back home again.
Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I knew that a baby was hid in that house,
Though I saw no cradle and heard no cry;
But the husband was tip-toeing 'round like a mouse,
And the good wife was humming a soft lullaby;
And there was a look on the face of the mother,
That I knew could mean only one thing, and no other.
The mother, I said to myself,...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
Lured by the wall, and drawn
To stare below the roof,
Where pigeons nest aloof
From prowling cats and men,
I count the sash and bar
Secured to granite stone,
And note the daylight gone,
Supper and silence near.
Close to the wall inside,
Immured, empty of love,
A man I have wondered of
Lies patient, vacant-eye.
A month and a day ago
He stopped his car and found
A girl on the...Read more of this...
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