Famous Allowance Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

If

by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  ...Read more of this...

Widows

by Louise Gluck
 My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

Midsummer: too hot to go out.
Today, my aunt's ahead; she's getting the good cards.
My mother's dragging, having trouble with her concentration.
She can't get used to her own bed this summer.
She had no trouble last summer,
getting used to the floor. She learned...Read more of this...

A Satyre Against Mankind

by John Wilmot
 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...

Original Preface

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a 
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the 
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily 
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands, 
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased 
when...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Allowance poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace