BASKET POEMS

In The Rain

In the rain,
Where laughter and frown smeared our faces
As the pomegranate failed to bud.
And with shuddering kneels we carried the basket of uncertainty home
.....

Gerald Onyebuchi

Michael: A Pastoral Poem

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent
.....

William Wordsworth

The Bowl Of Contentment

Oh! Africa, You have baked me black
In the oven of your Sahara,
The attribute of resilience.

.....

Dauda Tholley

A Basket Of Summer Fruit

First see those ample melons-brindled o'er
With mingled green and brown is all the rind;
For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,
And saturate with the nectar of their kind.
.....

Charles Harpur

Two Children

Give me your hand, oh little one!
Like children be we two;
Yet I am old, my day is done
That barely breaks for you.
.....

Robert Service

Endymion: Book I

ENDYMION.

A Poetic Romance.

.....

John Keats

The Englishman In Italy

(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
.....

Robert Browning

Prothalamion

Calme was the day, and through the trembling ayre
Sweete-breathing Zephyrus did softly play
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titans beames, which then did glyster fayre;
.....

Edmund Spenser

The Great Hunger

I
Clay is the word and clay is the flesh
Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move
Along the side-fall of the hill - Maguire and his men.
.....

Patrick Kavanagh

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

Thesaurus

It could be the name of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up
on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.
.....

Billy Collins

A Basket Of Flowers, From Dawn To Dusk

Dawn


On skies still and starlit
.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

The Odyssey: Book 17

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Telemachus bound on his sandals and took a strong spear that suited
his hands, for he wanted to go into the city. “Old friend,” said he to
the swineherd, “I will now go to the town and show myself to my
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 20

Ulysses slept in the cloister upon an undressed bullock's hide, on
the top of which he threw several skins of the sheep the suitors had
eaten, and Eurynome threw a cloak over him after he had laid himself
down. There, then, Ulysses lay wakefully brooding upon the way in
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 03

But as the sun was rising from the fair sea into the firmament of
heaven to shed Blight on mortals and immortals, they reached Pylos the
city of Neleus. Now the people of Pylos were gathered on the sea shore
to offer sacrifice of black bulls to Neptune lord of the Earthquake.
.....

Homer

Salvage

Daily the cortege of crumpled
defunct cars
goes by by the lasagna-
layered flatbed
.....

Amy Clampitt

-scaped

Once, I knew a fine song,
- It is true, believe me -
It was all of birds,
And I held them in a basket;
.....

Stephen Crane

Oonts

(Northern India Transport Train)



.....

Rudyard Kipling

Servant

A female lad,
And from male was made,
A rib single,
Brought much love, all
.....

Brian Dredan

Savitri. Part V.

As consciousness came slowly back
He recognised his loving wife--
"Who was it, Love, through regions black
Where hardly seemed a sign of life
.....

Toru Dutt

Basket Dance

Dance!
Dance!
The priest is yellow with sunflower meal,
He is yellow with corn-meal,
.....

Amy Lowell

An Apple Gathering

I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree,
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
.....

Christina Rossetti

A Basket Of Flowers - From Dawn To Dusk

Dawn

On skies still and starlit
White lustres take hold,
.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Goblin Market

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
.....

Christina Rossetti

The Devon Maid: Stanzas Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon

Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there i' the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?
.....

John Keats

For A Picture Of St. Dorothea

I bear a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Intime

Returning, I find her just the same,
At just the same old delicate game.

Still she says: “Nay, loose no flame
.....

D. H. Lawrence

The Odyssey: Book 18

Now there came a certain common tramp who used to go begging all
over the city of Ithaca, and was notorious as an incorrigible
glutton and drunkard. This man had no strength nor stay in him, but he
was a great hulking fellow to look at; his real name, the one his
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 04

They reached the low lying city of Lacedaemon them where they
drove straight to the of abode Menelaus [and found him in his own
house, feasting with his many clansmen in honour of the wedding of his
son, and also of his daughter, whom he was marrying to the son of that
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 06

So here Ulysses slept, overcome by sleep and toil; but Minerva
went off to the country and city of the Phaecians-a people who used
to live in the fair town of Hypereia, near the lawless Cyclopes. Now
the Cyclopes were stronger than they and plundered them, so their king
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 08

Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Alcinous and Ulysses both rose, and Alcinous led the way to the
Phaecian place of assembly, which was near the ships. When they got
there they sat down side by side on a seat of polished stone, while
.....

Homer

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
.....

Amy Lowell

The Book Of Hours Of Sister Clotilde

The Bell in the convent tower swung.
High overhead the great sun hung,
A navel for the curving sky.
The air was a blue clarity.
.....

Amy Lowell

The New Hawaiian Girl

EXPLANATORY

Kamehameha First, of the Hawaiian Islands, conquered his
foes in a great battle, driving them over the high mountain
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Sonnet

Poet, beware! The sonnet's primrose path
Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread.
Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,
Because the sated reader roars in wrath:
.....

Andrew Lang

Moeurs Contemporaines

I

Mr. Styrax 1
Mr. Hecatomb Styrax, the owner of a large estate and of large muscles,
.....

Ezra Pound

Gratitude

I found a starving cat in the street:
It cried for food and a place by the fire.
I carried it home, and I strove to meet
The claims of its desire.
.....

Edith Nesbit

Impromptu

'Where art thou wandering, little child?'
I said to one I met to-day.--
She pushed her bonnet up and smiled,
'I'm going upon the green to play:
.....

John Clare

Dyke Side

The frog croaks loud, and maidens dare not pass
But fear the noisome toad and shun the grass;
And on the sunny banks they dare not go
Where hissing snakes run to the flood below.
.....

John Clare

Prairie

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a
slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the
.....

Carl Sandburg

Balbus

I'll tell you the story of Balbus,
You know, him as builded a wall;
I'll tell you the reason he built it,
And the place where it happened an' all.
.....

Marriott Edgar

Illinois Farmer

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.....

Carl Sandburg

River Moons

THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face,
The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head.
I saw them last night, a cradle moon, two horns of a moon, such an early hopeful moon, such a child's moon for all young hearts to make a picture of.
The river-I remember this like a picture-the river was the upper twist of a written question mark.
.....

Carl Sandburg

The Paper Windmill

The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of the square
glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown water
.....

Amy Lowell

Lotus

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying,
and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

Garadh

FOR the poor body that I own
I could weep many a tear:
The days have stolen flesh and bone,
And left a changeling here.
.....

Padraic Colum

Medallion

Luini in porcelain!
The grand piano
Utters a profane
Protest with her clear soprano.
.....

Ezra Pound

Basket

speak, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir, like an old woman over a bushel of apples.


.....

Carl Sandburg

Stepping Westward

What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.
If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to
.....

Denise Levertov

Palimpsest

The walk that led out through the apple trees-
the narrow, crumbling path of brick embossed
among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves-

.....

Jared Carter