Famous Bawdy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Centenarians

by Robert William Service
 I asked of ancient gaffers three
 The way of their ripe living,
And this is what they told to me
 Without Misgiving.

The First: 'The why I've lived so long,
 To my fond recollection
Is that for women, wine and song
 I've had a predilection.
Full many a bawdy stave I've sung
 With wenches of my choosing,
But of the joys that kept me...Read more of this...

Katie Drummond

by Robert William Service
 My Louis loved me oh so well
 And spiered me for his wife;
He would have haled me from the hell
 That was my bawdy life:
The mother of his bairns to be,
 Daftlike he saw in me.

But I, a hizzie of the town
 Just telt him we must part;
Loving too well to drag him down
 I tore him from my...Read more of this...

Peter Quince At The Clavier

by Wallace Stevens
I 

1 Just as my fingers on these keys 
2 Make music, so the self-same sounds 
3 On my spirit make a music, too. 
4 Music is feeling, then, not sound; 
5 And thus it is that what I feel, 
6 Here in this room, desiring you, 

7 Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, 
8 Is music. It is like the...Read more of this...

The Methodist

by Thomas Chatterton
 Says Tom to Jack, 'tis very odd, 
These representatives of God, 
In color, way of life and evil, 
Should be so very like the devil. 
Jack, understand, was one of those, 
Who mould religion in the rose, 
A red hot methodist; his face 
Was full of puritanic grace, 
His loose lank hair, his slow gradation, 
Declared a late regeneration;...Read more of this...

The Colossus

by Sylvia Plath
 I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and...Read more of this...

The Wild Old Wicked Man

by William Butler Yeats
 Because I am mad about women
I am mad about the hills,'
Said that wild old wicked man
Who travels where God wills.
'Not to die on the straw at home.
Those hands to close these eyes,
That is all I ask, my dear,
From the old man in the skies.
 Daybreak and a candle-end.

'Kind are all your words, my dear,
Do not the rest withhold.
Who can...Read more of this...

Tunbridge Wells

by John Wilmot
 At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head
From Thetis' lap, I raised myself from bed,
And mounting steed, I trotted to the waters
The rendesvous of fools, buffoons, and praters,
Cuckolds, whores, citizens, their wives and daughters.

My squeamish stomach I with wine had bribed
To undertake the dose that was prescribed;
But turning head, a sudden curséd view
That innocent provision overthrew,
And without drinking,...Read more of this...

The Unpromised Land Montgomery Alabama

by Andrew Hudgins
 Despite the noon sun shimmering on Court Street,
each day I leave my desk, and window-shop,
waste time, and use my whole lunch hour to stroll
the route the marchers took. The walk is blistering--
the kind of heat that might make you recall
Nat Turner skinned and rendered into grease
if you share my cheap liberal guilt for sins
before your time. I hold it...Read more of this...

The Old Armchair

by Robert William Service
 In all the pubs from Troon to Ayr
Grandfather's father would repair
With Bobby Burns, a drouthy pair,
 The glass to clink;
And oftenwhiles, when not too "fou,"
They'd roar a bawdy stave or two,
From midnight muk to morning dew,
 And drink and drink.

And Grandfather, with eye aglow
And proper pride, would often show
An old armchair where long ago
 The Bard would sit;
Reciting there...Read more of this...

A Song for Muriel

by Carolyn Kizer
 No-one explains me because
There is nothing to explain.
It's all right here
Very clear.
O for my reputations sake
To be difficult and opaque!

No-one explains me because
Though myopic, I see plain.
I just put it down
With a leer and a frown...
Why does it make you sweat?
Is this the thanks I get?

No-one explains me because
There are tears in my bawdy song.
Once I am dead
Something will...Read more of this...

An Allusion to Horace

by John Wilmot
 Well Sir, 'tis granted, I said Dryden's Rhimes, 
Were stoln, unequal, nay dull many times: 
What foolish Patron, is there found of his, 
So blindly partial, to deny me this? 
But that his Plays, Embroider'd up and downe, 
With Witt, and Learning, justly pleas'd the Towne, 
In the same paper, I as freely owne: 
Yet haveing this allow'd, the...Read more of this...

My Twins

by Robert William Service
 Of twin daughters I'm the mother -
Lord! how I was proud of them;
Each the image of the other,
Like two lilies on one stem;
But while May, my first-born daughter,
Was angelic from the first,
Different as wine and water,
Maude, my second, seemed accurst.

I'm a tender-hearted dame,
Military is my bent;
Thus my pretty dears can claim
For their Pa the Regiment.
As they say: to err...Read more of this...

On The Boulevard

by Robert William Service
 Oh, it's pleasant sitting here,
Seeing all the people pass;
You beside your bock of beer,
I behind my demi-tasse.
Chatting of no matter what.
You the Mummer, I the Bard;
Oh, it's jolly, is it not? --
Sitting on the Boulevard.

More amusing than a book,
If a chap has eyes to see;
For, no matter where I look,
Stories, stories jump at me.
Moving tales my pen might write;
Poems...Read more of this...

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