Famous Wool Poems by Famous Poets

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

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March

by A E Housman
 The Sun at noon to higher air, 
Unharnessing the silver Pair 
That late before his chariot swam, 
Rides on the gold wool of the Ram. 

So braver notes the storm-cock sings 
To start the rusted wheel of things, 
And brutes in field and brutes in pen 
Leap that the world goes round again. 

The boys are up the woods...Read more of this...

Thou hast formed me of earth and of water, what can

by Omar Khayyam
Thou hast formed me of earth and of water, what can
I do? Whether I be wool or silk, it is Thou that hast
woven, and what can I do? The good that I do, the
evil that I am guilty of, were alike predestined by Thee;
what can I do?
346...Read more of this...

The Maoris Wool

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Maoris are a mighty race -- the finest ever known; 
Before the missionaries came they worshipped wood and stone; 
They went to war and fought like fiends, and when the war was done 
They pacified their conquered foes by eating every one. 
But now-a-days about the pahs in idleness they lurk, 
Prepared to smoke or drink or talk...Read more of this...

Prayers After World War

by Carl Sandburg
 WANDERING oversea dreamer,
Hunting and hoarse, Oh daughter and mother,
Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood,
Child of the hair let down, and tears,
Child of the cross in the south
And the star in the north,
Keeper of Egypt and Russia and France,
Keeper of England and Poland and Spain,
Make us a song for to-morrow.
Make us one new dream, us who forget,
Out of...Read more of this...

Questionnaire

by Carl Sandburg
 HAVE I told any man to be a liar for my sake?
Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets?
Have I given any man an earful too much of my...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Hesperus

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his month,
And he watched how the...Read more of this...

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

by Mother Goose
Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, marry, have I,
Three bags full;

One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
Who cries in the lane....Read more of this...

Winding Wool

by Robert William Service
 She'd bring to me a skein of wool
And beg me to hold out my hands;
so on my pipe I cease to pull
And watch her twine the shining strands
Into a ball so snug and neat,
Perchance a pair of socks to knit
To comfort my unworthy feet,
Or pullover my girth to fit.

As to the winding I would sway,
A poem in my head...Read more of this...

Joey

by Robert William Service
 I thought I would go daft when Joey died.
He was my first, and wise beyond his years.
For nigh a hundred nights I cried and cried,
Until my weary eyes burned up my tears.
Willie and Rosie tried to comfort me:
A woeful, weeping family were we.

I was a widow with no friends at all,
Ironing men's shirts to buy my kiddies grub;
And then...Read more of this...

Exmoor

by Amy Clampitt
 Lost aboard the roll of Kodac-
olor that was to have super-
seded all need to remember
Somerset were: a large flock

of winter-bedcover-thick-
pelted sheep up on the moor;
a stile, a church spire, 
and an excess, at Porlock,

of tenderly barbarous antique
thatch in tandem with flower-
beds, relentlessly pictur-
esque, along every sidewalk;

a millwheel; and a millbrook 
running down brown as beer.
Exempt from the disaster.
however, as...Read more of this...

An answer to Various Bards

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in, 
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin, 
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp, 
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp; 
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom -- 
But you know...Read more of this...

Hamatreya

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, 
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil 
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. 
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, 
Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's. 
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! 
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill! 
I fancy...Read more of this...

from crossing the line

by Rg Gregory
 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as...Read more of this...

Bridge Over The Aire Book 6

by Barry Tebb
 THE WALK TO THE PARADISE GARDENS



1



Bonfire Night beckoned us to the bridge

By Saint Hilda’s where we started down

Knostrop to chump but I trailed behind

With Margaret when it was late September

The song of summer ceased and fires in

Blackleaded grates began and we were

Hidden from the others by the bridge’s span.

2



When you bent I saw the buds of your breasts

As you...Read more of this...

The Dream (Ryton Firs)

by Lascelles Abercrombie
All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out — let them make uproar loud as drums —
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.

There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple it;
All trees...Read more of this...

St. Francis and the Birds

by Katharine Tynan
 Little sisters, the birds: 
We must praise God, you and I­ 
You, with songs that fill the sky, 
I, with halting words. 

All things tell His praise,
Woods and waters thereof sing, 
Summer, Winter, Autumn, Spring, 
And the night and days. 

Yea, and cold and heat,
And the sun and stars and moon,
Sea with her monotonous tune,
Rain and hail and sleet,...Read more of this...

Old Song Re-Sung

by Katharine Tynan
 I saw three ships a-sailing, 
A-sailing on the sea, 
The first her masts were silver,
Her hull was ivory. 
The snows came drifting softly, 
And lined her white as wool; 
Oh, Jesus, Son of Mary, 
Thy Cradle beautiful! 

I saw three ships a-sailing, 
The next was red as blood, 
Her decks shone like a ruby, 
Encrimsoned all her wood. 
Her...Read more of this...

The Country Life:

by Robert Herrick
 TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF
THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTY

Sweet country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee.
Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
To seek and bring rough pepper home:
Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove
To bring from thence the scorched clove:
Nor, with the loss of...Read more of this...

Aunt Jennifers Tigers

by Adrienne Rich
 Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, 
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. 
They do not fear the men beneath the tree; 
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. 

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool 
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. 
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band 
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. 

When...Read more of this...

4:02 p.m

by Suheir Hammad
 poem supposed to be about
one minute and the lives of three women in it
writing it and up
the block a woman killed
by her husband

poem now about one minute
and the lives of four women
in it

haitian mother
she walks through
town carrying her son's
head—banging it against
her thigh calling out 
creole come see, see what
they've done to my flesh
holds on to him grip tight
through hair...Read more of this...

The Moose

by Elizabeth Bishop
 From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats 
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich...Read more of this...

The Girt Woak Tree

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
An' pick'd the eacorns green, a-shed
In wrestlen storms from his broad head,
An' down below's the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an' hook,
An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream,...Read more of this...

The Terrible Abstractions

by Vernon Scannell
 The naked hunter's fist, bunched round his spear, 
Was tight and wet inside with sweat of fear; 
He heard behind him what the hunted hear. 

The silence in the undergrowth crept near; 
Its mischief tickled in his nervous ear 
And he became the prey, the quivering deer. 

The naked hunter feared the threat he knew: 
Being hunted, caught, then...Read more of this...

The Girt Woak Tree

by William Barnes
 The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
An' pick'd the eacorns green, a-shed
In wrestlen storms from his broad head,
An' down below's the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an' hook,
An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream,...Read more of this...

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