Famous Weeds Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The White Lady

by Dorothy Parker
 I cannot rest, I cannot rest
In straight and shiny wood,
My woven hands upon my breast--
The dead are all so good!

The earth is cool across their eyes;
They lie there quietly.
But I am neither old nor wise;
They do not welcome me.

Where never I walked alone before,
I wander in the weeds;
And people scream and bar the door,
And rattle at their beads.

We cannot...Read more of this...

Before

by Yehuda Amichai
 Before the gate has been closed,
before the last quetion is posed,
before I am transposed.
Before the weeds fill the gardens,
before there are no pardons,
before the concrete hardens.
Before all the flute-holes are covered,
beore things are locked in then cupboard,
before the rules are discovered.
Before the conclusion is planned,
before God closes his hand,
before we have nowhere to stand....Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 16. I Envy not in any Moods

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I envy not in any moods 
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds...Read more of this...

Cocotte

by Robert William Service
 When a girl's sixteen, and as poor as she's pretty,
 And she hasn't a friend and she hasn't a home,
Heigh-ho! She's as safe in Paris city
 As a lamb night-strayed where the wild wolves roam;
And that was I; oh, it's seven years now
 (Some water's run down the Seine since then),
And I've almost forgotten the pangs and the tears...Read more of this...

After While

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I think that though the clouds be dark,
That though the waves dash o'er the bark,
Yet after while the light will come,
And in calm waters safe at home
The bark will anchor.
Weep not, my sad-eyed, gray-robed maid,
Because your fairest blossoms fade,
That sorrow still o'erruns your cup,
And even though you root them up,
The weeds grow ranker.
For after while your tears shall cease,
And sorrow...Read more of this...

The Song of the Dead

by Rudyard Kipling
 Hear now the Song of the Dead -- in the North by the torn berg-edges --
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South -- in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East...Read more of this...

Portrait By A Neighbour

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!

It's long after midnight
Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Til past ten o'clock!

She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She...Read more of this...

Searching For Pittsburgh

by Jack Gilbert
 The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night, 
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart 
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it. 
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world. 
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh 
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically 
along three rivers. The authority of them. 
The...Read more of this...

The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

In the Storm that is to come

by Henry Lawson
 By our place in the midst of the furthest seas we were fated to stand alone -
When the nations fly at each other's throats let Australia look to her own;
Let her spend her gold on the barren west, let her keep her men at home;
For the South must look to the South for strength in the storm that is...Read more of this...

Drink wine to root up metaphysic weeds,

by Omar Khayyam
Drink wine to root up metaphysic weeds,
And tangle of the two-and-seventy creeds;
Do not forswear that wondrous alchemy,
'Twill turn to gold, and cure a thousand needs....Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

The Map

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?

The shadow of...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXIX

by William Shakespeare
 Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own
In other accents do this praise confound
By seeing farther than...Read more of this...

The Witnesses

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning...Read more of this...

Poet

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
TO clothe the fiery thought 
In simple words succeeds  
For still the craft of genius is 
To mask a king in weeds. ...Read more of this...

Weeds

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 White with daisies and red with sorrel
And empty, empty under the sky!—
Life is a quest and love a quarrel—
Here is a place for me to lie.

Daisies spring from damned seeds,
And this red fire that here I see
Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,
Cursed by farmers thriftily.

But here, unhated for an hour,
The sorrel runs in ragged flame,
The daisy stands, a...Read more of this...

Weeds

by Carl Sandburg
 FROM the time of the early radishes
To the time of the standing corn
Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes.

There are laws in the village against weeds.
The law says a weed is wrong and shall be killed.
The weeds say life is a white and lovely thing
And the weeds come on and on in irrepressible regiments.
Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes; and the village law uttering...Read more of this...

Sonnet 44 - Beloved thou hast brought me many flowers

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart's ground. Indeed,...Read more of this...

Sighs of Autumn Rain (3)

by Du Fu
 Chang'an commoner who notice Be locked in weigh gate watch surround wall Old people not go grow weeds Child without worry walk wind rain Rain sound sough and sigh hasten early cold West goose wing wet high fly hard Autumn come have not see white sun Mud dirt after earth what time dry  In Chang'an,...Read more of this...

The Child and the Mariner

by William Henry Davies
 A dear old couple my grandparents were, 
And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven 
The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; 
Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them 
Death was a rainbow in Eternity, 
That promised everlasting brightness soon. 
An old seafaring man was he; a rough 
Old man, but kind; and hairy,...Read more of this...

Adieu Adieu! My Native Land

by George (Lord) Byron
 Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'ver the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native Land-Good Night! 
A few short hours, and he will rise
To give the morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother earth.
Deserted...Read more of this...

The Excesses Of God

by Robinson Jeffers
Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness...Read more of this...

Wind and Window Flower

by Robert Frost
 LOVERS, forget your love,
 And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
 And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
 Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
 Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
 He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
 To come again at dark.

He was a...Read more of this...

Eleanor Wilner

by Eleanor Wilner
 It was a pure white cloud that hung there
in the blue, or a jellyfish on a waveless
sea, suspended high above us; we were
the creatures in the weeds below.
It seemed so effortless in its suspense, 
perfectly out of time and out of place
like the ghost of moon in the sky
of a brilliant afternoon.
After a while it seemed to grow, and...Read more of this...

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