Famous Picket Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Picket poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous picket poems. These examples illustrate what a famous picket poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...A day of seeming innocence,
A glorious sun and sky,
And, just above my picket fence,
Black Bonnet passing by.
In knitted gloves and quaint old dress,
Without a spot or smirch,
Her worn face lit with peacefulness,
Old Granny goes to church.
Her hair is richly white, like milk,
That long ago was fair --
And glossy still the old black silk
She keeps for "chapel wear";
Her bonnet, of a bygone style,
That long has passed...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...namon, umber, and dun.
The twilight svallows the thicket,
The starlight reveals the ridge.
The whistle shrills to the picket --
We are changing guard on the bridge.
(Few, forgotten and lonely,
Where the empty metals shine --
No, not combatants-only
Details guarding the line.)
We slip through the broken panel
Of fence by the ganger's shed;
We drop to the waterless channel
And the lean track overhead;
We stumble on refuse of rations,
The beef and the biscuit-tins;
We...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...should have a crazy crave
To paint our fence.
Yet that is what I aim to do,
Though dim my sight:
Jest paint them aged pickets blue,
Or green or white.
Jest squat serenely in the sun
Wi' brush an' paint,
An' gay them pickets one by one,
--A chore! It ain't.
The job is joy. Although I'm slow
I save expense:
So folks, let me before I go,
Smart that ol' fence.
Them pickets with my hands I made,
When young and spry;
I coloured them a gleeful shade
To glad the eye.
So no...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...e like all things we know: .
A stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.
It will be quiet then and we may stay Long at the picket gate
But there will be less to say....Read more of this...
by
Bontemps, Arna
...
He lived flecking lint off coat lapels
Of men he talked with.
He kissed the miners’ babies
And wrote a Denver paper
Of picket silhouettes on a mountain line.
He had no mother but Mother Jones
Crying from a jail window of Trinidad:
“All I want is room enough to stand
And shake my fist at the enemies of the human race.”
Named by a grand jury as a murderer
He went to Chihuahua, forgot his old Scotch name,
Smoked cheroots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock ...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...id dish,
And swilled it down.
Just for a moment he was still,
Then he erupted loud and shrill
With frantic yell;
The picket fence he tried to vault;
He turned a double somersault,
And ran like hell.
I saw him leap into the lake,
As if a thirst of fire to slake,
And thrash up foam;
And then he sped along the shore,
And beat his breast with raucous roar,
And made for home.
I guess he told the folks back there
My homestead was taboo for bear
For since that day,
Although ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...utts of our spears--
Him and his vast designs--
To be scorn of our muleteers
And the jest of our halted line.
By the picket-pins that the dogs defile,
In the dung and the dust He lay,
Till the priests ran and chattered awhile
And we wiped Him and took Him away.
Hushing the matter before it was known,
They returned to our fathers afar,
And hastily set Him afresh on His throne
Because he had won us the war.
Wherefore with knees that feign to quake--
Bent head and shad...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...rgeon, "I've got noises in me head
And a kind o' filled up feeling after every time I'm fed;
I can sleep all night on picket, but I can't sleep in my bed".
And the Surgeon said,
"That's Lead!"
Said the soldier to the Surgeon, "Do you think they'll send me back?
For I really ain't adapted to be carrying a pack
Though I've humped a case of whisky half a mile upon my back".
And the Surgeon said,
"That's Lead!"
"And my legs have swelled up cruel, I can hardly walk at a...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ptimist.
So he became their patriarch,
Dreadfully mild in the half-dark.
His throat that the sand seemed to choke,
His picket teeth, these left their mark
But never did explain the joke
That so amused him, lying there
While the moon went down to disappear
Along the still and tilted track
That bears the zodiac....Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...ave we not done our share?
"Starving and tired and thirsty
We limped on the blazing plain;
And after a long night's picket
You saddled us up again.
"We froze on the windswept kopjes
When the frost lay snowy-white,
Never a halt in the daytime,
Never a rest at night!
"We knew when the rifles rattled
From the hillside bare and brown,
And over our weary shoulders
We felt warm blood run down,
"As we turned for the stretching gallop,
Crushed to the earth with weig...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...the fight,
And the grim, grey Highland engineer
Driving them into the night.
Then a signal light glowed red,
And a picket came to the track.
"Enemy holding the line ahead;
Three of our mates we have left for dead,
Only we two got back."
And far to the north through the still night air
They heard the rifles crack.
And the boom of a gun rang out,
Like the sound of a deep appeal,
And the picket stood in doubt
By the side of the driving-wheel.
But the engineer lo...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...be wakened by a noise
And a clatter on the deck above your crown,
And you'll head the corporal shout as he turns the picket out,
"There's another blessed horse fell down."
You can see 'em in the morning, when you're cleaning out the stall,
A-leaning on the railings nearly dead,
And you reckon by the evening they'll be pretty sure to fall;
And you curse them as you tumble into bed.
Oh, you'll hear it pretty soon, "Pass the word for Denny Moon,
There's a horse here th...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...it on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love.
An iron picket fence … and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks … straw hats, faces, legs … a singing, talking, hustling river … down the great street that ends with a Sea.
… easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton.
… easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton.
… easy are the great governments and the great steamboats....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
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