Famous Parents Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Parents poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous parents poems. These examples illustrate what a famous parents poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
A S J Tessimond
We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?
How can we say "we see you
As but-for-God's-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time's telescope between us"?
How can we say "you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for"?
How say "and you remembered
The sins of our outlived...Read more of this...
by
Anthony Hecht
1992
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.
3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.
4) A cornucopia filled...Read more of this...
by
Suheir Hammad
leaves and leaving call october home
her daughter releases wood
smoke from her skin
rich in scorpio
blood survived the first
flood each new year marks
a circle around her
thick bark middle
this the month summer and
winter fall into each
other and leave orange
yellow ashes
the vibrancy of death
carry it all
coiled in my belly
cut on the cusp
of libra tail
tips the scales
tonight it is raining in
the tradition...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel
Made Maple first take notice of her name.
She asked her father and he told her, "Maple—
Maple is right."
"But teacher told the school
There's no such name."
"Teachers don't know as much
As fathers about children, you tell teacher.
You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E.
You ask her if she knows a maple tree.
Well, you were named after a...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Bowers
The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother’s firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors’ acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street...Read more of this...
by
D A Levy
When i was a little kid
my parents never told me
i didn't find out until
i got out of high school
then when people asked me,
I ASKED THEM,
"Nationality or Religion?"
When i was a little kid
my parents brought me up as a christian
that when i discovered,
i was different
i wasnt THAT sick!
so at sixteen
still being a virgin forest
i decided
i must be a buddhist monk,
Then when...Read more of this...
by
Carolyn Kizer
for Maxine Kumin
Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses
More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.
They moan about...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for....Read more of this...
by
William Henry Davies
Now, joy is born of parents poor,
And pleasure of our richer kind;
Though pleasure's free, she cannot sing
As sweet a song as joy confined.
Pleasure's a Moth, that sleeps by day
And dances by false glare at night;
But Joy's a Butterfly, that loves
To spread its wings in Nature's light.
Joy's like a Bee that gently...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Abraham's blessing on the Gentiles.
Rom. 11:16,17.
Gentiles by nature, we belong
To the wild olive wood;
Grace took us from the barren tree,
And grafts us in the good.
With the same blessings grace endows
The Gentile and the Jew;
If pure and holy be the root,
Such are the branches too.
Then let the children of the saints
Be dedicate to God,
Pour out thy Spirit on them,...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
Christmas defeated Chanukah
once again last night
by a margin of three billion dollars
or so, but every time I hear
a Yiddish word like bupkes
in a movie (L.A. Confidential)
or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie
calls a garment a shmatta, it's "good
for the Jews," as our parents used to say.
Meanwhile some things have
stayed the same; the drunken lout
in the street is...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.
In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
A ROSE-BUD by my early walk,
Adown a corn-enclosed bawk,
Sae gently bent its thorny stalk,
All on a dewy morning.
Ere twice the shades o’ dawn are fled,
In a’ its crimson glory spread,
And drooping rich the dewy head,
It scents the early morning.
Within the bush her covert nest
A little linnet fondly prest;
The dew sat chilly on her breast,
Sae early in...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
HOW cruel are the parents
Who riches only prize,
And to the wealthy booby
Poor Woman sacrifice!
Meanwhile, the hapless Daughter
Has but a choice of strife;
To shun a tyrant Father’s hate—
Become a wretched Wife.
The ravening hawk pursuing,
The trembling dove thus flies,
To shun impelling ruin,
Awhile her pinions tries;
Till, of escape despairing,
No shelter or retreat,
She trusts the ruthless...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
owls and pussy cats can make up their minds
to sail out to sea and even get married
but they don't have parents or other such binds
whose one job in life is to see that they're harried
now a seven year old boy whose mind is quite clear
about what the world is and his proper place
will feel deeply distraught and totally drear
when...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
LX. — TO WILLIAM LORD MOUNTEAGLE. Lo, what my country should have done (have raised An obelisk, or column to thy name, Or, if she would but modestly have praised Thy fact, in brass or marble writ the same) I, that am glad of thy great chance, here do ! And proud, my works shall out-last common deeds, Durst think...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
up or down from the infinite C E N T E R
B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of time
the voice in my head said
LOVE IS THE DISTANCE
BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE
WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE
*
then I saw the parade of my loves
those PERFORMERS comics actors singers
forgetful of my very self...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O THOU dread Power, who reign’st above,
I know thou wilt me hear,
When for this scene of peace and love,
I make this prayer sincere.
The hoary Sire—the mortal stroke,
Long, long be pleas’d to spare;
To bless this little filial flock,
And show what good men are.
She, who her lovely offspring eyes
With tender hopes and fears,
O bless her with...Read more of this...
by
Walter de la Mare
Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snows fell,
Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked,
When a poor Wanderer struggled on her journey
Weary and way-sore.
Drear were the downs, more dreary her reflexions;
Cold was the night wind, colder was her bosom!
She had no home, the world was all before her,
She had no shelter.
Fast o'er the bleak heath rattling drove...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
Had thence retir'd; and, with her second joy,
The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy,
Pensive she stood on Ilion's tow'ry height,
Beheld the war, and sicken'd at the sight;
There...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
II. — TO PENSHURST. Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told ; Or stair, or courts ; but stand'st an ancient pile, And these grudg'd at, art reverenced the while. Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, Of wood, of water ; therein thou art fair. Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport :...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
BROTHER of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o’er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
A burial verse for thee.
What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire?
—The life thou lived’st we know not,
But that thou walk’dst...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
The lump of coal my parents teased
I'd find in my Christmas stocking
turned out each year to be an orange,
for I was their sunshine.
Now I have one C. gave me,
a dense node of sleeping fire.
I keep it where I read and write.
"You're on chummy terms with dread,"
it reminds me. "You kiss ambivalence
on both cheeks. But if you close your
heart to...Read more of this...
by
Robert Bly
As I drive my parents home through the snow
their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.
I call over the cliff
only snow answers.
They talk quietly
of hauling water of eating an orange
of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.
When they open the door of their house they disappear.
And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
so here we are at last at the ten-boy
never to be the single-figure-aged-again boy
and all the trailing clouds that cling to the not-big child
can be blown away - you're up in your own sky now
clear-blue on some days (if on others windy and wild)
now you'll have to see yourself as the tall-boy
the take-it-on-the-chin and care-for-all boy
and looking at what's...Read more of this...
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