Famous Drank Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Widows Party

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Where have you been this while away,
 Johnnie, Johnnie?"
'Long with the rest on a picnic lay,
 Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!
They called us out of the barrack-yard
To Gawd knows where from Gosport Hard,
And you can't refuse when you get the card,
 And the Widow gives the party.
 (Bugle: Ta--rara--ra-ra-rara!)

"What did you get to eat and drink,
 Johnnie, Johnnie?"
Standing water as...Read more of this...

Eulogy To A Hell Of A Dame

by Charles Bukowski
 some dogs who sleep ay night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coimng down you
wanted to explode out of 
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a 
rotten 
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than...Read more of this...

Mummia

by Rupert Brooke
 As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;

Drunk on the dead, and medicined
With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.

So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,
Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time
To rarify ecstasy.

Helen's the hair shuts out from...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Brand

by Robert William Service
 'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him...Read more of this...

Henry Clays Mouth

by Thomas Lux
 Senator, statesman, speaker of the House,
exceptional dancer, slim,
graceful, ugly. Proclaimed, before most, slavery
an evil, broker
of elections (burned Jackson
for Adams), took a pistol ball in the thigh
in a duel, delayed, by forty years,
with his compromises, the Civil War,
gambler ("I have always
paid peculiar homage to the fickle goddess"),
boozehound, ladies' man -- which leads us
to his mouth, which was huge,
a long slash...Read more of this...

The Squaw Man

by Robert William Service
 The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched...Read more of this...

Canzone XVI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 124] CANZONE XVI. Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno. TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE.  O my own Italy! though words are vainThe mortal wounds to close,Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,Yet may it soothe my painTo sigh forth Tyber's woes,Read more of this...

Incompatabilities

by Barry Tebb
 For Brenda Williams



La lune diminue; divin septembre.

Divine September the moon wanes.

 Pierre Jean Jouve



Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce:

This is one September I shall not forget.



The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked

And the floors waxed, but I never shone.

The stripes of the red and black blazer

Were prison-grey. You could never see things that way:

Your home...Read more of this...

Voyages

by Philip Levine
 Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart -- 
I walk by sedge and brown river rot 
to where the old lake boats went daily out. 
All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen 
in upon itself. Even the channel's 
grown over. Once we set sail here 
for Bob-Lo, the Brewery Isles, Cleveland. 
We would have gone as far...Read more of this...

Dream Song 94: Ill lay he long upon this last return

by John Berryman
 Ill lay he long, upon this last return,
unvisited. The doctors put everything in the hospital
into reluctant Henry
and the nurses took it out & put it back,
smiling like fiends, with their eternal 'we.'
Henry did a slow burn,

collapsing his dialogue to their white ears
& shiny on the flanges. Sanka he drank
until his memories blurred
& Valerie was coming, lower he sank
and lovely....Read more of this...

He ate and drank the precious Words --

by Emily Dickinson
 He ate and drank the precious Words --
His Spirit grew robust --
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was Dust --

He danced along the dingy Days
And this Bequest of Wings
Was but a Book -- What Liberty
A loosened spirit brings --...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

World Was In The Face Of The Beloved

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 World was in the face of the beloved--,
but suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world can not be grasped.

Why didn't I, from the full, beloved face
as I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drink
world, so near that I couldn't almost taste it?

Ah, I drank. Insatiably I drank.
But I was filled up also, with too...Read more of this...

Peter Anderson And Co

by Henry Lawson
 He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago, 
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.', 
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood -- 
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good. 
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had -- 
He was fond of beer and leisure --...Read more of this...

Last Week

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, the new-chum went to the backblock run, 
But he should have gone there last week. 
He tramped ten miles with a loaded gun, 
But of turkey of duck saw never a one, 
For he should have been there last week, 
They said, 
There were flocks of 'em there last week. 
He wended his way to a waterfall, 
And...Read more of this...

Phoebus with Admetus

by George Meredith
 WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, 
 Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, 
Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, 
 Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod! 
Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe 
 Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, 
How the rustic flute drew the silver...Read more of this...

Old Codger

by Robert William Service
 Of garden truck he made his fare,
 As his bright eyes bore witness;
Health was his habit and his care,
 His hobby human fitness.
He sang the praise of open sky,
 The gladth of Nature's giving;
And when at last he came to die
 It was of too long living.

He held aloof from hate and strife,
 Drank peace in dreamful doses;
He never...Read more of this...

Stars

by Emily Brontë
 Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky? 

All through the night, your glorious eyes
Were gazing down in mine,
And, with a full heart's thankful sighs,
I blessed that watch divine. 

I was at peace, and drank your beams
As they were life to me;
And revelled in my changeful dreams,
Like petrel on...Read more of this...

Drinking Song

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER

Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.

Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.

Round about...Read more of this...

I never drank of joy's sweet cordial,

by Omar Khayyam
I never drank of joy's sweet cordial,
But grief's fell hand infused a drop of gall;
Nor dipped my bread in pleasure's piquant salt,
But briny sorrow made me smart withal!...Read more of this...

191. Song—Theniel Menzies' Bonie Mary

by Robert Burns
 IN comin by the brig o’ Dye,
 At Darlet we a blink did tarry;
As day was dawnin in the sky,
 We drank a health to bonie Mary.


Chorus.—Theniel Menzies’ bonie Mary,
 Theniel Menzies’ bonie Mary,
Charlie Grigor tint his plaidie,
 Kissin’ Theniel’s bonie Mary.


Her een sae bright, her brow sae white,
 Her haffet locks as brown’s a berry;
And aye they dimpl’t...Read more of this...

The Children of Lir

by Katharine Tynan
 Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses;
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool;
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, 
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; 
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early: 
And the day's a...Read more of this...

Strayed Reveller The

by Matthew Arnold
 The Youth

Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
Down on me! thy right arm,
Lean'd up against the column there,
Props thy soft cheek;
Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
I held but now.
Is it, then, evening
So soon? I see, the night-dews,
Cluster'd in thick beads, dim
The agate brooch-stones
On thy white shoulder;
The cool...Read more of this...

Sonnet 05

by Robert Southey
 Hard by the road, where on that little mound
The high grass rustles to the passing breeze,
The child of Misery rests her head in peace.
Pause there in sadness. That unhallowed ground
Inshrines what once was Isabel. Sleep on
Sleep on, poor Outcast! lovely was thy cheek,
And thy mild eye was eloquent to speak
The soul of Pity. Pale and woe-begone
Soon did thy fair...Read more of this...

The Legless Man

by Robert William Service
 (The Dark Side)

My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;
Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,
We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.
Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!
"Debout les...Read more of this...

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