10 Best Famous Gambit Poems

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

• All Famous Gambit Poems

 APENECK SWEENEY spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganised upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

 The Master played the bishop’s pawn, 
For jest, while Atherton looked on; 
The master played this way and that, 
And Atherton, amazed thereat, 
Said “Now I have a thing in view
That will enlighten one or two, 
And make a difference or so 
In what it is they do not know.” 

The morning stars together sang 
And forth a mighty music rang—
Not heard by many, save as told 
Again through magic manifold 
By such a few as have to play 
For others, in the Master’s way, 
The music that the Master made
When all the morning stars obeyed. 

Atherton played the bishop’s pawn 
While more than one or two looked on; 
Atherton played this way and that, 
And many a friend, amused thereat,
Went on about his business 
Nor cared for Atherton the less; 
A few stood longer by the game, 
With Atherton to them the same. 

The morning stars are singing still,
To crown, to challenge, and to kill; 
And if perforce there falls a voice 
On pious ears that have no choice 
Except to urge an erring hand 
To wreak its homage on the land,
Who of us that is worth his while 
Will, if he listen, more than smile? 

Who of us, being what he is, 
May scoff at others’ ecstasies? 
However we may shine to-day,
More-shining ones are on the way; 
And so it were not wholly well 
To be at odds with Azrael,— 
Nor were it kind of any one 
To sing the end of Atherton.