10 Best Famous Schoolboys Poems

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

• All Famous Schoolboys Poems

 Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour 'prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and, tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear 'All here in one bed lay'.

She is all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.

1

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,
For my mean pen, are too superior things,
And how they all, or each, their dates have run
Let poets, and historians set these forth,
My obscure verse shall not so dim their worth.


2

But when my wond'ring eyes, and envious heart,
Great Bartas' sugared lines do but read o'er,
Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part
'Twixt him and me that overfluent store;
A Bartas can do what a Bartas will,
But simple I, according to my skill.


3

From schoolboy's tongue, no rhetoric we expect,
Nor yet a sweet consort, from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty, where's a main defect;
My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings;
And this to mend, alas, no art is able,
'Cause nature made it so irreparable.


4

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek
Who lisped at first, speak afterwards more plain.
By art, he gladly found what he did seek,
A full requital of his striving pain:
Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure.
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.


5

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who says my hand a needle better fits;
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong;
For such despite they cast on female wits:
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.


6

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild,
Else of our sex, why feigned they those nine,
And poesy made Calliope's own child?
So 'mongst the rest they placed the arts divine:
But this weak knot they will full soon untie,
The Greeks did nought, but play the fool and lie.


7

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are,
Men have precedency, and still excel;
It is but vain, unjustly to wage war;
Men can do best, and women know it well;
Preeminence in each and all is yours,
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.


8

And oh, ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey, still catch your praise,
If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give wholesome parsley wreath, I ask no bays:
This mean and unrefinèd stuff of mine,
Will make your glistering gold but more to shine.

 Much wine had passed, with grave discourse
Of who fucks who, and who does worse
(Such as you usually do hear
From those that diet at the Bear),
When I, who still take care to see
Drunkenness relieved by lechery,
Went out into St. James's Park
To cool my head and fire my heart.
But though St. James has th' honor on 't,
'Tis consecrate to prick and ****.
There, by a most incestuous birth,
Strange woods spring from the teeming earth;
For they relate how heretofore,
When ancient Pict began to whore,
Deluded of his assignation
(Jilting, it seems, was then in fashion),
Poor pensive lover, in this place
Would frig upon his mother's face;
Whence rows of mandrakes tall did rise
Whose lewd tops fucked the very skies.
Each imitative branch does twine
In some loved fold of Aretine,
And nightly now beneath their shade
Are buggeries, rapes, and incests made.
Unto this all-sin-sheltering grove
Whores of the bulk and the alcove,
Great ladies, chambermaids, and drudges,
The ragpicker, and heiress trudges.
Carmen, divines, great lords, and tailors,
Prentices, poets, pimps, and jailers,
Footmen, fine fops do here arrive,
And here promiscuously they swive.

Along these hallowed walks it was
That I beheld Corinna pass.
Whoever had been by to see
The proud disdain she cast on me
Through charming eyes, he would have swore
She dropped from heaven that very hour,
Forsaking the divine abode
In scorn of some despairing god.
But mark what creatures women are:
How infinitely vile, when fair!

Three knights o' the' elbow and the slur
With wriggling tails made up to her.

The first was of your Whitehall baldes,
Near kin t' th' Mother of the Maids;
Graced by whose favor he was able
To bring a friend t' th' Waiters' table,
Where he had heard Sir Edward Sutton
Say how the King loved Banstead mutton;
Since when he'd ne'er be brought to eat
By 's good will any other meat.
In this, as well as all the rest,
He ventures to do like the best,
But wanting common sense, th' ingredient
In choosing well not least expedient,
Converts abortive imitation
To universal affectation.
Thus he not only eats and talks
But feels and smells, sits down and walks,
Nay looks, and lives, and loves by rote,
In an old tawdry birthday coat.

The second was a Grays Inn wit,
A great inhabiter of the pit,
Where critic-like he sits and squints,
Steals pocket handkerchiefs, and hints
From 's neighbor, and the comedy,
To court, and pay, his landlady.

The third, a lady's eldest son
Within few years of twenty-one
Who hopes from his propitious fate,
Against he comes to his estate,
By these two worthies to be made
A most accomplished tearing blade.

One, in a strain 'twixt tune and nonsense,
Cries, "Madam, I have loved you long since.
Permit me your fair hand to kiss";
When at her mouth her **** cries, "Yes!"
In short, without much more ado,
Joyful and pleased, away she flew,
And with these three confounded asses
From park to hackney coach she passes.

So a proud ***** does lead about
Of humble curs the amorous rout,
Who most obsequiously do hunt
The savory scent of salt-swoln ****.
Some power more patient now relate
The sense of this surprising fate.
Gods! that a thing admired by me
Should fall to so much infamy.
Had she picked out, to rub her **** on,
Some stiff-pricked clown or well-hung parson,
Each job of whose spermatic sluice
Had filled her **** with wholesome juice,
I the proceeding should have praised
In hope sh' had quenched a fire I raised.
Such natural freedoms are but just:
There's something generous in mere lust.
But to turn a damned abandoned jade
When neither head nor tail persuade;
To be a whore in understanding,
A passive pot for fools to spend in!
The devil played booty, sure, with thee
To bring a blot on infamy.

But why am I, of all mankind,
To so severe a fate designed?
Ungrateful! Why this treachery
To humble fond, believing me,
Who gave you privilege above
The nice allowances of love?
Did ever I refuse to bear
The meanest part your lust could spare?
When your lewd **** came spewing home
Drenched with the seed of half the town,
My dram of sperm was supped up after
For the digestive surfeit water.
Full gorged at another time
With a vast meal of slime
Which your devouring **** had drawn
From porters' backs and footmen's brawn,
I was content to serve you up
My ballock-full for your grace cup,
Nor ever thought it an abuse
While you had pleasure for excuse -
You that could make my heart away
For noise and color, and betray
The secrets of my tender hours
To such knight-errant paramours,
When, leaning on your faithless breast,
Wrapped in security and rest,
Soft kindness all my powers did move,
And reason lay dissolved in love!

May stinking vapors choke your womb
Such as the men you dote upon
May your depraved appetite,
That could in whiffling fools delight,
Beget such frenzies in your mind
You may go mad for the north wind,
And fixing all your hopes upon't
To have him bluster in your ****,
Turn up your longing **** t' th' air
And perish in a wild despair!
But cowards shall forget to rant,
Schoolboys to frig, old whores to paint;
The Jesuits' fraternity
Shall leave the use of buggery;
Crab-louse, inspired with grace divine,
From earthly cod to heaven shall climb;
Physicians shall believe in Jesus,
And disobedience cease to please us,
Ere I desist with all my power
To plague this woman and undo her.
But my revenge will best be timed
When she is married that is limed.
In that most lamentable state
I'll make her feel my scorn and hate:
Pelt her with scandals, truth or lies,
And her poor cur with jealousied,
Till I have torn him from her breech,
While she whines like a dog-drawn *****;
Loathed and despised, kicked out o' th' Town
Into some dirty hole alone,
To chew the cud of misery
And know she owes it all to me.

And may no woman better thrive 
That dares prophane the **** I swive!

 In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.

 So closed our tale, of which I give you all 
The random scheme as wildly as it rose: 
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased 
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 
'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me, 
'What, if you drest it up poetically?' 
So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent: 
Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven 
Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? 
The men required that I should give throughout 
The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, 
With which we bantered little Lilia first: 
The women--and perhaps they felt their power, 
For something in the ballads which they sang, 
Or in their silent influence as they sat, 
Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque, 
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close-- 
They hated banter, wished for something real, 
A gallant fight, a noble princess--why 
Not make her true-heroic--true-sublime? 
Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? 
Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. 
Then rose a little feud betwixt the two, 
Betwixt the mockers and the realists: 
And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, 
And yet to give the story as it rose, 
I moved as in a strange diagonal, 
And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part 
In our dispute: the sequel of the tale 
Had touched her; and she sat, she plucked the grass, 
She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
'You--tell us what we are' who might have told, 
For she was crammed with theories out of books, 
But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these: we climbed 
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw 
The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves; 
Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower 
Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; 
The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; 
A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, 
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 

'Look there, a garden!' said my college friend, 
The Tory member's elder son, 'and there! 
God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, 
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled-- 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith, 
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 
Some patient force to change them when we will, 
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd-- 
But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, 
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, 
The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
In mock heroics stranger than our own; 
Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out; 
Too comic for the serious things they are, 
Too solemn for the comic touches in them, 
Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 
As some of theirs--God bless the narrow seas! 
I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.' 

'Have patience,' I replied, 'ourselves are full 
Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth: 
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, 
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time 
To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides.' 

In such discourse we gained the garden rails, 
And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, 
Before a tower of crimson holly-hoaks, 
Among six boys, head under head, and looked 
No little lily-handed Baronet he, 
A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman, 
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 
A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
A patron of some thirty charities, 
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none; 
Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn; 
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 
That stood the nearest--now addressed to speech-- 
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed 
Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 
To follow: a shout rose again, and made 
The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 
From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer 
From slope to slope through distant ferns, and rang 
Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout 
More joyful than the city-roar that hails 
Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs 
Give up their parks some dozen times a year 
To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried, 
I likewise, and in groups they streamed away. 

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, 
So much the gathering darkness charmed: we sat 
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, 
Perchance upon the future man: the walls 
Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped, 
And gradually the powers of the night, 
That range above the region of the wind, 
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up 
Through all the silent spaces of the worlds, 
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly, 
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph 
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.

 A feather from the Whippoorwill
That everlasting -- sings!
Whose galleries -- are Sunrise --
Whose Opera -- the Springs --
Whose Emerald Nest the Ages spin
Of mellow -- murmuring thread --
Whose Beryl Egg, what Schoolboys hunt
In "Recess" -- Overhead!

 So you think its Stephen?
Then I'd best make sure
Be on the safe side as it were.
Ah, theres been a mistake. The hair
you see, its black, now Stephens fair ...
Whats that? The explosion?
Of course, burnt black. Silly of me.
I should have known. Then lets get on.

The face, is that the face mask?
that mask of charred wood
blistered scarred could
that have been a child's face?
The sweater, where intact, looks
in fact all too familiar.
But one must be sure.

The scoutbelt. Yes thats his.
I recognise the studs he hammered in
not a week ago. At the age
when boys get clothes-conscious
now you know. Its almost
certainly Stephen. But one must
be sure. Remove all trace of doubt.
Pull out every splinter of hope.

Pockets. Empty the pockets.
Handkerchief? Could be any schoolboy's.
Dirty enough. Cigarettes?
Oh this can't be Stephen.
I dont allow him to smoke you see.
He wouldn't disobey me. Not his father.
But that's his penknife. Thats his alright.
And thats his key on the keyring 
Gran gave him just the other night.
Then this must be him.

I think I know what happened
... ... ... about the cigarettes
No doubt he was minding them
for one of the older boys.
Yes thats it.
Thats him.
Thats our Stephen.

 The night still frightens you.
You know it is interminable
And of vast, unimaginable dimensions.
"That's because His insomnia is permanent,"
You've read some mystic say.
Is it the point of His schoolboy's compass
That pricks your heart?

Somewhere perhaps the lovers lie
Under the dark cypress trees,
Trembling with happiness,
But here there's only your beard of many days
And a night moth shivering
Under your hand pressed against your chest.

Oldest child, Prometheus
Of some cold, cold fire you can't even name
For which you're serving slow time
With that night moth's terror for company.

 Oh something just now must be happening there! 
That suddenly and quiveringly here, 
Amid the city's noises, I must think 
Of mangoes leaning o'er the river's brink, 
And dexterous Davie climbing high above, 
The gold fruits ebon-speckled to remove, 
And toss them quickly in the tangled mass 
Of wis-wis twisted round the guinea grass; 
And Cyril coming through the bramble-track 
A prize bunch of bananas on his back; 
And Georgie--none could ever dive like him-- 
Throwing his scanty clothes off for a swim; 
And schoolboys, from Bridge-tunnel going home, 
Watching the waters downward dash and foam. 
This is no daytime dream, there's something in it, 
Oh something's happening there this very minute!

 There's many a schoolboy's bat and ball that are gathering dust at home, 
For he hears a voice in the future call, and he trains for the war to come; 
A serious light in his eyes is seen as he comes from the schoolhouse gate; 
He keeps his kit and his rifle clean, and he sees that his back is straight. 

But straight or crooked, or round, or lame – you may let these words take root; 
As the time draws near for the sterner game, all boys should learn to shoot, 
From the beardless youth to the grim grey-beard, let Australians ne'er forget, 
A lame limb never interfered with a brave man's shooting yet. 

Over and over and over again, to you and our friends and me, 
The warning of danger has sounded plain – like the thud of a gun at sea. 
The rich man turns to his wine once more, and the gay to their worldly joys, 
The "statesman" laughs at a hint of war – but something has told the boys. 

The schoolboy scouts of the White Man's Land are out on the hills to-day; 
They trace the tracks from the sea-beach sand and sea-cliffs grim and grey; 
They take the range for a likely shot by every cape and head, 
And they spy the lay of each lonely spot where an enemy's foot might tread. 

In the cooling breeze of the coastal streams, or out where the townships bake, 
They march in fancy, and fight in dreams, and die for Australia's sake. 
They hold the fort till relief arrives, when the landing parties storm, 
And they take the pride of their fresh young lives in the set of a uniform. 

Where never a loaded shell was hurled, nor a rifle fired to kill, 
The schoolboy scouts of the Southern World are choosing their Battery Hill. 
They run the tapes on the flats and fells by roads that the guns might sweep, 
They are fixing in memory obstacles where the firing lines shall creep. 

They read and they study the gunnery - they ask till the meaning's plain, 
But the craft of the scout is a simple thing to the young Australian brain. 
They blaze the track for a forward run, where the scrub is everywhere, 
And they mark positions for every gun and every unit there. 

They trace the track for a quick retreat – and the track for the other way round, 
And they mark the spot in the summer heat where the water is always found. 
They note the chances of cliff and tide, and where they can move, and when, 
And every point where a man might hide in the days when they'll fight as men. 

When silent men with their rifles lie by many a ferny dell; 
And turn their heads when a scout goes by, with a cheery growl "All's well"; 
And scouts shall climb by the fisherman's ways, and watch for a sign of ships, 
With stern eyes fixed on the threatening haze where the blue horizon dips. 

When men shall camp in the dark and damp by the bough-marked battery, 
Between the forts and the open ports where the miners watch the sea; 
And talk perhaps of their boy-scout days, as they sit in their shelters rude, 
While motors race to the distant bays with ammunition and food. 

When the city alight shall wait by night for news from a far-out post, 
And men ride down from the farming town to patrol the lonely coast – 
Till they hear the thud of a distant gun, or the distant rifles crack, 
And Australians spring to their arms as one to drive the invaders back. 

There'll be no music or martial noise, save the guns to help you through, 
For a plain and shirt-sleeve job, my boys, is the job that we'll have to do. 
And many of those who had learned to shoot – and in learning learned to teach – 
To the last three men, and the last galoot, shall die on some lonely beach. 

But they'll waste their breath in no empty boast, and they'll prove to the world their worth, 
When the shearers rush to the Eastern Coast, and the miners rush to Perth. 
And the man who fights in a Queenscliff fort, or up by Keppel Bay, 
Will know that his mates at Bunbury are doing their share that day. 

There was never a land so great and wide, where the foreign fathers came, 
That has bred her children so much alike, with their hearts so much the same. 
And sons shall fight by the mangrove creeks that lie on the lone East Coast, 
Who never shall know (or not for weeks) if the rest of Australia's lost. 

And far in the future (I see it well, and born of such days as these), 
There lies an Australia invincible, and mistress of all her seas; 
With monuments standing on hill and head, where her sons shall point with pride 
To the names of Australia's bravest dead, carved under the words "Here died."