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Famous Flippant Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...from her breast; 
Now in their place a flutt'ring form appears, 
Mocks her fall'n pow'r, and triumphs in her tears: 
A flippant, senseless, aëry thing, whose eye 
Glares wanton mirth, and fulsome ribaldry. 

While motley mumm'ry holds her tinsel reign, 
SHAKSPERE might write, and GARRICK act in vain: 
True Wit recedes, when blushing Reason views 
This spurious offspring of the banish'd Muse. 

The task be thine to check the daring hand 
That leads fantastic folly o'er the la...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby



...nrise in the morn --
A deeper twilight on the lawn --
A print of a vermillion foot --
A purple finger on the slope --
A flippant fly upon the pane --
A spider at his trade again --
An added strut in Chanticleer --
A flower expected everywhere --
An axe shrill singing in the woods --
Fern odors on untravelled roads --
All this and more I cannot tell --
A furtive look you know as well --
And Nicodemus' Mystery
Receives its annual reply!...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...e;
Your terrapin and oysters,
With wine to wash 'em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul's devotion
To apple-pie and cheese!

The pie my Julia makes me
(God bless her Yankee ways!)
On memory's pinions takes me
To dear Green Mountain days;
And seems like I see Mother
Lean on the window-sill,
A-handin' me and brother
What she knows 'll keep us still;
And these feelings are so grat...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...say, `He at his lady's feet
Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs;
Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet
In flippant censers of light lover's songs.'
Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee;
For love is large as is yon heavenly dome:
In love's great blue, each passion is full free
To fly his favorite flight and build his home.
Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak
Stab by mischance a level-flying dove?
Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek:
God-...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...n--we will grant them all. 
The Dutch are then in proclamation shent 
For sin against th' eleventh commandment. 
Hyde's flippant style there pleasantly curvets, 
Still his sharp wit on states and princes whets 
(So Spain could not escape his laughter's spleen: 
None but himsef must choose the King a Queen), 
But when he came the odious clause to pen 
That summons up the Parliament again, 
His writing master many a time he banned 
And wished himself the gout to seize his hand....Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew



...gether!

We were not Phyllis, simple-sweet,
And Corydon; we did not meet
By brook or meadow, but among
A Philistine and flippant throng

Which much we scorned; (less rigorous
It had no scorn at all for us!)
How many an eve of sweet July,
Heedless of Mrs. Grundy's eye,

We've scaled the stairway's topmost height,
And sat there talking half the night;
And, gazing on the crowd below,
Thanked Fate and Heaven that made us so;--

To hold the pure delights of brain
Above light loves...Read more of this...
by Levy, Amy
...Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee:
Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here."...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...achieved? Rejoice! 
On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun. 
Salute him with free heart and choral voice, 
'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan, 
The bold, significant, successful man....Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma
...never had—
You'd know it too . . . ' So went this colloquy,
Half humorous, with undertones of pathos,
Half grave, half flippant . . . while her fingers, softly,
Felt for this tune, played it and let it fall,
Now note by singing note, now chord by chord,
Repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure . . .
Was it symbolic of the woman's weakness
That she could neither break it—nor conclude?
It paused . . . and wandered . . . paused again; while she,
Perplexed and tired, half told ...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...never had—
You'd know it too . . . ' So went this colloquy,
Half humorous, with undertones of pathos,
Half grave, half flippant . . . while her fingers, softly,
Felt for this tune, played it and let it fall,
Now note by singing note, now chord by chord,
Repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure . . .
Was it symbolic of the woman's weakness
That she could neither break it—nor conclude?
It paused . . . and wandered . . . paused again; while she,
Perplexed and tired, half told ...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...u to a gloom condign,
But here you've crept upon me and
I--I am thirty-nine!

Now, were I thirty-five, I could
Assume a flippant guise;
Or, were I forty years, I should
Undoubtedly look wise;
For forty years are said to bring
Sedateness superfine;
But thirty-nine don't mean a thing--
À bas with thirty-nine!

You healthy, hulking girls and boys,--
What makes you grow so fast?
Oh, I'll survive your lusty noise--
I'm tough and bound to last!
No, no--I'm old and withered too--
I ...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...nderneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; 
I pursue you where none else has pursued you; 
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if
 these
 conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do
 not
 balk me, 
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all
 these I
 part aside. 

There i...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry