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Famous Pails Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...full of soft pillows 
To go a-sailing on the billows. 

We took a saw and several nails, 
And water in the nursery pails; 
And Tom said, "Let us also take 
An apple and a slice of cake;"-- 
Which was enough for Tom and me 
To go a-sailing on, till tea. 

We sailed along for days and days, 
And had the very best of plays; 
But Tom fell out and hurt his knee, 
So there was no one left but me....Read more of this...



by Field, Eugene
...Malvoisie, and Port, swete Muscadelle and perry;
Rochelle, Osey, and Romenay, Tyre, Rhenish, posset too,
With kags and pails of foaming ales of brown October brew.
To wine and beer and other cheere I pray you now despatch ye,
And for ensample, wit ye well, sweet sirs, I'm looking at ye!"

Unto which toast of their liege lord ye oders in ye party
Did lout them low in humble wise and bid ye same drink hearty.
So then ben merrisome discourse and passing plaisaunt cheere...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ith the spirits

Of the children

Of the Bridgefields

The boys in Eton collars

The girls in long

White dresses with

Pails of milk.





16



Even the Hollows

Are gone now

The Go Kart’s Stadium’s

Wire mesh set in concrete,

Placards round the concourse,

The Readymix factory’s

Dumb towers, the DIY yard

And ‘Beer Paradise’ board,

The street sign

‘Bridgewater Place’

Lying on its side.



17



Wallflowers

Lost and faded

Beige and sepia

Orange and maroon

...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...asks us in
and the one who sews like a wasp and will not budge.

Climbing the dark halls, I ignore their papers and pails,
the twelve coats of rubbish of someone else's dim life.
Tell them need is an excuse for love. Tell them need prevails.
Tell them I remake and smooth your bed and am your wife....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet pea...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders
Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence
Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended.
Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farm-yard, 
Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness;
Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn-doors,
Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent.

In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...r puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny ****.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...lope,
The huts of Avant shine!
lts pines, under their branches, ope
Ways for the pasturing kine.

Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass--

The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame;
Whence drops the path to Alli?re down,
And walls where Byron came,

By their green river, who doth change
His birth-name just below;
Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grange
Nurse...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails
Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech
And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
..., How she her Days had spent 
Amidst the Quiet of a sweet Content, 
Where Shepherds 'tend their Flocks, and Maids their Pails, 
And no harsh Mistress domineers, or rails? 
Not rail! she cries–Why, I that had no share 
In their Concerns, cou'd not the Trollops spare; 
But told 'em, they were Sluts–And for the Swains, 
My Name a Terror to them still remains; 
So often I reprov'd their slothful Faults, 
And with such Freedom told 'em all my Thoughts, 
That I no more amongst them...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...but he wanted only this -
a living thing 
to call his own.
And being mortal
who can blame him?

The queen cried two pails of sea water.
She was as persistent
as a Jehovah's Witness.
And the dwarf took pity.
He said: I will give you
three days to guess my name
and if you cannot do it
I will collect your child.
The queen sent messengers
throughout the land to find names
of the most unusual sort.
When he appeared the next day
she asked: Melchior?
Balthaza...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...el day closing on
them.
One by one the floors are emptied. . . The uniformed
elevator men are gone. Pails clang. . . Scrubbers
work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water
and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit,
and machine grime of the day.
Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling
miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for
money. The sign speaks till midnight.

Darkness on the hallways.Read more of this...

by Williams, C K
...other realm, like trolls.
When they take their break, they leave their brooms standing at attention 
in the asphalt pails,
work gloves clinging like Br'er Rabbit to the bitten shafts, and they slouch 
along the precipitous lip,
the enormous sky behind them, the heavy noontime air alive with shim-
mers and mirages.

Sometime in the afternoon I had to go inside: the advent of our vigil was 
upon us.
However much we didn't want to, however little we would do about it...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in f...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...ve labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bon...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...s dry.
Oh, my! Oh, my!
They have coppered up the bottom,
And the copper nails
Stand about and sparkle in big wooden pails.
Bang! Clash! Bang!
"And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd,
And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd,
And I swigg'd, and all of us swigg'd it,
And swore there was nothing 
like grog."
It seems they sing,
Even though coppering is not an easy thing.
What a splendid specimen of humanity is a true British workman,
Say the people of the Three Towns,
As they...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...f. Pneumatic hammers
Began their madhouse clatter, the white-hot rivets
Were tossed from below and deftly caught in pails;
He signalled again, and wiped his mouth, and thought
A place so high in the air should be more quiet.
The tree, far down below, teased at his eyes,
Teased at the corners of them, until he looked,
And felt his body go suddenly small and light;
Felt his brain float off like a dwindling vapor;
And heard a whistle of wind, and saw a tree
Come plunging...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...s tangled fair?

We wandered shyly hand in hand,
small footprints in the golden sand,
and gathered pearls and shells in pails,
while all about the nightengales
were singing in the trees.
We dug for silver with our spades,
and caught the sparkle of the seas,
then ran ashore to greenlit glades,
and found the warm and winding lane
that now we cannot find again,
between tall whispering trees.

The air was neither night nor day,
an ever-eve of gloaming light,
when first th...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...ERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST. 
THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS,
THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS.

And then, in an instant,
Ye modern men, 
Behold the procession once again, 
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking, 
Listen to the wise -horn, desperate-to-advise horn, 
Listen to the fast -horn, kill -horn, blast -horn. . . .
Far away the Rachel-Jane 
Not defeated by the horns 
Sings amid a hedge of thorns:—
Love and life,
Et...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...the wells of the farmyards,
Each bucket and pulley, it creaks and it wails;
By cisterns of farmyards, the pulleys and pails
They creak and they cry,
The whole of sad death in their melancholy.


The wind, it sends scudding dead leaves from the birches
Along o'er the water, the wind of November,
The savage, fierce wind;
The boughs of the trees for the birds' nests it searches,
To bite them and grind.
The wind, as though rasping down iron, grates past,
And, furious...Read more of this...

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