Famous Ace Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Freedom of Love

by Andre Breton
 (Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti)

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

by Anne Sexton
 No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.
Open to say, 
Good Day Mama,
and shut for the thrust
of the unicorn.
She is unsoiled.
She is as white as a bonefish.

Once there was a lovely virgin
called Snow White.
Say she was...Read more of this...

The Fall of Jock Gillespie

by Rudyard Kipling
 This fell when dinner-time was done --
 'Twixt the first an' the second rub --
That oor mon Jock cam' hame again
 To his rooms ahist the Club.

An' syne he laughed, an' syne he sang,
 An' syne we thocht him fou,
An' syne he trumped his partner's trick,
 An' garred his partner rue.

Then up and spake an elder mon,
 That held...Read more of this...

56. Epistle to Davie A Brother Poet

by Robert Burns
 WHILE winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
An’ bar the doors wi’ driving snaw,
 An’ hing us owre the ingle,
I set me down to pass the time,
An’ spin a verse or twa o’ rhyme,
 In hamely, westlin jingle.
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
 Ben to the chimla lug,
I grudge a wee the great-folk’s gift,
 That live sae bien an’ snug:
...Read more of this...

The New Hieroglyphics

by Les Murray
 In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2S O4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped...Read more of this...

Untitled

by Quincy Troupe
 in brussels, eye sat in the grand place cafe & heard
duke's place, played after salsa
between the old majestic architecture, jazz bouncing off
all that gilded gold history snoring complacently there
flowers all over the ground, up inside the sound
the old white band jammin the music
tight & heavy, like some food
pushin pedal to the metal
gettin all the way down
under the scaffolding surrounding
l'hotel...Read more of this...

258. Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner

by Robert Burns
 AULD comrade dear, and brither sinner,
How’s a’ the folk about Glenconner?
How do you this blae eastlin wind,
That’s like to blaw a body blind?
For me, my faculties are frozen,
My dearest member nearly dozen’d.
I’ve sent you here, by Johnie Simson,
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on;
Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling,
An’ Reid, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
An’ meikle Greek an’...Read more of this...

Olympic Granny

by Kenn Nesbitt
When Grandma goes for gold in
The Olympic games this year,
She’ll laugh at her competitors
And make them quake with fear.
She’s ninety-nine years old
But, in athletics, she’s been blessed.
The trouble is she can’t decide
Which sport she plays the best.
She’s such an ace at archery.
She’s queen of the canoe.
She’s tough to top at taekwondo
And table tennis too.
She dominates the diving board.
She tromps the...Read more of this...

39. Ballad on the American War

by Robert Burns
 WHEN Guilford good our pilot stood
 An’ did our hellim thraw, man,
Ae night, at tea, began a plea,
 Within America, man:
Then up they gat the maskin-pat,
 And in the sea did jaw, man;
An’ did nae less, in full congress,
 Than quite refuse our law, man.


Then thro’ the lakes Montgomery takes,
 I wat he was na slaw, man;
Down Lowrie’s Burn...Read more of this...

Ace Shaw

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I never saw any difference
Between playing cards for money
And selling real estate,
Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
For everything is chance.
Nevertheless
Seest thou a man diligent in business?
He shall stand before Kings!...Read more of this...

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

by Anne Sexton
 If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Common
on speed and saltines,
pissing in the duck pond,
rapping with the street priest,
trading talk like blows,
another missing person,
would understand.

The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.

The...Read more of this...

Poem Reaching For Something

by Quincy Troupe
 we walk through a calligraphy of hats slicing off foreheads
ace-deuce cocked, they slant, razor sharp, clean through imagination, our
spirits knee-deep in what we have forgotten entrancing our bodies now to
dance, like enraptured water lilies
the rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks
eyeballs rippling through breezes
riffing choirs of trees, where a trillion slivers of sunlight prance across
filigreeing leaves, a zillion voices...Read more of this...

The delectable ballad of the waller lot

by Eugene Field
 Up yonder in Buena Park
There is a famous spot,
In legend and in history
Yclept the Waller Lot.

There children play in daytime
And lovers stroll by dark,
For 't is the goodliest trysting-place
In all Buena Park.

Once on a time that beauteous maid,
Sweet little Sissy Knott,
Took out her pretty doll to walk
Within the Waller Lot.

While thus she fared, from Ravenswood
Came Injuns o'er the plain,
And...Read more of this...

Banty Time

by John Hay
I reckon I git your drift, gents,—
You ’low the boy sha’n’t stay;
This is a white man’s country;
You’re Dimocrats, you say;
And whereas, and seein’, and wherefore,
The times bein’ all out o’ j’int,
The ****** has got to mosey
From the limits o’ Spunky P’int!

Le’s reason the thing a minute:
I’m an old-fashioned Dimocrat too,
Though I laid my politics out o’ the way
For to keep...Read more of this...

At This Moment Of Time

by Delmore Schwartz
 Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear
The Ace of Spades. They fear
Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,
Sweet with decision. And they distrust
The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,
Then the colored lights, rising.
Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume
Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,
Locked in the stone of his act and office.
While the brass band brightly bursts over the...Read more of this...

Rubber Souls

by Andrei Voznesensky
 I hate you, rubber souls, you seem 
 to stretch to fit any regime. 

 They'll give a yawning smile, stretched wide, 
 and, like an octopus, they'll draw you tight. 

 A rubber man is an elusive rogue: 
 a fist gets sucked into the bog. 

 The rubber editor is scared of script, 
 the author is...Read more of this...

Song For Heroes

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Captain O’Hare was a mariner brave;
He refused to abandon his ship;
A hero, he sleeps in a watery grave—
And his widow is now Mrs. Bipp,
 Haw! Haw!
His widow is now Mrs. Bipp!

Henri Dupont was a fearless young ace;
Five thousand feet up he was hit;
Each year on his grave pretty flowers we place—
And his widow is now Mrs. Schmitt,
 Haw! Haw!
His...Read more of this...

The Passing of Gundagai

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 "I'll introduce a friend!" he said, 
"And if you've got a vacant pen 
You'd better take him in the shed 
And start him shearing straight ahead; 
He's one of these here quiet men. 
"He never strikes -- that ain't his game; 
No matter what the others try 
He goes on shearing just the same. 
I never rightly knew his...Read more of this...

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