Famous Like A Father Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

by Ogden Nash
 My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents...Read more of this...

Father Explains

by Czeslaw Milosz
 "There where that ray touches the plain
And the shadows escape as if they really ran,
Warsaw stands, open from all sides,
A city not very old but quite famous.

"Farther, where strings of rain hang from a little cloud,
Under the hills with an acacia grove
Is Prague. Above it, a marvelous castle
Shored against a slope in accordance with old rules.

"What divides this land...Read more of this...

Talking To My Father Whose Ashes Sit In A Closet And Listen

by Lisa Zaran
 Death is not the final word. 
Without ears, my father still listens, 
still shrugs his shoulders 
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer. 

I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob, 
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him 
what does he think about the war in Iraq 
and how does he...Read more of this...

To His Father

by Robinson Jeffers
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like...Read more of this...

38. Epitaph on my Ever Honoured Father

by Robert Burns
 O YE whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
 Draw near with pious rev’rence, and attend!
Here lie the loving husband’s dear remains,
 The tender father, and the gen’rous friend;
The pitying heart that felt for human woe,
 The dauntless heart that fear’d no human pride;
The friend of man-to vice alone a foe;
 For “ev’n his failings lean’d to virtue’s side.”...Read more of this...

Father Malloy

by Edgar Lee Masters
 You are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
Not here with us on the hill --
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
You...Read more of this...

To Father* Kronos

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [written in a post-chaise.]

 (* In the original, Schwager, which has the 
twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.)

HASTEN thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead

Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,--
Striving and hoping, up, up!

Wide,...Read more of this...

Letter Of Recommendation From My Father To My Future Wife

by Richard Jones
 During the war, I was in China.
Every night we blew the world to hell.
The sky was purple and yellow
like his favorite shirt.

I was in India once
on the Ganges in a tourist boat.
There were soldiers,
some women with parasols.
A dead body floated by
going in the opposite direction.
My son likes this story
and requests it each year at Thanksgiving.

When he was twelve,
there was...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XVI: Father Part Of His Double Interest

by John Donne
 Father, part of his double interest
Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me,
His jointure in the knotty Trinity
He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest.
This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest,
Was from the world's beginning slain, and he
Hath made two Wills which with the Legacy
Of his and thy kingdom do thy Sons invest.
Yet such are...Read more of this...

Boy and Father

by Carl Sandburg
 THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.

 The rain beats on the windows
 And the raindrops...Read more of this...

Memory Of My Father

by Patrick Kavanagh
 Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In...Read more of this...

Sonnet XII: That Learned Father

by Michael Drayton
 To the Soul

That learned Father, who so firmly proves 
The Soul of man immortal and divine, 
And doth the several offices define: 
Anima - Gives her that name, as she the Body moves; 
Amor - Then is she Love, embracing charity; 
Animus - Moving a Will in us, it is the Mind 
Mens - Retaining knowledge, still the same...Read more of this...

25. My Father was a Farmer: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 MY father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O,
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, O;
For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth regarding, O.


Then out into the world my course I did determine, O;
Tho’ to be rich was not my...Read more of this...

Father Death Blues (Dont Grow Old Part V)

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

Father Death, Don't cry any more
Mama's there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store

Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans

O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts'll ease your...Read more of this...

Another Acrostic ( In the style of Father William )

by Lewis Carroll
 "Are you deaf, Father William!" the young man said, 
"Did you hear what I told you just now? 
"Excuse me for shouting! Don't waggle your head 
"Like a blundering, sleepy old cow! 
"A little maid dwelling in Wallington Town, 
"Is my friend, so I beg to remark: 
"Do you think she'd be pleased if a book were sent down...Read more of this...

Who were the Father and the Son

by Emily Dickinson
 Who were "the Father and the Son"
We pondered when a child,
And what had they to do with us
And when portentous told

With inference appalling
By Childhood fortified
We thought, at least they are no worse
Than they have been described.

Who are "the Father and the Son"
Did we demand Today
"The Father and the Son" himself
Would doubtless specify --

But had they the felicity
When we desired...Read more of this...

Father And Child

by William Butler Yeats
 She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes....Read more of this...

You Are Old Father William

by Lewis Carroll
 "You are old, Father william," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are...Read more of this...

Heavenly Father -- take to thee

by Emily Dickinson
 "Heavenly Father" -- take to thee
The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand
In a moment contraband --
Though to trust us -- seems to us
More respectful -- "We are Dust" --
We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity --...Read more of this...

To Her Father with Some Verses

by Anne Bradstreet
 Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, 
If worth in me or ought I do appear, 
Who can of right better demand the same 
Than may your worthy self from whom it came? 
The principal might yield a greater sum, 
Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; 
My stock's so small I know not how to pay, 
My...Read more of this...

Father

by Edgar Albert Guest
 My father knows the proper way 
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.
My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There's nothing that he cannot do,
He knows...Read more of this...

The Child Is Father To The Man

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 'The child is father to the man.' 
How can he be? The words are wild. 
Suck any sense from that who can: 
'The child is father to the man.' 
No; what the poet did write ran, 
'The man is father to the child.' 
'The child is father to the man!' 
How can he be? The words are wild....Read more of this...

My Father

by Yehuda Amichai
 The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deeds....Read more of this...

The Father Of Toads

by Russell Edson
 A man had just delivered a toad from his wife's armpit. He 
held it by its legs and spanked it. 

 Do you love it? said his wife. 

 It's our child, isn't it? 

 Does that mean you can't love it? she said. 

 It's hard enough to love a toad, but when it turns out to be...Read more of this...

Father

by Edgar Albert Guest
 The long lines of diesels 
groan toward evening 
carrying off the breath 
of the living. 
The face of your house 
is black, 
it is your face, black 
and fire bombed 
in the first street wars, 
a black tooth planted in the earth 
of Michigan 
and bearing nothing, 
and the earth is black, 
sick on used oils. 

Did you look...Read more of this...

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