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Best Famous Gents Poems

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

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Written by Philip Larkin | Create an image from this poem

Essential Beauty

 In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be. High above the gutter
A silver knife sinks into golden butter,
A glass of milk stands in a meadow, and
Well-balanced families, in fine
Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,
Even their youth, to that small cube each hand
Stretches towards. These, and the deep armchairs
Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars
(Gas or electric), quarter-profile cats
By slippers on warm mats,
Reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares

They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise
Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,
Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes
That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age, and dying smokers sense
Walking towards them through some dappled park
As if on water that unfocused she
No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,
Who now stands newly clear,
Smiling, and recognising, and going dark.


Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

An Evening Of Poetry

 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet of crisps in sight.

I parked my friend on a bench and wandered

Down Highgate Hill, realising where I was

From the Waterlow Unit and the Whittington’s A&E.

Some say they know their way by the pubs

But I find psychiatric units more useful.

At a reading like this you never know just who

Might have a do and need some Haldol fast.

(Especially if the poet hovering round sanity’s border

Should chance upon the critic who thinks his Word

Is law and order - the first’s a devotee of a Krishna cult

For rich retirees; the second wrote a good book once

On early Hughes, but goes off if you don’t share his

‘Thought through views’).



In the event the only happening was a turbanned Sikh

Having a go at an Arts Council guru leaning in a stick.

I remembered Martin Bell’s story of how Scannell the boxer

Broke - was it Redgrove’s brolly? - over his head and had

To hide in the Gents till time was called.

James Simmons boasted of how the pint he threw

At Anthony Thwaite hit Geoffrey Hill instead.



O, for the company of the missing and the dead

Martin Bell, Wendy Oliver, Iris and Ted.
Written by Vernon Scannell | Create an image from this poem

Death In The Lounge Bar

 The bar he went inside was not 
A place he often visited; 
He welcomed anonymity; 
No one to switch inquisitive 
Receivers on, no one could see, 
Or wanted to, exactly what 
He was, or had been, or would be; 
A quiet brown place, a place to drink 
And let thought simmer like good stock, 
No mirrors to distract, no fat 
And calculating face of clock, 
A good calm place to sip and think. 
If anybody noticed that 
He was even there they'd see 
A fairly tall and slender man, 
Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and handsome in 
A manner strictly masculine. 
They would not know, or want to know, 
More than what they saw of him, 
Nor would they wish to bug the bone 
Walls of skull and listen in 
To whatever whisperings 
Pittered quietly in that dark: 
An excellent place to sip your gin. 
Then---sting of interruption! voice 
Pierced the private walls and shook 
His thoughtful calm with delicate shock. 
A waiter, with white napkin face 
And shining toe-cap hair, excused 
The oiled intrusion, asking if 
His name was what indeed it was. 
In that case he was wanted on 
The telephone the customers used, 
The one next to the Gents. He went. 
Inside the secretive warm box 
He heard his wife's voice, strangled by 
Distance, darkness, coils of wire, 
But unmistakably her voice, 
Asking why he was so late, 
Why did he humiliate 
Her in every way he could, 
Make her life so hard to face? 
She'd telephoned most bars in town 
Before she'd finally tracked him down. 
He said that he'd been working late 
And slipped in for a quick one on 
His weary journey home. He'd come 
Back at once. Right now. Toot sweet. 
No, not another drop. Not one. 
Back in the bar, he drank his gin 
And ordered just one more, the last. 
And just as well: his peace had gone; 
The place no longer welcomed him. 
He saw the waiter moving past, 
That pale ambassador of gloom, 
And called him over, asked him how 
He had known which customer 
To summon to the telephone. 
The waiter said, 'Your wife described 
You, sir. I knew you instantly.' 
'And how did she describe me, then, 
That I'm so easily recognized?' 
'She said: grey suit, cream shirt, blue tie, 
That you were fairly tall, red-faced, 
Stout, middle-aged, and going bald.' 
Disbelief cried once and sat 
Bolt upright, then it fell back dead. 
'Stout middle-aged and going bald.' 
The slender ghost with golden hair 
Watched him go into the cold 
Dark outside, heard his slow tread 
Fade towards wife, armchair, and bed.
Written by John Hay | Create an image from this poem

Banty Time

I reckon I git your drift, gents,—
You ’low the boy sha’n’t stay;
This is a white man’s country;
You’re Dimocrats, you say;
And whereas, and seein’, and wherefore,
The times bein’ all out o’ j’int,
The ****** has got to mosey
From the limits o’ Spunky P’int!

Le’s reason the thing a minute:
I’m an old-fashioned Dimocrat too,
Though I laid my politics out o’ the way
For to keep till the war was through.
14But I come back here, allowin’
To vote as I used to do,
Though it gravels me like the devil to train
Along o’ sich fools as you.

Now dog my cats ef I kin see,
In all the light of the day,
What you’ve got to do with the question
Ef Tim shill go or stay.
And furder than that I give notice,
Ef one of you tetches the boy,
He kin check his trunks to a warmer clime
Than he’ll find in Illanoy.

Why, blame your hearts, jest hear me!
You know that ungodly day
When our left struck Vicksburg Heights, how ripped
And torn and tattered we lay.
When the rest retreated I stayed behind,
Fur reasons sufficient to me,—
With a rib caved in, and a leg on a strike,
I sprawled on that damned glacee.

Lord! how the hot sun went for us,
And br’iled and blistered and burned!
How the Rebel bullets whizzed round us
When a cuss in his death-grip turned!
Till along toward dusk I seen a thing
I couldn’t believe for a spell:
That ******—that Tim—was a crawlin’ to me
Through that fire-proof, gilt-edged hell!
15The Rebels seen him as quick as me,
And the bullets buzzed like bees;
But he jumped for me, and shouldered me,
Though a shot brought him once to his knees;
But he staggered up, and packed me off,
With a dozen stumbles and falls,
Till safe in our lines he drapped us both,
His black hide riddled with balls.

So, my gentle gazelles, thar’s my answer,
And here stays Banty Tim:
He trumped Death’s ace for me that day,
And I’m not goin’ back on him!
You may rezoloot till the cows come home,
But ef one of you tetches the boy,
He’ll wrastle his hash to-night in hell,
Or my name’s not Tilmon Joy!

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry