Famous Sundays Poems by Famous Poets

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

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96. The Inventory

...:
Wee Davock hauds the nowt in fother.
I rule them as I ought, discreetly,
An’ aften labour them completely;
An’ aye on Sundays duly, nightly,
I on the Questions targe them tightly;
Till, faith! wee Davock’s grown sae gleg,
Tho’ scarcely langer than your leg,
He’ll screed you aff Effectual Calling,
As fast as ony in the dwalling.


 I’ve nane in female servant station,
(L—d keep me aye frae a’ temptation!)
I hae nae wife-and thay my bliss is,
An’ ye have laid nae tax on misse...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


Allegory

...I had a gig-horse, and I called him Pleasure 
Because on Sundays for a little jaunt 
He was so fast and showy, quite a treasure; 
Although he sometimes kicked and shied aslant. 
I had a chaise, and christened it Enjoyment, 
With yellow body and the wheels of red, 
Because it was only used for one employment, 
Namely, to go wherever Pleasure led. 
I had a wife, her nickname was Delight: 
A son called Frolic, who wa...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

Childhood

...de out of a whale's jaw-bones, 
And the swings, which were for "Board-School children," 
And its gravel paths. 

And on Sundays they rang the bells, 
From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches. 
They had a Salvation Army. 
I was taken to a High Church; 
The parson's name was Mowbray, 
"Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it --" 
That's what I heard people say. 

I took a little black book 
To that cold, grey, damp, smelling church, 
And I had to sit on a ha...Read more of this...
by Aldington, Richard

Curriculum Vitae

...building 
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.

5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.

6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones 
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.

7) My country was struck by history more deadly than 
earthquakes or hurricanes.

8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother 
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.

9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights 
of adol...Read more of this...
by Hecht, Anthony

Elegy: Walking the Line

...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 sha...Read more of this...
by Bowers, Edgar


Guinevere at Her Fireside

...And wedded stays in Heaven. Amen.

(And oh, the shirts of linen-lawn,
And all the armor, tagged and tied,
And church on Sundays, dusk and dawn.
And bed a thing to kneel beside!)

The bravest one stood tall above
The rest, and watched me as a light.
I heard and heard them talk of love;
I'd naught to do but think, at night.

The bravest man has littlest brains;
That chalky fool from Astolat
With all her dying and her pains!-
Thank God, I helped him over that.

I found him not u...Read more of this...
by Parker, Dorothy

Hans Sachs Poetical Mission

...5000 lyric poems. He flourished throughout almost 
the whole of the 16th century.]

EARLY within his workshop here,
On Sundays stands our master dear;
His dirty apron he puts away,
And wears a cleanly doublet to-day;
Lets wax'd thread, hammer, and pincers rest,
And lays his awl within his chest;
The seventh day he takes repose
From many pulls and many blows.

Soon as the spring-sun meets his view,
Repose begets him labour anew;
He feels that he holds within his brain
A littl...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

In Defence of the Bush

...was despised, 
For you say you'll stay in townships till the bush is civilized. 
Would you make it a tea-garden, and on Sundays have a band 
Where the "blokes" might take their "donahs", with a "public" close at hand? 
You had better stick to Sydney and make merry with the "push", 
For the bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush....Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

Inspiration From A Visitation Of My Muse

...andad

A strict Methodist who read only a vast Bible

Hunched in his fireside chair insisting

On chapel three times on Sundays.

Only in retirement did joy and wisdom

Enter him, abandoning chapel he took

To the Friends or Quakers as they called them then

And somehow at seventy the inner light

Consumed him.

Gruff but kind was my impression:

He would take me for walks

Along abandoned railways to the shutdown

Pipeworks where my three uncles

Worked their early manhood t...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Leeds

...e Seine, hearing the bells

Of the Angelus dawn?



II



Exiled in the south and in a new century,

I recall leisurely Sundays on the Grande Jatte;

The children in sun hats knelt by their boats

Unfurling handkerchiefs for sails and for supreme farewells

(Shall I return? Steamer with your poised masts

Raising anchor for exotic climes?)



III



The bells of Sacr? Coeur shake rickety tables

Where old men in blazers sport the L?gion d’Honneur.

Priests in birettas sip Gre...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

LoveSpell: Against Endings

...nce
revealed by experience;
with soft rain
and a bare head;
with hand-in-hand dreams on Mondays
and the land of ****
on Sundays;
with mangoes, papayas
and limes,
and a house towering
above the sea.

Muse, I surrender
to thee.
Thy will be done,
not mine.

If this love spell
pleases you,
send me this lover,
this husband,
this dancing partner
for my empty bed
and let him fill me
from now
until I die.
I offer my bones,
my poems,
my luck with roses,
and the secret garden
I have fo...Read more of this...
by Jong, Erica

Mulhollands Contract

...er exactly as Scripture says;
But following that, I knocked him down an' led him up to Grace.

An' we have preaching on Sundays whenever the sea is calm,
An' I use no knife or pistol an' I never take no harm,
For the Lord abideth back of me to guide my fighting arm.

An' I sign for four-pound-ten a month and save the money clear,
An' I am in charge of the lower deck, an' I never lose a steer;
An' I believe in Almighty God an' preach His Gospel here.

The skippers say I'm craz...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Name of Horses

...
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn, 
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load 
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns. 
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill 
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept ...Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

Sabbaths W.I

...h pass
those herons like spinsters that doubted their reflections
inquiring, inquiring

those nettles that waited
those Sundays, those Sundays

those Sundays when the lights at the road's end were an occasion

those Sundays when my mother lay on her back
those Sundays when the sisters gathered like white moths
round their street lantern

and cities passed us by on the horizon...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

Sin

...t season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws;—they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears:
Yet all these fences and their whol...Read more of this...
by Herbert, George

The Ballad of Persse OReilly

...hemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,
Mare's milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion's reform,
 (Chorus) And religious reform,
 Hideous in form.

Arrah, why, says you, couldn't he manage it?
I'll go bail, my fine dairyman darling,
Like the bumping bull of the Cassidys
All your butter is in your horns.
 (Chorus) His butter is in his horns.
 Butter his horns!

(Repeat) Hurrah there, Hosty, frosty Hosty...Read more of this...
by Joyce, James

The Fury Of Sundays

...Moist, moist, 
the heat leaking through the hinges, 
sun baking the roof like a pie 
and I and thou and she 
eating, working, sweating, 
droned up on the heat. 
The sun as read as the cop car siren. 
The sun as red as the algebra marks. 
The sun as red as two electric eyeballs. 
She wanting to take a bath in jello. 
You and me sipping vodka and soda, 
ice ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

...t -- -- did not reappear! . . . 
- Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair, 
All churchgoing will I forswear, 
And sit on Sundays in my chair, 
And read that moderate man Voltaire....Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Those Winter Sundays

...Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that hou...Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert

To a Fish

...g wights, 
What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles? 
How do ye vary your vile days and nights? 
How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles 
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites, 
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?...Read more of this...
by Hunt, James Henry Leigh

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