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Famous Gambler Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Blake, William
...hey'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...a purple prayer,
A beaten shape of ashes
waiting the sunrise or night,
something or nothing,
proud-mouthed,
proud-eyed gambler....Read more of this...

by Lux, Thomas
...on
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 across his face,
with which he ate and prodigiously drank,
with which he modulated his melodic voice,
with which he liked to kiss and kiss and kiss.
He said: "Kissing is like the presidency,
it is not ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ssoo, the Game of Plum-stones. 
Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart, 
Called him coward, Shaugodaya, 
Idler, gambler, Yenadizze,
Little heeded he their jesting, 
Little cared he for their insults, 
For the women and the maidens 
Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis.
He was dressed in shirt of doeskin, 
White and soft, and fringed with ermine, 
All inwrought with beads of wampum; 
He was dressed in deer-skin leggings,
Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine, 
And i...Read more of this...

by Meredith, George
...ere goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain:-- 
My meaning is, it must not be again. 
Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart. 
If any state be enviable on earth, 
'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by, 
Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly, 
In a ***** sort of meditative mirth....Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...vest.

For I -- and oh, 'ow I shudder at the 'orror the word conveys!
'Ave been -- let me whisper it 'oarsely -- a gambler 'alf of me days;
A gambler, you 'ear -- a gambler. It makes me wishful to weep,
And yet 'ow it's true, my brethren! -- I'd rather gamble than sleep.

I've gambled the 'ole world over, from Monte Carlo to Maine;
From Dawson City to Dover, from San Francisco to Spain.
Cards! They 'ave been me ruin. They've taken me pride and me pelf,
An...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...penny bars, 
Ash from Socialist cigars. 
Leathern tongue of boozer curst 
With the great Australian thirst, 
Two-up gambler keeping dark, 
Loafer sleeping in the park -- 
Drop them in to prove the sequel, 
All men are born free and equal. 

ALL: Double, double, toil and trouble, 
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. 

3RD WITCH:Lung of Labour agitator, 
Gall of Isaacs turning traitor; 
Spleen that Kingston has revealed, 
Sawdust stuffing out of Neild; 
Mix them up, and...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...to prison -- let them take lugger and all!" 

Kanzo Makame, the diver -- knowing full well what it meant -- 
Fatalist, gambler, and stoic, smiled a broad smile of content, 
Flattened in mainsail and foresail, and off to the Islands they went. 

Close to the headlands they drifted, picking up shell by the ton, 
Piled up on deck were the oysters, opening wide in the sun, 
When, from the lee of the headland, boomed the report of a gun. 

Then if the diver was sighted, p...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...er,
But she never, never forgot— either one—
Percy and John—though I knew she loved one better—
Percy, the wastrel, the gambler, the eldest son.
I think I shall always remember
Until I die
Her face that day in December,
When in a hospital ward together, she and I
Were writing letters for wounded men and dying,
Writing and crying
Over their words, so silly and simple and loving,
Suddenly, looking up, I saw the old Vicar moving
Like fate down the hospital ward, until
He sto...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...ty,
Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,
In that poker room in the opera house.
And I say to you that Life's a gambler
Head and shoulders above us all.
No mayor alive can close the house.
And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;
You'll not get back your money.
He makes the percentage hard to conquer;
He stacks the cards to catch your weakness
And not to meet your strength.
And he gives you seventy years to play:
For if you cannot win in seventy
Yo...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...WHERE now the huts are empty, 
Where never a camp-fire glows, 
In an abandoned cañon, 
A Gambler's Ghost arose. 
He muttered there, "The moon's a sack 
Of dust." His voice rose thin: 
"I wish I knew the miner-man. 
I'd play, and play to win. 
In every game in Cripple-creek 
Of old, when stakes were high, 
I held my own. Now I would play 
For that sack in the sky. 
The sport would not be ended there. 
'Twould rather be...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things