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Famous Casual Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...AFAR 1 the illustrious Exile roams,
 Whom kingdoms on this day should hail;
 An inmate in the casual shed,
 On transient pity’s bounty fed,
 Haunted by busy memory’s bitter tale!
 Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
 But He, who should imperial purple wear,
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
 His wretched refuge, dark despair,
 While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
 And distant far the faithful few
 Who would his sorrows...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...ne --
 Throw the ashes and the dust.
Don't go down at once. I trust
 You will find excuse to "snake
Three days' casual on the bust."
 Get your fun for old sake's sake.

I could never stand the Plains.
 Think of blazing June and May
Think of those September rains
 Yearly till the Judgment Day!
I should never rest in peace,
 I should sweat and lie awake.
Rail me then, on my decease,
 To the Hills for old sake's sake....Read more of this...

by Moody, William Vaughn
..., 
And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young, 
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, 
With restless violent hands and casual tongue 
Moulding her mighty fates, 
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; 
And like a larger sea, the vital green 
Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung 
Over Dakota and the prairie states. 
By desert people immemorial 
On Arizonan mesas shall be done 
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; 
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice 
...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...f no more,
What now's a-rampage in him, and exhibit,
With a decent half-allegiance to the ages
An earnest of at least a casual eye
Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg,
And to the fealty of more centuries
Than are as yet a picture in our vision.
"There's time enough, -- I'll do it when I'm old,
And we're immortal men," he says to that;
And then he says to me, "Ben, what's 'immortal'?
Think you by any force of ordination
It may be nothing of a sort more noisy
Than a sm...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...
Since everything that has occurred,
Through seeming fickle in your eyes,
Could not a jot be otherwise.
For in this casual cosmic biz
The world can be but what it is;
And nobody can dare deny
Part of this world is you and I.

Or call it fate or destiny
No other issue could there be.
Though half the world I've wandered through
Cause and effect have linked us two.
Aye, all the aeons of the past
Conspired to bring us here at last,
And all I ever chanced to do
Ine...Read more of this...



by Rich, Adrienne
...br> Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.

The length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.

The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have ...Read more of this...

by Nemerov, Howard
...isaster, before the storm,
In its peculiar silence, an integer
Fixed in the middle of the fall of things,
Perfected and casual as to a child's eye
Soap bubbles are, and skipping stones....Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...
So, when ol' Dana hove in sight, we couldn't understand
Why he didn't seem to notice that his crony wa'n't on hand;
No casual allusion, not a question, no, not one,
For the man who'd "worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun!"

We broke it gently to him, but he didn't seem surprised,
Thar wuz no big burst uv passion as we fellers had surmised.
He said that Whoppers wuz a man he 'd never heerd about,
But he mought have carried papers on a Jarsey City route;
And then he recoll...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the Dead, with them
I live in ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...d waves his purple wings, 
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile 
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared, 
Casual fruition; nor in court-amours, 
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, 
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings 
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. 
These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept, 
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof 
Showered roses, which the morn repaired. Sleep on, 
Blest pair; and O!yet happiest...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...so near each other thus all day 
Our task we choose, what wonder if so near 
Looks intervene and smiles, or object new 
Casual discourse draw on; which intermits 
Our day's work, brought to little, though begun 
Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned? 
To whom mild answer Adam thus returned. 
Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond 
Compare above all living creatures dear! 
Well hast thou motioned, well thy thoughts employed, 
How we might best fulfil the work which ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...other part stood one who, at the forge 
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass 
Had melted, (whether found where casual fire 
Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale, 
Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot 
To some cave's mouth; or whether washed by stream 
From underground;) the liquid ore he drained 
Into fit moulds prepared; from which he formed 
First his own tools; then, what might else be wrought 
Fusil or graven in metal. After these, 
But on the hi...Read more of this...

by Ammons, A R
...s as green as), fish **** (the generality), trout

****, rainbow trout **** (for the nice), mullet ****,
sand dab ****, casual sloth ****, elephant ****
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest ****,

horse **** (a favorite), caterpillar **** (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros
****, splashy jaybird ****, mockingbird ****

(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin **** that
oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,
chicken ****...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...out us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Abiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings....Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...ilst on this Oak, a Fruit so small, 
So disproportion'd, grows; 
That, who with Sence surveys this All, 
This universal Casual Ball, 
Its ill Contrivance knows. 

My better Judgment wou'd have hung 
That Weight upon a Tree, 
And left this Mast, thus slightly strung, 
'Mongst things which on the Surface sprung, 
And small and feeble be. 

No more the Caviller cou'd say, 
Nor farther Faults descry; 
For, as he upwards gazing lay, 
An Acorn, loosen'd from the Stay, 
Fell...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...eemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all thc blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
O...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...ike thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose tomorrow the ground won today— 
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Yes, we await it!—but ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...--
Each, like himself & like each other were,
At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
"Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
"As the sun shapes the clouds--thus, on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all, and long before the day
"Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
And some grew weary of the ghastly ...Read more of this...

by Walker, Alice
...
Before the herd of jealous Gods


Fate finds them receiving
At home.


Grim the warrior forest who present
Casual silence with casual battle cries
Or stand unflinchingly lodged


In common sand
Crucified. ...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...ow what happened to the swan. I read
every week of some man's lover showing
the first symptoms, the night sweat

or casual flu, and then the wasting begins
and the disappearance a day at a time.
I don't know what happened to the swan;
I don't know if the stain on the street
was our turtle or some other. I don't know
where these things we meet and know briefly,

as well as we can or they will let us,
go. I only know that I do not want you
--you with your white ...Read more of this...

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