Famous Youngster Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Long ago

by Eugene Field
 I once knew all the birds that came
And nested in our orchard trees;
For every flower I had a name--
My friends were woodchucks, toads, and bees;
I knew where thrived in yonder glen
What plants would soothe a stone-bruised toe--
Oh, I was very learned then;
But that was very long ago!

I knew the spot upon the hill
Where checkerberries could be found,
I knew the...Read more of this...

The Spellin'-bee

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I never shall furgit that night when father hitched up Dobbin,
An' all us youngsters clambered in an' down the road went bobbin'
To school where we was kep' at work in every kind o' weather,
But where that night a spellin'-bee was callin' us together.
'Twas one o' Heaven's banner nights, the stars was all a glitter,
The moon was shinin' like the hand...Read more of this...

The Buglers First Communion

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 A buglar boy from barrack (it is over the hill
There)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish
 Mother to an English sire (he
Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will), 

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on
My late being there begged of me, overflowing
 Boon in my bestowing,
Came, I say, this day...Read more of this...

Battle Of Brunanburgh

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Athelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield-wall,
Hew'd the lindenwood,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands. 

Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires--
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes. 

Bow'd the spoiler,
Bent the Scotsman,
Fell...Read more of this...

The Boys

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 HAS there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise.
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!

We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?
He's tipsy,-- young jackanapes!-- show him the door!
"Gray temples at twenty?"-- Yes ! white if we please;
Where the snow-flakes...Read more of this...

There Is No God the Wicked Sayeth

by Arthur Hugh Clough
 "There is no God," the wicked saith,
"And truly it's a blessing,
For what He might have done with us
It's better only guessing."

"There is no God," a youngster thinks,
"or really, if there may be,
He surely did not mean a man
Always to be a baby."

"There is no God, or if there is,"
The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny
If He should take it ill in...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Leather Medal

by Robert William Service
 Only a Leather Medal, hanging there on the wall,
Dingy and frayed and faded, dusty and worn and old;
Yet of my humble treasures I value it most of all,
And I wouldn't part with that medal if you gave me its weight in gold.

Read the inscription: For Valour - presented to Millie MacGee.
Ah! how in mem'ry it takes me back to...Read more of this...

In the Stable

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 What! you don't like him; well, maybe -- we all have our fancies, of course: 
Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he's a thoroughbred horse; 
Sired by a son of old Panic -- look at his ears and his head -- 
Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain't he? -- well, that's how the Panics are bred. 
Gluttonous, ugly and...Read more of this...

Count Eberhard The Groaner Of Wurtembert. A War Song

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Now hearken, ye who take delight
In boasting of your worth!
To many a man, to many a knight,
Beloved in peace and brave in fight,
The Swabian land gives birth.

Of Charles and Edward, Louis, Guy,
And Frederick, ye may boast;
Charles, Edward, Louis, Frederick, Guy--
None with Sir Eberhard can vie--
Himself a mighty host!

And then young Ulerick, his son,
Ha! how he loved the fray!
Young Ulerick,...Read more of this...

Trooper Campbell

by Henry Lawson
 One day old Trooper Campbell 
Rode out to Blackman's Run, 
His cap-peak and his sabre 
Were glancing in the sun. 
'Twas New Year's Eve, and slowly 
Across the ridges low 
The sad Old Year was drifting 
To where the old years go. 

The trooper's mind was reading 
The love-page of his life -- 
His love for Mary Wylie 
Ere...Read more of this...

The Corner Man

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I dreamt a dream at the midnight deep, 
When fancies come and go 
To vex a man in his soothing sleep 
With thoughts of awful woe -- 
I dreamed that I was the corner man 
Of a ****** minstrel show. 
I cracked my jokes, and the building rang 
With laughter loud and long; 
I hushed the house as I...Read more of this...

Bush Christening

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, 
And men of religion are scanty, 
On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost, 
One Michael Magee had a shanty. 
Now this Mike was the dad of a ten year old lad, 
Plump, healthy, and stoutly conditioned; 
He was strong as the best, but poor Mike had...Read more of this...

Room 5: The Concert Singer

by Robert William Service
 I'm one of these haphazard chaps
Who sit in cafes drinking;
A most improper taste, perhaps,
Yet pleasant, to my thinking.
For, oh, I hate discord and strife;
I'm sadly, weakly human;
And I do think the best of life
Is wine and song and woman.

Now, there's that youngster on my right
Who thinks himself a poet,
And so he toils from morn to night
And vainly hopes to...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

by Conrad Aiken
 As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...

Boy at the Window

by Richard Wilbur
 Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish...Read more of this...

A Voice from the Town

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I thought, in the days of the droving, 
Of steps I might hope to retrace, 
To be done with the bush and the roving 
And settle once more in my place. 
With a heart that was well nigh to breaking, 
In the long, lonely rides on the plain, 
I thought of the pleasure of taking 
The hand of a...Read more of this...

A Letter From the Front

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 I was out early to-day, spying about 
From the top of a haystack -- such a lovely morning -- 
And when I mounted again to canter back 
I saw across a field in the broad sunlight 
A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along 
With a rook-rifle held at the read, and -- would you believe it? -- 
A domestic cat,...Read more of this...

A Bush Christening

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few,
 And men of religion are scanty,
On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost,
 One Michael Magee had a shanty. 

Now this Mike was the dad of a ten year old lad,
 Plump, healthy, and stoutly conditioned;
He was strong as the best, but poor Mike had no rest
...Read more of this...

Doors Doors Doors

by Anne Sexton
 1. Old Man

Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.

The room will do. All that's left of the old life
is jampacked on shelves from floor to ceiling
like a supermarket: your books, your dead wife
generously fat...Read more of this...

The Story of Mongrel Grey

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 This is the story the stockman told 
On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright; 
The moon rose up like a globe of gold 
And flooded the plain with her mellow light. 
We watched the cattle till dawn of day 
And he told me the story of Mongrel Grey. 
He was a knock-about station hack, 
Spurred and walloped, and...Read more of this...

The September Gale

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I'M not a chicken; I have seen 
Full many a chill September, 
And though I was a youngster then, 
That gale I well remember; 
The day before, my kite-string snapped, 
And I, my kite pursuing, 
The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; 
For me two storms were brewing!

It came as quarrels sometimes do, 
When married folks get clashing;
There was...Read more of this...

Frying Pans Theology

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Shock-headed blackfellow, 
Boy (on a pony). 
Snowflakes are falling 
Gentle and slow, 
Youngster says, "Frying Pan 
What makes it snow?" 

Frying Pan, confident, 
Makes the reply -- 
"Shake 'im big flour bag 
Up in the sky!" 

"What! when there's miles of it? 
Surely that's brag. 
Who is there strong enough 
Shake such a bag?" 

"What parson tellin' you, 
Ole...Read more of this...

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