10 Best Famous Fives Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Fives poems. This is a select list of the best famous Fives poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Fives poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of fives poems.

• All Famous Fives Poems

 Bring me a quart of colonial beer 
And some doughy damper to make good cheer, 
I must make a heavy dinner; 
Heavily dine and heavily sup, 
Of indigestible things fill up, 
Next month they run the Melbourne Cup, 
And I have to dream the winner. 
Stoke it in, boys! the half-cooked ham, 
The rich ragout and the charming cham., 
I've got to mix my liquor; 
Give me a gander's gaunt hind leg, 
Hard and tough as a wooden peg, 
And I'll keep it down with a hard-boiled egg, 
'Twill make me dream the quicker. 

Now that I'm full of fearful feed, 
Oh, but I'll dream of a winner indeed 
In my restless, troubled slumber; 
While the night-mares race through my heated brain 
And their devil-riders spur amain, 
The trip for the Cup will reward my pain, 
And I'll spot the winning number. 

Thousands and thousands and thousands more, 
Like sands on the white Pacific shore, 
The crowding people cluster; 
For evermore is the story old, 
While races are bought and backers are sold, 
Drawn by the greed of the gain of gold, 
In their thousands still they muster. 

* * * * * 

And the bookies' cries grow fierce and hot, 
"I'll lay the Cup! The double, if not!" 
"Five monkeys, Little John, sir!" 
"Here's fives bar one, I lay, I lay!" 
And so they shout through the livelong day, 
And stick to the game that is sure to pay, 
While fools put money on, sir! 

And now in my dream I seem to go 
And bet with a "book" that I seem to know -- 
A Hebrew money-lender; 
A million to five is the price I get -- 
Not bad! but before I book the bet 
The horse's name I clean forgret, 
Its number and even gender. 

Now for the start, and here they come, 
And the hoof-strokes roar like a mighty drum 
Beat by a hand unsteady; 
They come like a rushing, roaring flood, 
Hurrah for the speed of the Chester blood; 
For Acme is making the pace so good 
They are some of 'em done already. 

But round the track she begins to tire, 
And a mighty shout goes up "Crossfire!" 
The magpie jacket's leading; 
And Crossfire challenges fierce and bold, 
And the lead she'll have and the lead she'll hold, 
But at length gives way to the black and gold, 
Which right to the front is speeding. 

Carry them on and keep it up -- 
A flying race is the Melbourne Cup, 
You must race and stay to win it; 
And old Commotion, Victoria's pride, 
Now takes the lead with his raking stride, 
And a mighty roar goes far and wide -- 
"There's only Commotion in it!" 

But one draws out from the beaten ruck 
And up on the rails by a piece of luck 
He comes in a style that's clever; 
"It's Trident! Trident! Hurrah for Hales!" 
"Go at 'em now while their courage fails;" 
"Trident! Trident! for New South Wales!" 
"The blue and white for ever!" 

Under the whip! with the ears flat back, 
Under the whip! though the sinews crack, 
No sign of the base white feather: 
Stick to it now for your breeding's sake, 
Stick to it now though your hearts should break, 
While the yells and roars make the grand-stand shake, 
They come down the straignt together. 

Trident slowly forges ahead, 
The fierce whips cut and the spurs are red, 
The pace is undiminished 
Now for the Panics that never fail! 
But many a backer's face grows pale 
As old Commotion swings his tail 
And swerves -- and the Cup is finished. 

* * * * * 

And now in my dream it all comes back: 
I bet my coin on the Sydney crack, 
A million I've won, no question! 
"Give me my money, you hook-nosed hog! 
Give me my money, bookmaking dog!" 
But he disappeared in a kind of fog, 
And I woke with "the indigestion".

 Five little girls, of Five, Four, Three, Two, One:
Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun. 

Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six:
Sitting down to lessons - no more time for tricks. 

Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven:
Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven! 

Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen:
Each young man that calls, I say "Now tell me which you MEAN!" 

Five dashing girls, the youngest Twenty-one:
But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done? 

Five showy girls - but Thirty is an age
When girls may be ENGAGING, but they somehow don't ENGAGE. 

Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before! 


Five PASSE 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"!

 The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.

Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.

It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.

The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.

Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.

The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.

So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvednes,s of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.

 THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.

Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people?

 We're marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains,
A little front o' Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
 With its best foot first
 And the road a-sliding past,
 An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
 While the Big Drum says,
 With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!" --
 "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?"*

* Why don't you get on?

Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see,
There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree,
An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind,
An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind.
 While it's best foot first, . . .

At half-past five's Revelly, an' our tents they down must come,
Like a lot of button mushrooms when you pick 'em up at 'ome.
But it's over in a minute, an' at six the column starts,
While the women and the kiddies sit an' shiver in the carts.
 An' it's best foot first, . . .

Oh, then it's open order, an' we lights our pipes an' sings,
An' we talks about our rations an' a lot of other things,
An' we thinks o' friends in England, an' we wonders what they're at,
An' 'ow they would admire for to hear us sling the bat.*
 An' it's best foot first, . . .


* Language. Thomas's first and firmest conviction is that he is a profound Orientalist and a fluent speaker of Hindustani. As a matter of fact, he depends largely on the sign-language.

It's none so bad o' Sunday, when you're lyin' at your ease,
To watch the kites a-wheelin' round them feather-'eaded trees,
For although there ain't no women, yet there ain't no barrick-yards,
So the orficers goes shootin' an' the men they plays at cards.
 Till it's best foot first, . . .

So 'ark an' 'eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin' sore,
There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore;
An' if your 'eels are blistered an' they feels to 'urt like 'ell,
You drop some tallow in your socks an' that will make 'em well.
 For it's best foot first, . . .

We're marchin' on relief over Injia's coral strand,
Eight 'undred fightin' Englishmen, the Colonel, and the Band;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
 With its best foot first
 And the road a-sliding past,
 An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
 While the Big Drum says,
 With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!" --
 "Kiko kissywarsti don't you amsher argy jow?"

 The new chum's polo pony was the smartest pony yet -- 
The owner backed it for the Cup for all that he could get. 
The books were laying fives to one, in tenners; and you bet 
He was on it. 
The bell was rung, the nags came out their quality to try, 
The band played, "What Ho! Robbo!" as our hero cantered by, 
The people in the Leger Stand cried out, "Hi, mister, hi! 
Are you on it?" 

They watched him as the flag went down; his fate is quickly told -- 
The pony gave a sudden spring, and off the rider rolled. 
The pony finished first all right, but then our hero bold 
Was not on it.