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Famous Short House Poems

Famous Short House Poems. Short House Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best House short poems


A Star  Create an image from this poem
by Mother Goose
Higher than a house, higher than a tree.Oh! whatever can that be?



by Emily Dickinson
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
   The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
   That "heaven" is, to me.

The color on the cruising cloud,
   The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
   There Paradise is found!

Haiku  Create an image from this poem
by Jack Kerouac
 The low yellow
 moon above the
Quiet lamplit house

by Lewis Carroll
 Little maidens, when you look 
On this little story-book, 
Reading with attentive eye 
Its enticing history, 
Never think that hours of play 
Are your only HOLIDAY, 
And that in a HOUSE of joy 
Lessons serve but to annoy: 
If in any HOUSE you find 
Children of a gentle mind, 
Each the others pleasing ever-- 
Each the others vexing never-- 
Daily work and pastime daily 
In their order taking gaily-- 
Then be very sure that they 
Have a life of HOLIDAY.

by Yosa Buson
 Harvest moon--
called at his house,
he was digging potatoes.



by Robert Bly
As I drive my parents home through the snow 
their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.
I call over the cliff 
only snow answers.
They talk quietly
of hauling water of eating an orange 
of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.
When they open the door of their house they disappear.
And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it through miles and miles of silence?
They sit so close to each other¡­as if pressed together by the snow.

by Thomas Hardy
 Around the house the flakes fly faster, 
And all the berries now are gone 
From holly and cotoneaster 
Around the house. The flakes fly!--faster 
Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster 
We used to see upon the lawn 
Around the house. The flakes fly faster, 
And all the berries now are gone!

by Robert Frost
 I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

by Kobayashi Issa
 Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

by Langston Hughes
 I worked for a woman,
She wasn't mean--
But she had a twelve-room
House to clean.

Had to get breakfast,
Dinner, and supper, too--
Then take care of her children
When I got through.

Wash, iron, and scrub,
Walk the dog around--
It was too much,
Nearly broke me down.

I said, Madam,
Can it be
You trying to make a
Pack-horse out of me?

She opened her mouth.
She cried, Oh, no!
You know, Alberta,
I love you so!

I said, Madam,
That may be true--
But I'll be dogged
If I love you!

by Wang Wei
In the slant of the sun on the country-side, 
Cattle and sheep trail home along the lane; 
And a rugged old man in a thatch door 
Leans on a staff and thinks of his son, the herdboy. 
There are whirring pheasants? full wheat-ears, 
Silk-worms asleep, pared mulberry-leaves. 
And the farmers, returning with hoes on their shoulders, 
Hail one another familiarly. 
...No wonder I long for the simple life 
And am sighing the old song, Oh, to go Back Again! 

by D. H. Lawrence
 Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree 
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s 
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously. 

Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound 
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned 
The other voice in a silence of blood, ’neath the noise of the ash.

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks
In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie left as heritage
Her fine-toothed comb.)

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.

by Carl Sandburg
 NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that
can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.
As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble
and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering
children looking for a place to play.
Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go
nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.

by Margaret Atwood
 Marriage is not 
a house or even a tent 

it is before that, and colder: 

The edge of the forest, the edge 
of the desert 
 the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat 
outside, eating popcorn 

where painfully and with wonder 
at having survived even 
this far 

we are learning to make fire

by Dylan Thomas
 The sky is torn across
This ragged anniversary of two
Who moved for three years in tune
Down the long walks of their vows.

Now their love lies a loss
And Love and his patients roar on a chain;
From every tune or crater
Carrying cloud, Death strikes their house.

Too late in the wrong rain
They come together whom their love parted:
The windows pour into their heart
And the doors burn in their brain.

Hunted  Create an image from this poem
by Paul Eluard
 A few grains of dust more or less 
On ancient shoulders 
Locks of weakness on weary foreheads 
This theatre of honey and faded roses 
Where incalcuable flies 
Reply to the black signs that misery makes to them 
Despairing girders of a bridge 
Thrown across space 
Thrown across every street and every house 
Heavy wandering madnesses 
That we shall end by knowing by heart 
Mechanical appetites and uncontrolled dances 
That lead to the regret of hatred 

Nostalgia of justice

Doubt  Create an image from this poem
by Sara Teasdale
 My soul lives in my body's house,
 And you have both the house and her—
But sometimes she is less your own
 Than a wild, gay adventurer;
A restless and an eager wraith,
 How can I tell what she will do—
Oh, I am sure of my body's faith,
 But what if my soul broke faith with you?

by Matsuo Basho
 This old village--
not a single house
 without persimmon trees.

by Jack Gilbert
 Woke up suddenly thinking I heard crying.
Rushed through the dark house.
Stopped, remembering. Stood looking
out at bright moonlight on concrete.

by Lisa Zaran
 ~for Jackson C. Frank
It seems almost too far fetched really, 
too difficult to believe. 
This unassuming moon shining like a copper plate. 
These milkcrate blues. 
This soft trellis of sound 
wobbling through the wind 
as if pouring out from the window 
of some lonely house on the hill. 
How beautiful it is, 
the ghost of your voice, 
haunting this empty valley. 

Originally published in 2River View 10.1, 2005
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005 

by Emily Dickinson
 A first Mute Coming --
In the Stranger's House --
A first fair Going --
When the Bells rejoice --

A first Exchange -- of
What hath mingled -- been --
For Lot -- exhibited to
Faith -- alone --

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!

by Sara Teasdale
 Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.

Even love that I built my spirit's house for,
Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest,
And music and men's praise and even laughter
Are not so good as rest.

by Carl Sandburg
 WHITE MOON comes in on a baby face.
The shafts across her bed are flimmering.

Out on the land White Moon shines,
Shines and glimmers against gnarled shadows,
All silver to slow twisted shadows
Falling across the long road that runs from the house.

Keep a little of your beauty
And some of your flimmering silver
For her by the window to-night
Where you come in, White Moon.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry