UNCLE POEMS

Song For The Old Ones

My Fathers sit on benches
their flesh counts every plank
the slats leave dents of darkness
deep in their withered flanks.
.....

Maya Angelou

Uncle Sammy.

Some men were born for great things,
Some were born for small;
Some--it is not recorded
Why they were born at all;
.....

Will Carleton

My Last Afternoon With Uncle Devereux Winslow

1922: the stone porch of my Grandfatherâ??s summer house

I
â??I wonâ??t go with you. I want to stay with Grandpa!â?
.....

Robert Lowell

The Brus Book Ii

[Bruce escapes to Lochmaben]


The Bruys went till his innys swyth,
.....

John Barbour

The Hunting Of The Snark

Dedication

Inscribed to a dear Child:
in memory of golden summer hours
.....

Lewis Carroll

The Fudges In England. Letter Vii. From Miss Fanny Fudge, To Her Cousin, Miss Kitty ----.

IRREGULAR ODE.

Bring me the slumbering souls of flowers,
While yet, beneath some northern sky,
.....

Thomas Moore

Uncle Bill

My Uncle Bill! My Uncle Bill!
How doth my heart with anguish thrill!
For he, our chief, our Robin Hood,
Has gone to jail for stealing wood!
.....

Banjo Paterson

Lancelot 08

For longer war they came, and with a fury
That only Modred's opportunity,
Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed
And ended in a night. For Lancelot,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Deliverance

Master only left old Mistus
One bright and handsome boy;
But she fairly doted on him,
He was her pride and joy.
.....

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Stopped Dead

A squeal of brakes.
Or is it a birth cry?
And here we are, hung out over the dead drop
Uncle, pants factory Fatso, millionaire.
.....

Sylvia Plath

Uncle Ben.

A gradely chap wor uncle Ben
As ivver lived i'th' fowd:
He made a fortun for hissen,
An lived on't when he'r owd.
.....

John Hartley

Our World

World is our home
Where we are son of sun
Moon is our mother
Where we can see our grand mother
.....

Velu

A Ballade Of Suicide

The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall.
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
.....

G. K. Chesterton

What Uncle Rob Says

Uncle Rob says,
That once on a time the fire flies
Were stars with the others up in the skies.

.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In Time Of Revolt

The Thing must End. I am no boy! I am
No boy! I being twenty-one. Uncle, you make
A great mistake, a very great mistake,
In chiding me for letting slip a “Damn!”
.....

Rupert Brooke

The Silent Tide

A tangled orchard round the farm-house spreads,
Wherein it stands home-like, but desolate,
'Midst crowded and uneven-statured sheds,
Alike by rain and sunshine sadly stained.
.....

George Parsons Lathrop

See They Come, Post Haste From Thanet

See they come, post haste from Thanet,
Lovely couple, side by side;
They've left behind them Richard Kennet
With the Parents of the Bride!
.....

Jane Austen

The Mad Yak

I am watching them churn the last milk they'll ever get from me.
They are waiting for me to die;
They want to make buttons out of my bones.
Where are my sisters and brothers?
.....

Gregory Corso

Tale Xiv

THE STRUGGLES OF CONSCIENCE.

A serious Toyman in the city dwelt,
Who much concern for his religion felt;
.....

George Crabbe

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

Robin Hood, A Child.

It was the pleasant season yet,
When the stones at cottage doors
Dry quickly, while the roads are wet,
After the silver showers.
.....

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Cadet Grey: Canto Ii

I

Where West Point crouches, and with lifted shield
Turns the whole river eastward through the pass;
.....

Bret Harte

Anteater

'A genuine anteater,'
The pet man told my dad.
Turned out, it was an aunt eater,
And now my uncle's mad!
.....

Shel Silverstein

1st Chorus Mexico City Blues

Butte Magic of Ignorance
Butte Magic
Is the same as no-Butte
All one light
.....

Jack Kerouac

Uncle Harry

Oh, never let on to your own true love
That ever you drank a drop;
That ever you played in a two-up school
Or slept in a sly-grog shop;
.....

Henry Lawson

The Waster's Presentiment

I shall be spun. There is a voice within
Which tells me plainly I am all undone;
For though I toil not, neither do I spin,
I shall be spun.
.....

Robert Fuller Murray

Tale Xv

ADVICE; OR THE 'SQUIRE AND THE PRIEST.

A wealthy Lord of far-extended land
Had all that pleased him placed at his command;
.....

George Crabbe

Intellectual Limitations

Parunts knows lots more than us,
But they don't know _all_ things,--
'Cause we ketch 'em, lots o' times,
Even on little small things.
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

Poem

About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

Uncle Bob

OLD Uncle Bob lay on the settle,
At eventide, while on the hob,
'Roe-tee-riti-too' sang the kettle,
And charmed the dear heart of old Bob.
.....

Joseph Skipsey

On The Astrologers (from The Greek)

The astrologers did all alike presage
My uncle's dying in extreme old age;
One only disagreed. But he was wise,
And spoke not till he heard the funeral cries.
.....

William Cowper

Elegy

I know but will not tell
you, Aunt Irene, why there
are soap suds in the whiskey:
Uncle Robert had to have
.....

Alan Dugan

A Confidence

Uncle John, he makes me tired;
Thinks ‘at he's jest so all-fired
Smart, ‘at he kin pick up, so,
Ever'thing he wants to know.
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Family Party

ime family parties we gave so long ago,
When every near-relation and distant cousins, too,
The married ones with children, Aunt Mary and Aunt Sue,
The grandpas and the grandmas, yes, everyone of kin,
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Asses

'I KNOW where I'd get
An ass that would do,
If I had the money
A pound or two.'
.....

Padraic Colum

House

TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.
Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don't want him around.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school.
.....

Carl Sandburg

First Death In Nova Scotia

In the cold, cold parlor
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales,
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

Hope

The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
The week is dealt out like a hand
That children pick up card by card.
One keeps getting the same hand.
.....

Randall Jarrell

Halloween

Upon that night, when fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
.....

Robert Burns

Four Riddles

I

There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
.....

Lewis Carroll

Additions

The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's

THEY had long met o' Zundays--her true love and she--
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
.....

Thomas Hardy

Akbar's Bridge

Jelaludin Muhammed Akbar, Guardian of Mankind,
Moved his standards out of Delhi to Jaunpore of lower Hind,
Where a mosque was to be builded, and a lovelier ne'er was planned;
And Munim Khan, his Viceroy, slid the drawings 'neath his hand.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

The Hill

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.

.....

Edgar Lee Masters

Uncle Ananias

His words were magic and his heart was true,
And everywhere he wandered he was blessed.
Out of all ancient men my childhood knew
I choose him and I mark him for the best.
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

An Arctic Vision

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
.....

Bret Harte

The Old Homestead

JEST as atween the awk'ard lines a hand we love has penn'd
Appears a meanin' hid from other eyes,
So, in your simple, homespun art, old honest Yankee friend,
A power o' tearful, sweet seggestion lies.
.....

Eugene Field

The Woman

Go sleep, my sweetie-rest-rest!
Oh soft little hand on mother's breast!
Oh soft little lips-the din's mos' gone-
Over and done, my dearie one!
.....

Harriet Monroe

Brahm

A spectral film that came and went,
In its elusive way gave vent
In some unreal words which meant;
'I think therefore I am.'
.....

Joseph Furphy

Father Death Blues

Hey Father Death, I'm flying home
Hey poor man, you're all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going

.....

Allen Ginsberg

Tale Xx

THE BROTHERS.

Than old George Fletcher, on the British coast
Dwelt not a seaman who had more to boast:
.....

George Crabbe