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Famous Grumbling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bible, The
...generously
Will be blessed with all he needs
Let each one give as he has chosen
With a heart of gratitude,
Not with grumbling or reluctance,
But with a cheerful attitude
And God is able to make all grace
Abound toward you
So you will be fully equipped
And be blessed in all you do.Scripture Poem © Copyright Of M.S.Lowndes...Read more of this...



by Burns, Robert
...og-shouther, jundie, stretch, an’ strive;
Let me fair Nature’s face descrive,
 And I, wi’ pleasure,
Shall let the busy, grumbling hive
 Bum owre their treasure.


Fareweel, “my rhyme-composing” brither!
We’ve been owre lang unkenn’d to ither:
Now let us lay our heads thegither,
 In love fraternal:
May envy wallop in a tether,
 Black fiend, infernal!


While Highlandmen hate tools an’ taxes;
While moorlan’s herds like guid, fat braxies;
While terra firma, on her axis,
 Diu...Read more of this...

by Burgess, Gelett
...Loved to Go to Bed;
14 He was as Quiet as could Be whenever there were Folks to Tea;
15 And yet, he had a Little Way of Grumbling, when he should Obey.

16 When FESTUS was but Four Years Old his Parents Seldom had to Scold;
17 They never Called him 'FESTUS DON'T!' he Never Whined and said 'I Won't!'
18 Yet it was Sad to See him Dine. His Table Manners were Not Fine. 

19 GAMALIEL took Peculiar Pride in Making Others Satisfied.
20 One Time I asked him for his H...Read more of this...

by Davies, William Henry
...Come, let us find a cottage, love, 
That's green for half a mile around; 
To laugh at every grumbling bee, 
Whose sweetest blossom's not yet found. 
Where many a bird shall sing for you, 
And in your garden build its nest: 
They'll sing for you as though their eggs 
Were lying in your breast, 
My love-- 
Were lying warm in your soft breast. 

'Tis strange how men find time to hate, 
When life is all too short for love; 
But we, away from ou...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...summer palaces on slopes, the 
 terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and 
 grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
 liquor and women, 
And the night-fires going out, and the 
 lack of shelters, 
And the cities hostile and the towns 
 unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
 prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all 
 night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...et awnings, gold

Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes

And plinths of equine statuary before

The Gare du Nord, grumbling fading

Faience of the Gare de l’Est?



Often, O how often, did I mingle with your crowds

Crossing the Pont Mirabeau in their Sunday best,

Regretting my lost loves, watching the barges

Snail along the Seine, hearing the bells

Of the Angelus dawn?



II



Exiled in the south and in a new century,

I recall leisurely Sundays on the Grande Jatte...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ry wheel to a spinet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned, 

And for him who sat by the chimney lug, 
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw, 
And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life again, 
Saying only, "It might have been." 

Alas for the maiden, alas for the Judge, 
For rich repiner and househole drudge! 

God pity them both and pity us all, 
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 

For...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...ANDLING/GLASS

/DON'T SPILL/THIS SIDE UP/HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE

WAS AN ANGEL"

 And Trout Fishing in America Shorty, grumbling, puking

and cursing in his crate would travel across America, from

San Francisco to Chicago.

 And Trout Fishing in America Shorty, wondering what it

was all about, would travel on, shouting, "Where in the hell

am I? I can't see to open this bottle ! Who turned out the

lights? **** this motel! I have to take a piss ! Where's my

key ?"

 I...Read more of this...

by Hall, Donald
...e bars across them. An old lady tried to open a door to get a better look. I spoke sharply to her, she sat down grumbling and pulled a blanket over her knees.

Out of the window I saw zebras and rattlesnakes and wildebeests and cougars and woodchucks on the lawns and in the tennis courts. I worried how, after the storm, we would put the animals back in their cages, and get to the mainland....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...d sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia wh...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...t God himself, can raise another recruit. 
Drinking my hot tea, listening to the rain, 

I sit while Stephan packs, grumbling a bit. 
He breaks the china that my mother sent, 
Her own first china, as a wedding gift. 
"Now that your wife is dead, Captain, why can't 

The two of us really make love together?" 
I cannot answer. When I lift a plate 
It seems I almost hear my long-dead mother 
Saying, Watch out, the glass is underfoot. 

Stephan is touching me....Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...>  The Doctor, looking somewhat grim,  "What, woman! should I know of him?"  And, grumbling, he went back to bed.   "O woe is me! O woe is me!  Here will I die; here will I die;  I thought to find my Johnny here,  But he is neither far nor near,  Oh! what a wretched mother I!"   She stops, she stands, she looks about,  Which way...Read more of this...

by Issa, Kobayashi
...The moon tonight--
I even miss
her grumbling....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...s sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters,...Read more of this...

by Graves, Robert
...m 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 poem I’d been writing,... 
An old man’s life of beer and whisky drinking, 
His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;
And how at last, into a fever sinking, 
Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting. 

But sud...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...for Brenda Williams



The dawn cracked with ice, with fire grumbling in the grate,

With ire in the homes we had left, but still somehow

We made a nook in the crooked corner of Hall Ings,

A Wordsworthian dream with sheep nibbling by every crumbling

Dry-stone wall, smoke inching from the chimney pot beside the

Turning lane, the packhorse road with every stone intact that bound

The corner tight then up and off to...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ichael blew his trump, and still'd the noise 
With one still greater, as is yet the mode 
On earth besides; except some grumbling voice, 
Which now and then will make a slight inroad 
Upon decorous silence, few will twice 
Lift up their lungs when fairly overcrow'd; 
And now the bard could plead his own bad cause, 
With all the attitudes of self-applause. 

XCVI 

He said — (I only give the heads) — he said, 
He meant no harm in scribbling; 'twas his way 
Upon all topics;...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...
While together we made our case

To the well meaning but unenlightened psychiatrist,

Chair of the department no less, grumbling good-naturedly

At our fumbling formulations of splitting as a diagnostic aid.

When Cyril’s nightmare vision of me in a white coat

Leading a posse of nurses chasing him round his flat

With a flotilla of ambulances on witches’ brooms

Bringing his psychotic core to the fore and 

The departmental chairman finally signing the form.



Cyri...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...tered
to a life
you do not love,
& so unfree
that freedom seems
more fearful even
than the familiar
business
of being
a grumbling slave.

I lived
that way
once,
& I know
that freedom
is its own reward,
that it propagates
itself
by means
of runners,

that nobody
gives it to you,
not even me
to you,

but that you
must seize it
with your own
two quaking hands
& pluck
the strawberry
it bears
in the green
ungrumbling

Spring....Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...r>" Forget it, I think, even though I know
if I'm not nice, tampo can quickly escalate into nagdadabog--
foot stomping, grumbling, the slamming
of doors. Instead of talking to my husband, I storm off
to talk to my porcelain Kwan Yin,
the Chinese goddess of mercy
that I bought on Canal Street years before
my husband and I started dating.
"The real Kwan Yin is in Manila,"
he tells me. "She's called Nuestra Señora de Guia.
Her Asian features prove Christianity
wa...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs