Famous Pick Poems by Famous Poets

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...,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania, 
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders, 
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the
 vines, 
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South, 
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt

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...e
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
Bu...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert

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...Poets fury tell,
But, God wot, wot not what they meane by it;
And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell,
I am no pick-purse of anothers wit.
How falles it then, that with so smooth an ease
My thoughts I speake; and what I speake doth flow
In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please?
Ghesse we the cause? What, is it this? Fie, no.
Or so? Much lesse. How then? Sure thus it is,
My lips are sweet, inspir'd with Stellas kisse. 
LXXV 

Of all the Kings that eu...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip

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...there was a public park, I remember, 
And that was damned dull, too, 
With its beds of geraniums no one was allowed to pick, 
And its clipped lawns you weren't allowed to walk on, 
And the gold-fish pond you mustn't paddle in, 
And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones, 
And the swings, which were for "Board-School children," 
And its gravel paths. 

And on Sundays they rang the bells, 
From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches. 
They had a Salvation Army. 
I was...Read more of this...

by Aldington, Richard

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...e hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert

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...oid them as unlucky places?

Or after dark will dubious women come
To make their children touvh a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games in riddles seemingly at random;
But superstition like belief must die 
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass weedy pavement brambles butress sky.

A shape less recognisable each week 
A purpose more obscure. I wonder ...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip

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...ssying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mam...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne

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...
Our ears, our noses and our mouths
With the mud
Of oblivion. They will chew up
Our fingers in the night. They will pick
Their teeth with our pens. They will sabotage
Both our children
And our art.


Because when we show what we see,
They will discern the inevitable:
We do not worship them.


We do not worship them.
We do not worship what they have made.
We do not trust them.


We do not believe what they say.
We do not love their efficiency.
Or their po...Read more of this...

by Walker, Alice

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...
16[small insect] 
17[vapors which were believed to pass odors to the brain] 
18[the West Wind] 
19[stream] 
20[able to pick up a scent] 
21[having the odor of an animal] 
22[ocean] 
23[green] 
24[honey was thought to have medicinal properties] 
25[Animals slightly below humans on the chain of being] 
26[heavenly] 
27[complained] 
28[i.e., on the chain of being between angels and animals]...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander

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...m is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist 
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've alw...Read more of this...

by Dunn, Stephen

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...h me and freeze upon me. 

I search with the crowd—not one of the company is wash’d to us alive; 
In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.

12
Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn, 
Washington stands inside the lines—he stands on the intrench’d hills, amid a
 crowd of
 officers, 
His face is cold and damp—he cannot repress the weeping drops, 
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes—the color is blanch’d from his
 cheeks, 
He sees ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt

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...lid forest gives fluid utterances; 
They tumble forth, they rise and form, 
Hut, tent, landing, survey, 
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, 
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, 
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, 
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, 
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Wo...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt

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...res with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace

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...de the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry ****** from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver

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...se command: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

The Jews accuse me with despitefulness; 
And vying malice with my gentleness, 
Pick quarrels with their only happiness: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

I answer nothing, but with patience prove
If stony hearts will melt with gentle love.
But who does hawk at eagles with a dove? 
Was ever grief like mine? 

My silence rather doth augment their cry; 
My dove doth back into my bosom fly; 
Because the raging waters still are high: 
Was ever g...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George

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...heologic tract, 
To prove with Hebrew and with Arabic, 
If Job be allegory or a fact, 
But a true narrative; and thus I pick 
From out the whole but such and such an act 
As sets aside the slightest thought of trick. 
'Tis every tittle true, beyond suspicion, 
And accurate as any other vision. 

XXXV 

The spirits were in neutral space, before 
The gates of heaven; like eastern thresholds is 
The place where Death's grand cause is argued o'er, 
And souls despatch'd to that wo...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

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..., and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 
The chemist said it would be alri...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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...rty-five miles downstream to Steelhead,

the place where I was staying.

 It was all very simple. No one would stop and pick me up

even though I was carrying fishing tackle. People usually

stop and pick up a fisherman. I had to wait three hours for a

ride.

 The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had

 poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said,

"Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper, " and put the

coin in my hand, but never came back.
...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard

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...nd of knack at rhyme.
His way of writing now is past;
The town has got a better taste.
I keep no antiquated stuff;
But spick and span I have enough.
Pray do but give me leave to show 'em:
Here's Colley Cibber's birthday poem.
This ode you never yet have seen,
By Stephen Duck, upon the queen.
Then here's a letter finely penned
Against the Craftsman and his friend;
It clearly shows that all reflection
On ministers is disaffection.
Next, here's Sir Robert's vindication;
And Mr H...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan

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...shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
Yo...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya

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