Famous Pitcher Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pitcher poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pitcher poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pitcher poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
D. H. Lawrence
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
(Exodus, xvii.15)
By whom was David taught
To aim the deadly blow,
When he Goliath fought,
And laid the Gittite low?
Nor sword nor spear the stripling took,
But chose a pebble from the brook.
'Twas Israel's God and King
Who sent him to the fight;
Who gave him strength to sling,
And skill to aim aright.
Ye feeble saints, your strength endures,
Because young David's God is yours.
Who order'd Gideon...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER
Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.
Round about...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Thou hast broken my pitcher of wine, my God! Thou
hast shut upon me the portals of joy, my God! Thou
hast poured upon earth my limpid wine, my God! Oh!
[would that my mouth were filled with earth!] couldst
Thou have been drunk, my God?
376...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O idol, while you are on your journey through this
world, draw from the fountain-head into the pitcher, draw
this salutary wine and, ere the potter makes another
pitcher of my dust and thine, fill out a cup, drink it
and pass me one....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
I am constantly attracted by the sight of limpid wine,
my ears are ever attentive to the melodious sounds of
the flute and of the rubab [viol]. Oh, if the potter make
a pitcher of my dust, would that that pitcher might constantly
be full of wine!...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Arise, get off thy bed, O cupbearer! and pour the
limpid wine. Before they yet make pitchers of our
skulls, pour out some wine from pitcher into bowl, O
cupbearer!...Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
(To Paul Sykes, author of 'Sweet Agony')
He demolished five doors at a sitting
And topped it off with an outsize window
One Christmas afternoon, when drunk;
Sober he smiled like an angel, bowed,
Kissed ladies’ hands and courtesy
Was his middle name.
She tried to pass for thirty at fifty-six,
Called him "My Sweet piglet" and laid out
Dainty doylies for his teatime treats; always
She wore black...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
for Aaron Fogel
Politically-correct
personal computers
point and click.
President Clinton
(codename Peacock)
can't protect
crack pushing
Communist Party
cops pursuing
a care package
of peasant consciousness
in a car park.
Poverty's a crime,
and capital punishment
par for the course,
in this penal code.
A plausible cliffhanger
can't cure the paralyzed,
prevent cancer,
or prepare California
for Perry Como,
that peerless crooner.
Pitcher...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheerful
little explosions
and trails of sparks up the back of the chimney. Miniature
rockets
peppering the black bricks with golden stars, as though a gala
flamed a night of victorious wars.
The nodding mandarin on the bookcase moves his
head forward and back, slowly,
and looks into the air with his blue-green eyes. He stares
into...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'
Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned 'Nor...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
The woman is perfected
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the...Read more of this...
by
Lisel Mueller
What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.
We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,
and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.
Even...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Take a man who possesses bread sufficient to live upon
for two days, who can draw a drop of fresh water into
a cracked pitcher, why should such a man be commanded
by another who is of no more worth, or why should he
serve one who should be his equal?...Read more of this...
by
Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . .
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .
I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .
I am water rushing to...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Of mosque and prayer and fast preach not to me,
Rather go drink, were it on charity!
Yea, drink, Khayyam, your dust will soon be made
A jug, or pitcher, or a cup, may be!...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Trip upon trenchers,
And dance upon dishes,
My mother sent me for some barm, some barm;
She bid me go lightly,
And come again quickly,
For fear the young men should do me some harm.
Yet didn't you see, yet didn't you see,
What naughty tricks they put upon me?
They broke my pitcher
And spilt the water,
And huffed my mother,
And chid her daughter,
And kissed my sister instead of...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THERE stands on yonder high mountain
A castle built of yore,
Where once lurked horse and horseman
In rear of gate and of door.
Now door and gate are in ashes,
And all around is so still;
And over the fallen ruins
I clamber just as I will.
Below once lay a cellar,
With costly wines well stor'd;
No more the glad maid with her pitcher
Descends there to draw...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
You walked by the riverside path
with the full pitcher upon your hip.
Why did you swiftly turn your face
and peep at me through your fluttering
veil?
That gleaming look from the dark
came upon me like a breeze that sends
a shiver through the rippling water
and sweeps away to the shadowy
shore.
It came to me like the bird of the
evening that hurriedly flies across...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?
It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Come, come, arise, and, for the healing of my heart,
one problem solve for me: yet quickly bring me a pitcher
of wine, and let us drink before they make pitchers out
of our own dust....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
We read of kings and gods that kindly took
A pitcher fill'd with water from the brook ;
But I have daily tender'd without thanks
Rivers of tears that overflow their banks.
A slaughter'd bull will appease angry Jove,
A horse the Sun, a lamb the god of love,
But she disdains the spotless sacrifice
Of a pure heart,...Read more of this...
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