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Famous Steers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sandburg, Carl
...I WAITED today for a freight train to pass.
Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
bars, went by.
And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
cars.
Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.
Every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer
sending it to market,
While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
train without a ticket.
It reminded me of ten days I ...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...broad in your hat and spurs,
Hell-hoofin' over my cucumbers!

"You pray to the Lord to send you luck
An' you loose your steers in my garden-truck:

"An' now you're bust, as you ought to be,
You can keep on prayin' but not to me!"

Then Abel saw it meant the life;
But, in those days, there was no Knife:

So he up with his big bull-goad instead,
But--Cain hit first and dropped him dead!

The Herd-bulls ran when they smelt the blood,
An' horned an' pawed in that Red Mud.
The...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...ply groan for that divine Translation. 

31 

211 The Mariner that on smooth waves doth glide
212 Sings merrily and steers his Barque with ease
213 As if he had command of wind and tide
214 And now becomes great Master of the seas,
215 But suddenly a storm spoils all the sport
216 And makes him long for a more quiet port,
217 Which 'gainst all adverse winds may serve for fort. 

32 

218 So he that faileth in this world of pleasure,
219 Feeding on sweets that never bi...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...s affrighted
To windward sighted
The birds full-flighted
Of swift sea-kings;
So earth turns paler
When Storm the sailor
Steers in with a roar in the race of his wings.

O strong sea-sailor,
Whose cheek turns paler
For wind or hail or
For fear of thee?
O far sea-farer,
O thunder-bearer,
Thy songs are rarer
Than soft songs be.
O fleet-foot stranger,
O north-sea ranger
Through days of danger
And ways of fear,
Blow thy horn here for us,
Blow the sky clear for us,
Send us ...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...” 

Sir ralph the Rover sail’d away, 
He scour’d the seas for many a day; 
And now grown rich with plunder’d store, 
He steers his course for Scotland’s shore. 

So thick a haze o’erspreads the sky, 
They cannot see the sun on high; 
The wind hath blown a gale all day, 
At evening it hath died away. 

On the deck the Rover takes his stand, 
So dark it is they see no land. 
Quoth Sir Ralph, “It will be lighter soon, 
For there is the dawn of the rising Moon.” 
...Read more of this...



by Marvell, Andrew
...rals chose 
For one had much, the other nought to lose; 
Nor better choice all accidents could hit, 
While Hector Harry steers by Will the Wit. 
They both accept the charge with merry glee, 
To fight a battle, from all gunshot free. 
Pleased with their numbers, yet in valour wise, 
They feign a parley, better to surprise; 
They that ere long shall the rude Dutch upbraid, 
Who in the time of treaty durst invade. 

Thick was the morning, and the House was thin, 
The...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...Save that of cankerworms, destruction.
Thus having long both countries curst,
He quits them as he found them first,
Steers home disgraced, of little worth,
To join Burgoyne and rail at North.


"Now raise thine eyes and view with pleasure,
The triumphs of his famed successor."


"I look'd, and now by magic lore
Faint rose to view the Jersey shore:
But dimly seen in gloom array'd,
For night had pour'd her sable shade,
And every star, with glimm'rings pale,
Was ****...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...h used to drink and swear.

I see my chance was certain of bein' horned or trod,
For the lower deck was packed with steers thicker'n peas in a pod,
An' more pens broke at every roll -- so I made a Contract with God.

An' by the terms of the Contract, as I have read the same,
If He got me to port alive I would exalt His Name,
An' praise His Holy Majesty till further orders came.

He saved me from the cattle an' He saved me from the sea,
For they found me 'tween two...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...wn destroy'd by generous Fight, 
Or Privateering Foes. 
All Rules of Conduct laid aside, 
No more the baffl'd Pilot steers, 
Or knows an Art, when it each moment veers, 
To vary with the Winds, or stem th'unusual Tide. 
Dispers'd and loose, the shatter'd Vessels stray, 
Some perish within sight of Shore, 
Some, happier thought, obtain a wider Sea, 
But never to return, or cast an Anchor more! 
Some on the Northern Coasts are thrown, 
And by congealing Surges compass'd...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...slope their pointing spires, and,rolled 
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale. 
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight 
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, 
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land 
He lights--if it were land that ever burned 
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, 
And such appeared in hue as when the force 
Of subterranean wind transprots a hill 
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side 
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible 
And fuel...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...s, and set forth 
Their aery caravan, high over seas 
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing 
Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane 
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air 
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: 
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song 
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings 
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale 
Ceased warbling, but all night tun'd her soft lays: 
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, ba...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...first, as one who sought access, but feared 
To interrupt, side-long he works his way. 
As when a ship, by skilful steersmen wrought 
Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the wind 
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail: 
So varied he, and of his tortuous train 
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, 
To lure her eye; she, busied, heard the sound 
Of rusling leaves, but minded not, as used 
To such disport before her through the field, 
From every beast;...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...essure was a grave
In a new boughten grave plot by herself,
Under he didn't care how great a stone:
He'd sell a yoke of steers to pay for it.
And weren't there special cemetery flowers,
That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest;
The flowers will go on with grief awhile,
And no one seem neglecting or neglected?
A prudent grief will not despise such aids.
He thought of evergreen and everlasting.
And then he had a thought worth many of these.
Somewhere mus...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the fros...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
..."No power can hold us back," they roared, and hurried in their hope.
Into a mighty pipe they plunged, like maddened steers they ran,
And crashed out through a shard of steel - to serve the will of Man.

And there, by hydraulicking his ground beside a bedrock ditch,
With eye aflame and savage aim was Riley Dooleyvitch.
In long hip-boots and overalls, and dingy denim shirt,
Behind a giant monitor he pounded at the dirt.

A steely shaft of water shot, and smote t...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...lain 
Lay the snow, 
They fell, -- those lordly pines! 
Those grand, majestic pines! 
'Mid shouts and cheers 
The jaded steers, 
Panting beneath the goad, 
Dragged down the weary, winding road 
Those captive kings so straight and tall, 
To be shorn of their streaming hair, 
And naked and bare, 
To feel the stress and the strain 
Of the wind and the reeling main, 
Whose roar 
Would remind them forevermore 
Of their native forests they should not see again. 
And everywhere ...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...dorns 
only itself, perhaps the snows 
which so surprise us lying on the sea. 
Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off 
where waves give in to one another's waves 
and clouds run in a warmer sky. 
Icebergs behoove the soul 
(both being self-made from elements least visible) 
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible....Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...rascals bend to say
"O singing Mississippi
Shine, sing for us today."

But who is this in sweeping Oxford gown
Who steers the raft, or ambles up and down,
Or throws his gown aside, and there in white
Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night?
The lion of high courts, with hoary mane,
Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain —
Mark Twain!
The bad world's idol:
Old Mark Twain!

He takes his turn as watchman with the rest,
With secret transports to the stars addresse...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...And the Northern Lights come down o' nights to dance with the houseless snow;
And God Who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe,
He hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the wind along the snow.
But since our women must walk gay and money buys their gear,
The sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard year by year.
English they be and Japanee that hang on the Brown Bear's flank,
And some be Scot, but the worst of the lot, and the boldest thieves, b...Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
...ke a fishbone. She knows 
how easily she will comply when a man puts his hand 
on the back of her neck and gently steers her. 
She knows how long she will wait for rescue, how the world 
will go on expanding outside. She will see her mother's photo 
of Elvis shaking hands with Nixon, the terrifying conjunction. 
A whole war with Asia will begin slowly, 
in her lifetime, out of such irreconcilable urges. 
The Pill will become available to the genera...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs