Famous Bachelor Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Bachelor

...'Why keep a cow when I can buy,'
 Said he, 'the milk I need,'
I wanted to spit in his eye
 Of selfishness and greed;
But did not, for the reason he
 Was stronger than I be.

I told him: ''Tis our human fate,
 For better or for worse,
That man and maid should love and mate,
 And little children nurse.
Of course, if you are less than man
 You can't do what w...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William


A Game of Fives

...ASSE girls - Their age? Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam "careless bachelor" begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem "how the money goes"!...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

At The Window

...to care
If I'm early of late. No soft eyes of brown
To watch when I go to, or come from the town.
This bleak, wretched, bachelor life is about
(If I may be allowed the expression) played out.
Somewhere there must be, in the wide world, I think,
Another fair woman who dresses in pink,
And I know of a cottage, for sale, just below,
And it has a French window in front and - heigho!
I wonder how long, at the longest, 'twill be
Before, coming home from the office, I'll see
A nice ...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Epithalamion

..., 25 
And long since ready forth his maske to move, 
With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake, 
And many a bachelor to waite on him, 
In theyr fresh garments trim. 
Bid her awake therefore, and soone her dight, 30 
For lo! the wish¨¨d day is come at last, 
That shall, for all the paynes and sorrowes past, 
Pay to her usury of long delight: 
And, whylest she doth her dight, 
Doe ye to her of joy and solace sing, 35 
That all the woods may answer, and your ...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

Flee On Your Donkey

...hints
strung out—a serialized case history—
thirty-three years of the same dull incest
that sustained us both.
You, my bachelor analyst,
who sat on Marlborough Street,
sharing your office with your mother
and giving up cigarettes each New Year,
were the new God,
the manager of the Gideon Bible.

I was your third-grader
with a blue star on my forehead.
In trance I could be any age,
voice, gesture—all turned backward
like a drugstore clock.
Awake, I memorized dreams.
Dreams ca...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


Never Try To Trick Me With A Kiss

...the pain is his,
While stricken patients let him have his say;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Each virile bachelor dreads paralysis,
The old maid in the gable cries all day:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

The suave eternal serpents promise bliss
To mortal children longing to be gay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man wi...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Poem 2

...is awake,
And long since ready forth his maske to moue,
With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake,
And many a bachelor to waite on him,
In theyr fresh garments trim.
Bid her awake therefore and soone her dight,
For lo the wished day is come at last,
That shall for al the paynes and sorrowes past,
Pay to her vsury of long delight,
And whylest she doth her dight,
Doe ye to her of ioy and solace sing,
That all the woods may answer and your eccho ring....Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man

...It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
 and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
 Billy Sund...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

...nd praise,
But I have begun to loathe him.
Yes, I loathe with loathing shameless
This child who to me is nameless.
This bachelor child in his carriage
Gives never a thought to marriage,
But a person can hardly say knife
Before he will hunt him a wife.

I never see an infant (male),
A-sleeping in the sun,
Without I turn a trifle pale
And think is he the one?
Oh, first he'll want to crop his curls,
And then he'll want a pony,
And then he'll think of pretty girls,
And holy matri...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

The Ballad Of A Bachelor

...Listen, ladies, while I sing
The ballad of John Henry King.

John Henry was a bachelor,
His age was thirty-three or four.

Two maids for his affection vied,
And each desired to be his bride,

And bravely did they strive to bring
Unto their feet John Henry King.

John Henry liked them both so well,
To save his life he could not tell

Which he most wished to be his bride,
Nor was he able to decide.

Fair Kate was jolly, bright, and gay,...Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker

The Betrothed

...of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stums that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, sh...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Married Man

...The bachelor 'e fights for one
 As joyful as can be;
But the married man don't call it fun,
 Because 'e fights for three --
For 'Im an' 'Er an' It
 (An' Two an' One make Three)
'E wants to finish 'is little bit,
 An' e' wants to go 'ome to is tea!

The bachelor pokes up 'is 'ead
 To see if you are gone;
But the married man lies down instead,
 An' waits till the ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Well of St. Keyne

...se hard by
At the Well to fill his pail;
On the Well-side he rested it,
And he bade the Stranger hail.

"Now art thou a bachelor, Stranger?" quoth he,
"For an if thou hast a wife,
The happiest draught thou hast drank this day
That ever thou didst in thy life.

"Or has thy good woman, if one thou hast,
Ever here in Cornwall been?
For an if she have, I'll venture my life
She has drank of the Well of St. Keyne."

"I have left a good woman who never was here."
The Stranger he mad...Read more of this...
by Southey, Robert

To the Unknown Goddess

...d of the hunter when I turn 'mid the gibes of my friends;
When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.

Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow -- as of old on Mars Hill whey they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar -- so I, a young Pagan, have praised

The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me be true,
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you....Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Waking in the Blue

...young.

In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)

After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

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