Famous Funny Love Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lost

by Robert William Service
 "Black is the sky, but the land is white--
 (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
 Father, where is our boy to-night?
 Pray to God he is safe and warm."

 "Mother, mother, why should you fear?
 Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
 Over his cabin shines so clear--
 Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

"It's getting dark...Read more of this...

The Poet in the Nursery

by Robert Graves
 The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling 
In a dim library, just behind the chair 
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling 
A song about some Lovers at a Fair, 
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were beastly things and never there. 

And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking 
About the tragic...Read more of this...

The Blues

by William Matthews
 What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet
and boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons?
I had pieces to learn by heart, but at twelve

you think the heart and memory are different.
"'It's a poor sort of memory that only works
backwards,' the Queen remarked." Alice in Wonderland.

Although I knew the way music can fill a room,
even with loneliness, which is...Read more of this...

The Wedding Ring Dance

by Anne Sexton
 I dance in circles holding
the moth of the marriage,
thin, sticky, fluttering
its skirts, its webs.
The moth oozing a tear,
or is it a drop of urine?
The moth, grinning like a pear,
or is it teeth
clamping the iron maiden shut?

The moth,
who is my mother,
who is my father,
who was my lover,
floats airily out of my hands
and I dance slower,
pulling off the fat diamond engagement...Read more of this...

Tower Of Song

by Leonard Cohen
 Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey 
I ache in the places where I used to play 
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on 
I'm just paying my rent every day 
Oh in the Tower of Song 
I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? 
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet 
But...Read more of this...

The Singing-Woman from the Woods Edge

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...

A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston

by Anne Sexton
 Until tonight they were separate specialties, 
different stories, the best of their own worst. 
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's 
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first 
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone 
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum 
school for proper girls. The next April the plane 
bucked...Read more of this...

350. Epistle to John Maxwell Esq. of Terraughty

by Robert Burns
 HEALTH to the Maxwell’s veteran Chief!
Health, aye unsour’d by care or grief:
Inspir’d, I turn’d Fate’s sibyl leaf,
 This natal morn,
I see thy life is stuff o’ prief,
 Scarce quite half-worn.


This day thou metes threescore eleven,
And I can tell that bounteous Heaven
(The second-sight, ye ken, is given
 To ilka Poet)
On thee a tack o’ seven times seven
 Will yet bestow...Read more of this...

The Ladies

by Rudyard Kipling
 I've taken my fun where I've found it;
 I've rouged an' I've ranged in my time;
I've 'ad my pickin' o' seethearts,
 An' four o' the lot was prime.
One was an 'arf-caste widow,
 One was awoman at Prome,
One was the wife of a jemadar-sais
 An' one is a girl at 'ome.

Now I aren't no 'and with the ladies,
 For, takin'...Read more of this...

The Prospector

by Robert William Service
 I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and...Read more of this...

Its Raining In Love

by Richard Brautigan
 I don't know what it is,
 but I distrust myself
 when I start to like a girl
 a lot.

 It makes me nervous.
 I don't say the right things
 or perhaps I start
 to examine,
 evaluate,
 compute
 what I am saying.

 If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
 and she says, "I don't know,"
 I start...Read more of this...

The Holidays

by Jane Taylor
 "Ah! don't you remember, 'tis almost December,
And soon will the holidays come;
Oh, 'twill be so funny, I've plenty of money,
I'll buy me a sword and a drum. " 

Thus said little Harry, unwilling to tarry,
Impatient from school to depart; 
But we shall discover, this holiday lover
Knew little what was in his heart. 

For when on returning, he gave up...Read more of this...

Manuelzinho

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)—
a sort of inheritance; white,
in your thirties now, and supposed
to supply me with vegetables,
but you don't; or you won't; or you can't
get the idea through your brain—
the world's worst gardener since Cain.
Titled above me, your gardens
ravish my eyes. You edge
the beds of silver cabbages
with red carnations, and lettuces
mix with alyssum. And then
umbrella ants arrive,
or...Read more of this...

Here I Am ..

by Charles Bukowski
 drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle
of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young girls in this
dwindling twilight
liver gone
kidneys going
pancrea pooped
top-floor blood pressure 
while all the fear of the wasted years
laughs between my toes
no woman will live with me
no Florence Nightingale to watch...Read more of this...

On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes

by G K Chesterton
 Impetuously I sprang from bed,
Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
From the day's first golden cup.

In swift devouring ecstasy
Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigars.

But could my kind engross me? No!
Stern Art-what...Read more of this...

The Song Of The Strange Ascetic

by G K Chesterton
 If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have crowned Neaera's curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait At 28

by David Berman
 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...

Canine Conversation

by Robert William Service
 If dogs could speak, O Mademoiselle,
What funny stories they could tell!
For instance, take your little "peke,"
How awkward if the dear could speak!
How sad for you and all of us,
Who round you flutter, flirt and fuss;
Folks think you modest, mild and meek . . .
But would they - if Fi-Fi could speak?

If dogs could tell, Ah Madame Rose,
What secrets could...Read more of this...

The Lost Ingredient

by Anne Sexton
 Almost yesterday, those gentle ladies stole
to their baths in Atlantic Cuty, for the lost
rites of the first sea of the first salt
running from a faucet. I have heard they sat
for hours in briny tubs, patting hotel towels
sweetly over shivered skin, smelling the stale
harbor of a lost ocean, praying at last
for impossible loves, or new skin, or still
another child. And...Read more of this...

Magpiety

by Philip Levine
 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
 that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
 the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
 life survives.
In the still heat the engine
 clicks, although
the...Read more of this...

Death and Fame

by Allen Ginsberg
 When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in 
 Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 
 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor...Read more of this...

The Singing-Woman From The Woods Edge

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...

And One For My Dame

by Anne Sexton
 A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.

A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales

and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.

Each word
had been tried over and over,...Read more of this...

Dream Song 128: A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday

by John Berryman
 A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday-”
so help me Jesus-”then made funny too
the other, further one.
There must have been a bit. Sheets scrubbed away 
soon all but three nails. Doctors in this city O
will not (his wife cried) come.

Perhaps he's for it. IF that Filipino doc
had diagnosed ah here in Washington
that ear-infection ha
he'd have been grounded, so...Read more of this...

The Old Huntsman

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed 
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece. 
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough 
It cost me, what with my daft management, 
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me, 
And backing losers; and the local bucks 
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged...Read more of this...

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