Famous Comedy Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Comedy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous comedy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous comedy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Burns, Robert
..., like brandy, when imported?
Is there nae poet, burning keen for fame,
Will try to gie us sangs and plays at hame?
For Comedy abroad he need to toil,
A fool and knave are plants of every soil;
Nor need he hunt as far as Rome or Greece,
To gather matter for a serious piece;
There’s themes enow in Caledonian story,
Would shew the Tragic Muse in a’ her glory.—
Is there no daring Bard will rise and tell
How glorious Wallace stood, how hapless fell?
Where are the Muses fle...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ean departed; and we see
'Twas Idleness we took for Fate
That bound light bonds on you and me.
Amen! Here ends the comedy
Where it began in all good will;
Since Love and Leave together flee
As driven mist on Jakko Hill!...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...lodies to enscroll
Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked
That might have graced your garland. I induct
Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song,
Each longing a little, each a little long,
But each aspiring only to express
Your excellence and my unworthiness ---
Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense
And spirit too of that same excellence.
So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle:
I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle,
While, as for love, the sun...Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...ter of the pit,
Where critic-like he sits and squints,
Steals pocket handkerchiefs, and hints
From 's neighbor, and the comedy,
To court, and pay, his landlady.
The third, a lady's eldest son
Within few years of twenty-one
Who hopes from his propitious fate,
Against he comes to his estate,
By these two worthies to be made
A most accomplished tearing blade.
One, in a strain 'twixt tune and nonsense,
Cries, "Madam, I have loved you long since.
Permit me your fair ...Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...ys hands, to be well lasht at Schoole.
Of all our Moderne Witts, none seemes to me,
Once to have toucht upon true Comedy,
But hasty Shadwell, and slow Witcherley.
Shadwells unfinisht workes doe yet impart,
Great proofes of force of Nature, none of Art.
With just bold Stroakes, he dashes here and there,
Shewing great Mastery with little care;
And scornes to varnish his good touches o're,
To make the Fooles, and Women, praise 'em more.
But Witcherley, ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...BARDS of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Doubled-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wondrous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...She
I'm waiting for the man I hope to wed.
I've never seen him - that's the funny part.
I promised I would wear a rose of red,
Pinned on my coat above my fluttered heart,
So that he'd know me - a precaution wise,
Because I wrote him I was twenty-three,
And Oh such heaps and heaps of silly lies. . .
So when we meet what will he think of...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...is staggering throne,
And in dreary puddles now be found!
Blest art thou, within thy narrow cell!
To this stir of tragi-comedy,
To these fortune-waves that madly swell,
To this vain and childish lottery,
To this busy crowd effecting naught,
To this rest with labor teeming o'er,
Brother!--to this heaven with devils--fraught,
Now thine eyes have closed forevermore.
Fare thee well, oh, thou to memory dear,
By our blessings lulled to slumbers sweet!
Sleep on calmly in thy pr...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...forgot,
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.
Some doubt, if equal pains, or equal fire
The humbler Muse of comedy require.
But in known images of life, I guess
The labour greater, as th' indulgence less.
Observe how seldom ev'n the best succeed:
Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?
What pert, low dialogue has Farqu'ar writ!
How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!
The stage how loosely does Astr{ae}ea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to be...Read more of this...
by
Raleigh, Sir Walter
...ssion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest....Read more of this...
by
Strode, William
...ssion;
Our mirth the musick of division:
Our mother's wombes the tyring houses bee
Where wee are drest for tyme's short comedy:
The earth's the stage, heaven the spectator is,
Who marketh still whoere doth act amisse:
Our graves that hide us from the burning sunne
Are but drawne curtaynes when the play is done...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...ses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers--
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?...Read more of this...
by
Berman, David
...ssages.
It's part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.
It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people ...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...ts play,
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in myrth lyke to a comedy:
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my merth nor rues my smart:
But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry
She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.
What then can move her? if nor merth nor mone,
She is no woman, but a senceless stone....Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...ts play,
disguysing diuersly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I ioy when glad occasion sits,
and mask in myrth lyke to a Comedy:
soone after when my ioy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she beholding me with constant eye,
delights not in my merth nor rues my smart:
but when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry
she laughes, and hardens euermore her hart.
What then can moue her? if nor merth nor mone,
she is no woman, but a sencelesse stone....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...taught you Greek
But your painting of
‘The Essence of the Rose’
Was pure Platonic form.
You drew the masks
Of Comedy and Tragedy
In perfect harmony.
Having seen neither;
So Socrates was right.
Those who have the Spirit’s gift
Will one day find the light....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...
Would, when she spoke,
She fear'd, discover
Her envious joke:
And she was too much charm'd to be
In haste,--to end the Comedy!
Now WILLIAM, weary of such wooing,
Began, with all his might, hollooing:--
When suddenly from ev'ry bush
The eager throngs impatient rush;
With shouting, and with boist'rous glee
DAME DOWSON they pursue,
And from the broad Oak's canopy,
O'er moonlight fields of sparkling dew,
They bear in triumph the Old DAME,
Bawling, with loud Huzza's, her name;
"...Read more of this...
by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...fruit and wine
On the bedstand’s palm.”
Love!
You only existed in my inflamed brain.
Enough!
Stop this foolish comedy
and take notice:
I’m ripping off
my toy armour,
I,
the greatest of all Don Quixotes!
Remember?
Weighed down by the cross,
Christ stopped for a moment,
weary.
Watching him, the mob
yelled, jeering:
“Get movin’, you clod!”
That’s right!
Be spiteful.
Spit upon him who begs for a rest
on his day of days,
harry and curse him.
To the army of z...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...seeds and far from flowers
And since they remain chained to the sea's powers
May wilt to nonentity or loll and arise to comedy
Or thrown into mere accident through irrelevant incident
Dissipate all identity ceaselessly fragmented by the ocean's
immense and intense, irresistible and insistent
action,
Be scattered like the sand is, purposely and relentlessly,
Living in the summer resorts of the dead endlessly....Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Comedy poems.