Famous Evening Dress Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Cuba

by Paul Muldoon
 My eldest sister arrived home that morning
In her white muslin evening dress.
'Who the hell do you think you are
Running out to dances in next to nothing?
As though we hadn't enough bother
With the world at war, if not at an end.'
My father was pounding the breakfast-table. 

'Those Yankees were touch and go as it was—
If you'd heard Patton in Armagh—
But...Read more of this...

My Tails

by Robert William Service
 I haven't worn my evening dress
 For nearly twenty years;
Oh I'm unsocial, I confess,
 A hermit, it appears.
So much moth-balled it's but away,
 And though wee wifie wails,
Never unto my dimmest day
 I'll don my tails.

How slim and trim I looked in them,
 Though I was sixty old;
And now their sleekness I condemn
 To lie in rigid fold.
I have...Read more of this...

The Onion Memory

by Craig Raine
 Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears--
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust--the old flag...Read more of this...

Dan The Wreck

by Henry Lawson
 Tall, and stout, and solid-looking, 
Yet a wreck; 
None would think Death's finger's hooking 
Him from deck. 
Cause of half the fun that's started -- 
`Hard-case' Dan -- 
Isn't like a broken-hearted, 
Ruined man. 

Walking-coat from tail to throat is 
Frayed and greened -- 
Like a man whose other coat is 
Being cleaned; 
Gone for ever round the edging...Read more of this...

Fit the Seventh ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Banker's Fate 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 
And the Banker, inspired with a courage so new
It was matter for general remark, 
Rushed madly ahead and was lost to their view
In his zeal to...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Hank The Finn

by Robert William Service
 Now Fireman Flynn met Hank the Finn where lights of Lust-land glow;
"Let's leave," says he, "the lousy sea, and give the land a show.
I'm fed up to the molar mark with wallopin' the brine;
I feel the bloody barnacles a-carkin' on me spine.
Let's hit the hard-boiled North a crack, where creeks are paved with gold."
"You count me in," says Hank...Read more of this...

Making Good

by Robert William Service
 No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success;
he may not own his roof-tree overhead,
He may be on his uppers and have hocked his evening dress -
(Financially speaking - in the red)
He may have chronic shortage to repay the old home mortgage,
And almost be a bankrupt in his biz.,
But though he skips his dinner,
And each day...Read more of this...

The Atavist

by Robert William Service
 What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne -- what does your madness mean?

Go home, go home to your clubs, Tom...Read more of this...

Preamble (A Rough Draft For An Ars Poetica)

by Jean Cocteau
 ...Preamble

A rough draft 
for an ars poetica

. . . . . . . 

Let's get our dreams unstuck

The grain of rye
free from the prattle of grass
et loin de arbres orateurs

I 

plant

it

It will sprout


But forget about 
the rustic festivities

For the explosive word 
falls harmlessly
eternal through
the compact generations 

and except for you

 nothing 
 denotates

its sweet-scented dynamite

Greetings
I discard eloquence
the empty sail
and...Read more of this...

The Spirit Of The Unborn Babe

by Robert William Service
 The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all;
The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting...Read more of this...

The Joy Of Being Poor

by Robert William Service
 I

Let others sing of gold and gear, the joy of being rich;
But oh, the days when I was poor, a vagrant in a ditch!
When every dawn was like a gem, so radiant and rare,
And I had but a single coat, and not a single care;
When I would feast right royally on bacon, bread and beer,
And dig into a stack...Read more of this...

The Search

by Robert William Service
 Happiness, a-roving round
For a sweet abiding place,
In a stately palace found
Symmetry and gilded grace;
Courtliness and table cheer,
All that chimes with evening dress . . .
"I could never stick it here,"
Swift decided Happiness.

Happiness a-seeking still,
In a mansion of the town,
Comfort-crammed to overspill,
Sought in vain to settle down.
Every nook strained to express
Opulent prosperity . . .
But "Alas!" said Happiness,
"This is not...Read more of this...

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