Famous Rye Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Rye poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous rye poems. These examples illustrate what a famous rye poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Joseph Brodsky
I have braved for want of wild beasts steel cages
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters
lived by the sea flashed aces in an oasis
dined with the-devil-knows-whom in tails on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world the earthly
width. Twice have drowned thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore...Read more of this...
by
Jonas Mekas
Mondays, way before dawn,
before even the first hint of blue in the windows,
we'd hear it start, off the road past our place,
over on the highway nearby,
in a clatter of market-bound traffic.
Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl,
or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the pace,
or sitting up high, on raised seats
(the women all wore...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.
And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.
See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
Coming thro' the rye, poor body,
Coming thro' the rye,
She draiglet a' her petticoatie
Coming thro' the rye.
O, Jenny's a' wat, poor body;
Jenny's seldom dry;
She draiglet a' her petticoatie
Coming thro' the rye.
Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body—
Need a body cry?
Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an old person of Rye,Who went up to town on a fly;But they said, "If you cough, you are safe to fall off!You abstemious old person of Rye!" ...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;
Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.
What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.
Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We...Read more of this...
by
Joseph Brodsky
I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore and...Read more of this...
by
Walter de la Mare
The last of last words spoken is, Good-bye -
The last dismantled flower in the weed-grown hedge,
The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing,
The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye.
A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye,
Shines into nothing the watcher's burnt-out candle,
Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense,
Faints in the outer silence the hunting-cry.
Love of its...Read more of this...
by
Jean Cocteau
...Preamble
A rough draft
for an ars poetica
. . . . . . .
Let's get our dreams unstuck
The grain of rye
free from the prattle of grass
et loin de arbres orateurs
I
plant
it
It will sprout
But forget about
the rustic festivities
For the explosive word
falls harmlessly
eternal through
the compact generations
and except for you
nothing
denotates
its sweet-scented dynamite
Greetings
I discard eloquence
the empty sail
and...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
IT was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey,...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie!
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting-house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlor,
...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
God gave all men all earth to love,
But, since our hearts are small
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all;
That, as He watched Creation's birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.
So one shall Baltic pines content,
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove's droned...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived...Read more of this...
by
Bliss Carman
TO the assembled folk
At great St. Kavin’s spoke
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve;
I give you joy, my friends,
That as the round year ends,
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave.
On other festal days
For penitence or praise
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving;
To-night we calendar
The rising of that...Read more of this...
by
William Rose Benet
Blake saw a treeful of angels at Peckham Rye,
And his hands could lay hold on the tiger's terrible heart.
Blake knew how deep is Hell, and Heaven how high,
And could build the universe from one tiny part.
Blake heard the asides of God, as with furrowed brow
He sifts the star-streams between the Then and the Now,...Read more of this...
by
Adam Lindsay Gordon
They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less
Of sound than of words,
In lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
And songless bright birds;
Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses,
Insatiable Summer oppresses
Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses,
And faint flocks and herds.
Where in drieariest days, when all dews end,
And all winds are warm,
Wild Winter's large floodgates are loosen'd,
And floods, freed...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
Wal, Thanksgivin' do be comin' round.
With the price of turkeys on the bound,
And coal, by gum! Thet were just found,
Is surely gettin' cheaper.
The winds will soon begin to howl,
And winter, in its yearly growl,
Across the medders begin to prowl,
And Jack Frost gettin' deeper.
By shucks! It seems to me,
That you I orter be
Thankful, that our Ted could see
A way to...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Men’s bones all Europe through.
Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
The Sambre at Charleroi,
To move on Brussels, where the English host
Dallied in Parc and Bois.
The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun
Growl through...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight.
The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
And all...Read more of this...
by
Laurie Lee
The girl's far treble, muted to the heat,
calls like a fainting bird across the fields
to where her flock lies panting for her voice,
their black horns buried deep in marigolds.
They climb awake, like drowsy butterflies,
and press their red flanks through the tall branched grass,
and as they go their wandering tongues embrace
the vacant summer mirrored in their eyes.
Led to the limestone...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
There's a brook on the side of Greylock that used
to be full of trout,
But there's nothing there now but minnows; they say it is all fished
out.
I fished there many a Summer day some twenty years ago,
And I never quit without getting a mess of a dozen or so.
There was a man, Dave Lilly, who lived on the...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
I was a cottage maiden
Hardened by sun and air
Contented with my cottage mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
Why did a great lord find me out,
And praise my flaxen hair?
Why did a great lord find me out,
To fill my heart with care?
He lured me to his palace home -
Woe's me for joy thereof-...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
After working hard all day
In the office,
How much worse on homeward way
My old cough is!
Barney's Bar is gaily lit,
Let me stop there;
Just to buck me up a bit
Have a drop there.
As I stand beside the screen
Hesitating,
I have thought of how Noreen
Will be waiting;
Baby Patsy in her lap
Gay and laughing,
While at Barney's foaming...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a...Read more of this...
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