Famous Gouty Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...hey find
Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign'd;
And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them
Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them:

'So many have, that never touch'd his hand,
Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.
My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, not in part,
What with his art in youth, and youth in art,
Threw my affections in his charmed power,
Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

'Yet did I not,...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Amphion

...erever he sat down and sung 
He left a small plantation; 
Wherever in a lonely grove 
He set up his forlorn pipes, 
The gouty oak began to move, 
And flounder into hornpipes. 

The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, 
And, as tradition teaches, 
Young ashes pirouetted down 
Coquetting with young beeches; 
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath 
Ran forward to his rhyming, 
And from the valleys underneath 
Came little copses climbing. 

The linden broke her ranks and rent 
The woodbine ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Dance-Hall Girls

...most, I guess, have "gone before."
The swinging scythe is swift to mow
Alike the gallant and the fair;
And even I, with gouty toe,
Am glad to fill a rocking chair.

Ah me, I fear each gaysome girl
Who in champagne I used to toast,
or cozen in the waltz's whirl,
In now alas, a wistful ghost.
Oh where is Touch The Button Nell?
Or Minnie Dale or Rosa Lee,
Or Lorna Doone or Daisy Bell?
And where is Montreal Maree?

Fair ladies of my lusty youth,
I fear that you are dead and gone:...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Elegy VIII: The Comparison

...e,
Such is thy tanned skin's lamentable state.
And like a bunch of ragged carrots stand
The short swol'n fingers of thy gouty hand.
Then like the Chimic's masculine equal fire,
Which in the Lymbecks warm womb doth inspire
Into th' earth's worthless dirt a soul of gold,
Such cherishing heat her best loved part doth hold.
Thine's like the dread mouth of a fired gun,
Or like hot liquid metals newly run
Into clay moulds, or like to that Etna
Where round about the grass is burnt a...Read more of this...
by Donne, John

Fleckno an English Priest at Rome

...if the one touched be
The other opposite as soon replies,
Mov'd by the Air and hidden Sympathies;
So while he with his gouty Fingers craules
Over the Lute, his murmuring Belly calls,
Whose hungry Guts to the same streightness twin'd
In Echo to the trembling Strings repin'd.
I, that perceiv'd now what his Musick ment,
Ask'd civilly if he had eat this Lent.
He answered yes; with such, and such an one.
For he has this of gen'rous, that alone
He never feeds; save only when he tr...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew


The limitations of youth

...ue,
With a big black flag aflyin' overhead;
I would scour the billowy main with my gallant pirut crew
An' dye the sea a gouty, gory red!
With my cutlass in my hand
On the quarterdeck I'd stand
And to deeds of heroism I'd incite my pirut band--
If I darst; but I darsen't!

And, if I darst, I'd lick my pa for the times that he's licked me!
I'd lick my brother an' my teacher, too!
I'd lick the fellers that call round on sister after tea,
An' I'd keep on lickin' folks till I got ...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Medal

..., 
Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few. 
The head is loyal which thy heart commands, 
But what's a head with two such gouty hands? 
The wise and wealthy love the surest way 
And are content to thrive and to obey. 
But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave; 
None are so busy as the fool and knave. 
Those let me curse; what vengeance will they urge, 
Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge, 
Nor sharp experience can to duty bring 
Nor angry Heaven nor a forgiving king!...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

The Vision of Judgment

...ithin reach 
Of poets when the tide of rhyme's in flow; 
But stuck fast with his first hexameter, 
Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir. 

XCI 

But ere the spavin'd dactyls could be spurr'd 
Into recitative, in great dismay 
Both cherubim and seraphim were heard 
To murmur loudly through their long array: 
And Michael rose ere he could get a word 
Of all his founder'd verses under way. 
And cried, 'For God's sake stop, my friend! 'twere best — 
Non Di, non homines —- y...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

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