Famous Gambling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Intolerance

by Robert William Service
 I have no brief for gambling, nay
 The notion I express
That money earned 's the only way
 To pay for happiness.
With cards and dice I do not hold;
 By betting I've been bit:
Conclusion: to get honest gold
 You've got to sweat for it.

Though there be evil in strong drink
 It's brought me heaps of fun;
And now, with some reserve,...Read more of this...

87. The Twa Dogs

by Robert Burns
 ’TWAS 1 in that place o’ Scotland’s isle,
That bears the name o’ auld King Coil,
Upon a bonie day in June,
When wearin’ thro’ the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather’d ance upon a time.
 The first I’ll name, they ca’d him Caesar,
Was keepit for His Honor’s pleasure:
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Shew’d he was nane o’...Read more of this...

Beak-Bashing Boy

by Robert William Service
 But yesterday I banked on fistic fame,
Figgerin' I'd be a champion of the Ring.
Today I've half a mind to quit the Game,
For all them rosy dreams have taken wing,
Since last night a secondary bout
I let a goddam ****** knock me out.

It must have been that T-bone steak I ate;
They might have doped it, them smart gambling guys,
For round my...Read more of this...

Pau-Puk-Keewis

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
It was he who in his frenzy
Whirled these...Read more of this...

The Law Of The Yukon

by Robert William Service
 This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the...Read more of this...

Black Moran

by Robert William Service
 The mule-skinner was Bill Jerome, the passengers were three;
Two tinhorns from the dives of Nome, and Father Tim McGee.
And as for sunny Southland bound, through weary woods they sped,
The solitude that ringed them round was silent as the dead.

Then when the trail crooked crazily, the frost-rimed horses reared,
And from behind a fallen tree a grim galoot appeared;
He wore a...Read more of this...

To Be Amused

by Henry Lawson
 You ask me to be gay and glad 
While lurid clouds of danger loom, 
And vain and bad and gambling mad, 
Australia races to her doom. 
You bid me sing the light and fair, 
The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings – 
While you have wives who will not bear, 
And beer to drown the fear of things. 

A...Read more of this...

Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers

by Henry Lawson
 While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse 
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse, 
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part -- 
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte. 

If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks, 
And discover shining rivers...Read more of this...

The Pigeon Shooting

by Robert William Service
 They say that Monte Carlo is
A sunny place for shady people;
But I'm not in the gambling biz,
And sober as a parish steeple.
so though this paradisal spot
The devil's playground of the rich is,
I love it and I love it not,
As men may sometimes fall for bitches.

I lazed beneath the sky's blue bliss,
The sea swooned with a sequin glimmer;
The breeze was...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

January 1795

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Pavement slipp'ry, people sneezing,
Lords in ermine, beggars freezing ;
Titled gluttons dainties carving,
Genius in a garret starving.

Lofty mansions, warm and spacious ;
Courtiers clinging and voracious ;
Misers scarce the wretched heeding ;
Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who laugh at passive spouses ;
Theatres, and meeting-houses ;
Balls, where simp'ring misses languish ;
Hospitals, and groans of anguish.

Arts and sciences bewailing ;
Commerce drooping, credit failing ;
Placemen...Read more of this...

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