Onions

Can the Burbanks of the glorious West
    Either make or buy or sell
An onion with an onion's taste
    But with a violet's smell?

Unknown

The identity of this poet is not known. Their works, which are often of significant historical or cultural value, have been attributed to 'Unknown'. This designation is commonly used when the creator of works, ranging from ancient texts to more modern writings, remains anonymous or uncredited. Despite the lack of personal details, the impact and importance of these works endure, offering insight into the eras and cultures from which they originated.

Unknown

Nursery Rhyme. CCX. Riddles.

Unknown , Simple Poetry

Nursery Rhyme. LXXXIV. Proverbs.

Unknown , Simple Poetry

Thrift

Unknown , Simple Poetry

Nursery Rhyme. CCCCXCIII. Love And Matrimony.

Unknown , Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Verses Made For Fruit-Women

APPLES

Come buy my fine wares,
Plums, apples, and pears.
A hundred a penny,
In conscience too many:
Come, will you have any?
My children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven;
My husband a sot,
With his pipe and his pot,
Not a farthing will gain them,
And I must maintain them.



ASPARAGUS

    Ripe 'sparagrass
    Fit for lad or lass,
To make their water pass:
    O, 'tis pretty picking
    With a tender chicken!



ONIONS


        Come, follow me by the smell,
        Here are delicate onions to sell;
        I promise to use you well.
        They make the blood warmer,
        You'll feed like a farmer;
For this is every cook's opinion,
No savoury dish without an on...

Jonathan Swift

Oranges

Come buy my fine oranges, sauce for your veal,
And charming, when squeezed in a pot of brown ale;
Well roasted, with sugar and wine in a cup,
They'll make a sweet bishop when gentlefolks sup.

Jonathan Swift

The Buyers.

To an apple-woman's stall

Once some children nimbly ran;
Longing much to purchase all,
They with joyous haste began
Snatching up the piles there raised,
While with eager eyes they gazed
On the rosy fruit so nice;
But when they found out the price,
Down they threw the whole they'd got,
Just as if they were red hot.


*    *    *    *    *

The man who gratis will his goods supply
Will never find a lack of folks to buy!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

After Dinner Speeches

Every rose has its thorn
    There's fuzz on all the peaches.
There never was a dinner yet
    Without some lengthy speeches.

Unknown

Fashions

Fashion on fashion on fashion,
    (With only the truth growing old!)
And here's the new purple of passion,
    (And love waiting out in the cold)
            Who'll buy?

They are crying new lamps for Aladdin,
    New worlds for the old and the true;
And no one remembers the story
    The magic was not in the new.

They are crying a new rose for Eden,
    A rose of green glass. I suppose
The only thing wrong with their rose is
    The fact that it isn't a rose.
            Who'll buy?

And here is a song without metre;
    And, here again, nothing is wrong;
(For nothing on earth could be neater)
    Except that--it isn't a song.

Well. Walk on your hands. It's the latest!
    And feet are Victorian now;
And even ...

Alfred Noyes

Nursery Rhyme. CCCLXXXII. Lullabies.

        [The following is quoted in Florio's 'New World of Words,' fol., London, 1611, p. 3.]

    To market, to market,
        To buy a plum bun:
    Home again, come again,
        Market is done.

Unknown