- Su Tung-p’o,
“On the Birth of His Son” (c. 1070, trans. Arthur Waley, 1919)
- Robert Greene,
“Menaphon: Sephesta’s Song to her Child” (1589)
- Ben Jonson,
“Epigrams: On my First Son” (1616)
- William Blake,
“The Little Boy Lost” (1791)
- William Wordsworth,
“Anecdote for Fathers” (1798)
- Emily Dickinson,
“High from the earth I heard a bird” (1896)
- Walt Whitman,
“On the Beach at Night” (1900)
- Edgar A. Guest,
“Father” (1909)
- Rudyard Kipling,
“If” (1910)
- Edgar A. Guest,
“Only a Dad” (1916)
- Gerard Manley Hopkins,
“The Child Is Father To the Man” (1918)
- William Butler Yeats,
“A Prayer for My Daughter” (1921)
- William Butler Yeats,
“A Prayer for My Son” (1921)
Poems for Fathers
A collection of classic poems for Father’s Day
By Bob Holman & Margery Snyder, About.com
Gathered here are just a few of the greatest classic poems written about fathers and fatherhood, to read to or with your dad on Father’s Day:
More topical collections of classic poems
Contemporary collections: The About Poetry Anthologies
Explore Poetry
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