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Famous Prune Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Prune poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous prune poems. These examples illustrate what a famous prune poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Herrick, Robert
...al,
Manners each way musical;
Sweetness to allay my sour
And unsmooth behaviour:
For I know you have the skill
Vines to prune, though not to kill;
And of any wood ye see,
You can make a Mercury....Read more of this...



by Landor, Walter Savage
...val, some reckless of attire.
The snow had left the mountain-top; fresh flowers
Had withered in the meadow; fig and prune
Hung wrinkling; the last apple glow'd amid
Its freckled leaves; and weary oxen blinkt
Between the trodden corn and twisted vine,
Under whose bunches stood the empty crate,
To creak ere long beneath them carried home.
This was the season when twelve months before,
O gentle Hamadryad, true to love!
Thy mansion, thy dim mansion in the wood
Was blasted...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...ss patch
They saw his axe flash in the moon
And seeing as poor lass were 'eadless
They wondered what what next he would prune.

He suddenly caught sight of Albert
As midnight was on its last chime
As he lifted his axe, father murmered
'We'll get the insurance this time.'

At that, Mother rose, taking umbridge;
She said, 'Put that cleaver away.
You're not cutting our Albert's 'ead off,
Yon collar were clean on today.

The brave little lad stood undaunted
'Til t...Read more of this...

by Killigrew, Anne
...o longer cleave, 
Unworthy they of Heaven that will not view the Skies. 
[Page 83]

 Thy native Beauty re-assume, 
 Prune each neglected Plume, 
 Till more than Silver white, 
 Then burnisht Gold more bright, 
Thus ever ready stand to take thy Eternal Flight. 

II. 
The Bird to whom the spacious Aire was given, 
As in a smooth and trackless Path to go, 
 A Walk which does no Limits know
 Pervious alone to Her and Heaven: 
 Should she her Airy Race forget, 
 On Ear...Read more of this...

by Herrick, Robert
...while thou keep'st alive,
In death I thrive :
And like a phoenix re-aspire
From out my nard and fun'ral fire ;
And as I prune my feathered youth, so I
Do mar'l how I could die
When I had thee, my chief preserver, by.

I'm up, I'm up, and bless that hand
Which makes me stand
Now as I do, and but for thee
I must confess I could not be.
The debt is paid ; for he who doth resign
Thanks to the gen'rous vine
Invites fresh grapes to fill his press with wine....Read more of this...



by Prelutsky, Jack
...WED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE
POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL
PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM
PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM
BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER
CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER
AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT
PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT
COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD
CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD
ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP
TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE...Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...f their breasts,
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cyth?re,
Rum with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.

Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its d...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...declare there's none elsewhere
So skilled as Doctor Sam
With the claws of a deviled crawfish,
The juice of the prickly prune,
And the quivering dew
From a yarb that grew
In the light of a midnight moon!

I never should have known him
But for the colored folk
That here obtain
And ne'er in vain
That wizard's art invoke;
For when the Eye that's Evil
Would him and his'n damn,
The *****'s grief gets quick relief
Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam.
With the caul of an alligator,
The plume o...Read more of this...

by Chin, Staceyann
...nservative wear

In those years when I am grateful
I still have a good sturdy bladder
that does not leak undigested prune juice
onto diapers—no longer adorable
will I be more grateful for that
than for any forward movement in any current political cause
and will it have been worth it then
Will it have been worth the long hours
of not sleeping
that produced little more than reams
of badly written verses that catapulted me into literary spasms
but did not even whet...Read more of this...

by Graves, Robert
...ow our hearts he does harrow 
Jest and grief mingle 
In this jangle-jingle, 
For he will not stop
To sweep nor mop, 
To prune nor prop, 
To cut each phrase up 
Like beef when we sup, 
Nor sip at each line 
As at brandy-wine, 
Or port when we dine. 
But angrily, wittily, 
Tenderly, prettily, 
Laughingly, learnedly, 
Sadly, madly, 
Helter-skelter John 
Rhymes serenely on, 
As English poets should. 
Old John, you do me good!...Read more of this...

by Philips, Katherine
...ould their bliss destroy
By the malicious fowler's snare.
Some ravish'd with so bright a day,
Their feathers finely prune and deck;
Others their amorous heats allay,
Which yet the waters could not check:
All take their innocent content
In this their lovely element.


7

Summer's, nor Winter's bold approach,
This stream did never entertain;
Nor ever felt a boat or coach,
Whilst either season did remain.
No thirsty traveller came near,
And rudely made his hand his c...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...bow dress: —
Niagara, Niagara.

The shaggy meaning of her name
This Buffalo, this recreant town,
Sharps and lawyers prune and tame:
Few pioneers in Buffalo;
Except young lovers flushed and fleet
And winds hallooing down the street:
"Niagara, Niagara."

The journalists are sick of ink:
Boy prodigals are lost in wine,
By night where white and red lights blink,
The eyes of Death, in Buffalo.
And only twenty miles away
Are starlit rocks and healing spray: —
Niagara, N...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...ey are giggling at their labors.
First they plant the tiny seed,
Then they water, then they weed,
Then they hoe and prune and lop,
They they raise a record crop,
Then they laugh their sides asunder,
And plow the whole caboodle under.

Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you’re given,
The less you lead, the more you’re driven,
The more destroyed, the more they feed,
The more you pay, the more they need,
The...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
Unlimited of manifold delights: 
But let us ever praise him, and extol 
His bounty, following our delightful task, 
To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers, 
Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet. 
To whom thus Eve replied. O thou for whom 
And from whom I was formed, flesh of thy flesh, 
And without whom am to no end, my guide 
And head! what thou hast said is just and right. 
For we to him indeed all praises owe, 
And daily thanks; I ch...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...t, till more hands 
Aid us, the work under our labour grows, 
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day 
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, 
One night or two with wanton growth derides 
Tending to wild. Thou therefore now advise, 
Or bear what to my mind first thoughts present: 
Let us divide our labours; thou, where choice 
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind 
The woodbine round this arbour, or direct 
The clasping ivy where to climb; while I, 
In yonde...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
... Pick her a pan full of

pie cherries in the spring, and pick the rest of the cherries

on the tree for myself. Prune those goofy, at best half-assed

trees in the backyard. The ones that grew beside an old pile

oflumber. Weed.

 One early autumn day she loaned me to the woman next

door and I fixed a small leak in the roof of her woodshed.

The woman gave me a dollar tip, and I said thank you, and

the next time it rained, all the newspapers she had ...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...ed a forked stick
on the innocuous neck-sides of the dangerous southern snake.
One need not try to stir him up; his prune-shaped head
and alligator-eyes are not party to the joke.
Lifted and handled, he may be dangled like an eel
or set up on the forearm like a mouse;
his eyes bisected by pupils of a pin's width,
are flickeringly exhibited, then covered up.
May be? I should have said might have been;
when he has been got the better of in a dream--
as in a fight wi...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.

They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
M...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ined between,
     Closer she drew her bosom's screen;—
     So forth the startled swan would swing,
     So turn to prune his ruffled wing.
     Then safe, though fluttered and amazed,
     She paused, and on the stranger gazed.
     Not his the form, nor his the eye,
     That youthful maidens wont to fly.
     XXI.

     On his bold visage middle age
     Had slightly pressed its signet sage,
     Yet had not quenched the open truth
     And fiery vehemence of...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...owing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
   How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms ...Read more of this...

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