Famous Black Sheep Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Gentlmen-Rankers

by Rudyard Kipling
 To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
 To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
 And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses,
 And faith he went the pace and went it blind,
And...Read more of this...

The Black Virgin

by G K Chesterton
 One in thy thousand statues we salute thee 
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim 
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces 
Walk in a forest calling on one name 
And, most of all, how this thing may be so 
Who know thee not are mystified to know
That one cries "Here she stands" and one cries...Read more of this...

Lament

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my...Read more of this...

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

by Mother Goose
Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, marry, have I,
Three bags full;

One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
Who cries in the lane....Read more of this...

The Black Sheep

by Robert William Service
 "The aristocratic ne'er-do-well in Canada frequently finds his way
into the ranks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police." -- Extract.

 Hark to the ewe that bore him:
 "What has muddied the strain?
 Never his brothers before him
 Showed the hint of a stain."
 Hark to the tups and wethers;
 Hark to the old gray ram:
 "We're all of us white,...Read more of this...

The Never-Never Country

by Henry Lawson
 By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed, 
By railroad, coach, and track -- 
By lonely graves of our brave dead, 
Up-Country and Out-Back: 
To where 'neath glorious the clustered stars 
The dreamy plains expand -- 
My home lies wide a thousand miles 
In the Never-Never Land. 

It lies beyond the farming belt, 
Wide wastes of scrub and plain, 
A blazing desert...Read more of this...

Goodbat Nightman

by Roger McGough
 God bless all policemen
and fighters of crime,
May thieves go to jail
for a very long time.

They've had a hard day
helping clean up the town,
Now they hang from the mantelpiece
both upside down.

A glass of warm blood
and then straight up the stairs,
Batman and Robin
are saying their prayers.

* * *

They've locked all the doors
and they've put out the bat,
Put on their batjamas
(They like...Read more of this...

How the Land was Won

by Henry Lawson
 The future was dark and the past was dead 
As they gazed on the sea once more – 
But a nation was born when the immigrants said 
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore! 
In their loneliness they were parted thus 
Because of the work to do, 
A wild wide land to be won for us 
By hearts and hands so...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

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