Famous Porch Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Porch poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous porch poems. These examples illustrate what a famous porch poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Robert William Service
The Porch was blazoned with geranium bloom;
Myrtle and jasmine meadows lit the lea;
With rose and violet the vale's perfume
Languished to where the hyacinthine sea
Dreamed tenderly . . . "And I must go," said he.
He spoke in that dim, ghostly voice of his:
"I was a singer; then the Was . . . and GAS."
(I had to lean to him, no...Read more of this...
by
Auhad-uddin Ali Anwari
The mosque no more admits the pious race;
Constrain'd, they yield to beasts the holy place,
A stable now, where dome nor porch is found:
Nor can the savage for proclaim his reign,
For Khorasania's criers all are slain,
And all her pulpits levelled with the ground....Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I stand above the city's rush and din,
[Pg 276]And gaze far down with calm and undimmed eyes,
To where the misty smoke wreath grey and dim
Above the myriad roofs and spires rise;
Still is my heart and vacant is my breath—
This lovely view is breath and life to me,
Why I could charm the icy soul of death
With such a sight...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,
And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I guess folks think I'm mighty dumb
Since Jack and Jim and Joe
Have hit the trail to Kingdom Come
And left me here below:
Since Death, the bastard, bowled them out,
And left me faced with--Doubt.
My pals have all passed out on me
And I am by my lone;
Old Bill was last, and now I see
His name cut on...Read more of this...
by
James Dickey
Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling
Under the bedroom floor. In...Read more of this...
by
Erin Moure
Unspeakable. The word that fills up the
poem, that the head
tries to excise.
At 6 a.m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face
on the porch rail in the rain.
Heavy rains later, & maybe a thunderstorm.
12 or 13 degrees.
Inside: an iris, candle, poster of the
many-breasted Artemis in a stone hat
from Anatolia
A little pedal steel guitar
A photograph of her at a table by...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an
accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next
month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.
An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits
...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Drab Habitation of Whom?
Tabernacle or Tomb --
Or Dome of Worm --
Or Porch of Gnome --
Or some Elf's Catacomb?...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
So here the great man stood,
fermenting malice and poems
we have to be nearly as fierce
against ourselves as he
not to misread by their disguises.
Blue in dawn haze, the tamarack
across the road is new since Frost
and thirty feet tall already.
No doubt he liked to scorch off
morning fog by simply staring through it
long enough so that what he saw
grew visible. "Watching the...Read more of this...
by
Yosa Buson
He's on the porch,
to escape the wife and kids--
how hot it is!...Read more of this...
by
John Crowe Ransom
The little cousin is dead, by foul subtraction,
A green bough from Virginia's aged tree,
And none of the county kin like the transaction,
Nor some of the world of outer dark, like me.
A boy not beautiful, nor good, nor clever,
A black cloud full of storms too hot for keeping,
A sword beneath his mother's heart—yet never
Woman bewept her babe as this is...Read more of this...
by
Mark Strand
1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from their cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands hear the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabuth Ann;
An' she can cook best things to eat!
She ist puts dough in our pie-pan,
An' pours in somepin' 'at's good an' sweet;
An' nen she salts it all on top
With cinnamon; an' nen she'll stop
An' stoop an' slide it, ist as slow,
In th' old cook-stove, so's 'twon't slop
An' git all spilled; nen bakes it, so
It's custard-pie,...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Is it long as a noodle
or fat as an egg? Is it
lumpy like a potato or
ringed like an oak or an
onion and like the onion
the same as you go toward
the core? That would be
suitable, for is it not
the human core and the rest
meant either to keep it
warm or cold...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body bulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence, they'll no...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
THE DREAM
This has nothing to do with war
or the end of the world. She
dreams there are gray starlings
on the winter lawn and the buds
of next year's oranges alongside
this year's oranges, and the sun
is still up, a watery circle
of fire settling into the sky
at dinner time, but there's no
flame racing through...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
28 July
Calmly, while sat up friendlies & made noise
delight fuller than he can ready sing
or studiously say,
on hearing that the year had swung to pause
and culminated in an abundant thing,
came his Lady's birthday.
Dogs fill daylight, doing each other ill:
my own in love was lugged so many blocks
we had to have a vet.
Comes unrepentant round the lustful mongrel
again today, glaring...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Three 'coons come at his garbage. He be cross,
I figuring porcupine & took Sir poker
unbarring Mr door,
& then screen door. Ah, but the little 'coon,
hardly a foot (not counting tail) got in with
two more at the porch-edge
and they swirled, before some two swerve off
this side of crab tree, and my dear friend held
with the torch in his tiny...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Bowers
Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
A list of some observation. In a corner it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow the body bulks
like a glacier's debris a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence they'll no doubt...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
Joaquin Miller
THE moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
She bared her full white breast, she dared
The sun e'er show his face again.
She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on
his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands...Read more of this...
by
Tony Hoagland
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Porch poems.