Famous Craps Poems by Famous Poets

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

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377. Song—The Country Lass

...’s plenty beets the luver’s fire.”


“For Johnie o’ the Buskie-glen,
 I dinna care a single flie;
He lo’es sae weel his craps and kye,
 He has nae love to spare for me;
But blythe’s the blink o’ Robie’s e’e,
 And weel I wat he lo’es me dear:
Ae blink o’ him I wad na gie
 For Buskie-glen and a’ his gear.”


“O thoughtless lassie, life’s a faught;
 The canniest gate, the strife is sair;
But aye fu’-han’t is fechtin’ best,
 A hungry care’s an unco care:
But some will spend and s...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


88. The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer

...’ll tell the reason.


Scotland, my auld, respected mither!
Tho’ whiles ye moistify your leather,
Till, whare ye sit on craps o’ heather,
 Ye tine your dam;
Freedom an’ whisky gang thegither!
 Take aff your dram!


 Note 1. This was written before the Act anent the Scotch distilleries, of session 1786, for which Scotland and the author return their most grateful thanks.—R. B. [back]
Note 2. James Boswell of Auchinleck, the biographer of Johnson. [back]
Note 3. George Dempster...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert

Hoodlums

...…”
Today my son, to-morrow yours, the day after your next door neighbor’s—it is all in the wrists of the gods who shoot craps—it is anybody’s guess whose eyes shut next.
Being a hoodlum now, you and I, being all of us a world of hoodlums, let us take up the cry when the mob sluffs by on a thousand shoe soles, let us too yammer, “Kill him! kill him!…”
Let us do this now … for our mothers … for our sisters and wives … let us kill, kill, kill—for the torsoes of the women are tir...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs

...he same as why boys buy a nickel’s worth of peanuts and eat them and then buy another nickel’s worth.
Newsboys shooting craps in a back alley have a fugitive understanding of the scientific principle involved.
The jockey in a yellow satin shirt and scarlet boots, riding a sorrel pony at the county fair, has a grasp of the theory.
It is the same as why boys go running lickety-split
away from a school-room geography lesson
in April when the crawfishes come out
and the young fro...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Singing Nigger

...,
I know where your songs came from.
I know why God listens to your, “Walk All Over God’s Heaven.”
I heard you shooting craps, “My baby’s going to have a new dress.”
I heard you in the cinders, “I’m going to live anyhow until I die.”
I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you
 harmonizing six ways to sing, “Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield.”
I went away asking where I come from....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl


The Booker Washington Trilogy

...
And there they sit and gnash their teeth,
And each one wears a hop-vine wreath.
They are matching pennies and shooting craps,
They are playing poker and taking naps.
And old Legree is fat and fine:
He eats the fire, he drinks the wine —
Blood and burning turpentine —
Down, down with the Devil; 
Down, down with the Devil; 
Down, down with the Devil.


II. JOHN BROWN

(To be sung by a leader and chorus, the leader singing the body of the poem, while the chorus interrupts with ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

The Man of Laws Tale

...e contempt of the world") by Pope
Innocent.)

2. Transcriber' note: This refers to the game of hazard, a dice
game like craps, in which two ("ambes ace") won, and eleven
("six-cinque") lost.

3. Purpose: discourse, tale: French "propos".

4. "Peace" rhymed with "lese" and "chese", the old forms of
"lose" and "choose".

5. According to Middle Age writers there were two motions of
the first heaven; one everything always from east to west above
the stars; the other moving the st...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

Vers De Société

...My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's ****, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid--

Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted
Over to catch the dri...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Walking The Marshland

...gosling,
egret, whooping crane, and they liked

when I agreed. The casinos were a few miles
to the east.
I liked saying craps and croupier

and sometimes I wanted to be lost
in those bright
windowless ruins. It was April,

the gnats and black flies
weren't out yet.
The mosquitoes hadn't risen

from their stagnant pools to trouble
paradise and to give us
the great right to complain.

I loved these girls. The world
beyond Brigantine
awaited their beauty and beauty

is what othe...Read more of this...
by Dunn, Stephen

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