Famous Gypsy Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Gypsy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous gypsy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous gypsy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Clampitt, Amy
...r> Baltic cold. Being
sent home in a troika when her feet went numb. In
summer, carriage rides. A swarm of gypsy children
driven off with whips. An octogenarian father, bishop
of a dying schismatic sect. A very young mother
who didn't want her. A half-brother she met just once.
Cousins in Wisconsin, one of whom phoned her from a candy
store, out of the blue, while she was living in Chicago.
What had brought her there, or when, remained uncl...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the waste expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling;
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.
And I thought how like these chimes
Are the poet's airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
S...Read more of this...
by
Crane, Hart
...ith old fringe: --
The winers leave too, and the small lamps twinge.
Morning: and through the foggy city gate
A gypsy wagon wiggles, striving straight.
And some dream still of Carmen's mystic face, --
Yellow, pallid, like ancient lace....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every wo...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...de, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed.
Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons,
Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle,
All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them,
Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers.
Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean,
Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving
Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors.
Then, as th...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...r>
For I have often held this thought -
If I could change this mouldy me,
By heaven! I would choose the lot,
Of all the gypsy birds, to be
A gull that spans the spacious sea....Read more of this...
by
Simic, Charles
...o dark,
I could not see my face in the shaving mirror.
At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.
The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,
Whose storefront is on the corner,
Going to pee after a night of love.
Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.
So near it was, I thought
For a moment, I was sobbing myself....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...
"Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star
I pinned
to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember
her prophecy!
My dear friend, not here, the servants are watching; send them away,
and that flashing splendour, Roustan. Superb -- Imperial,
but . . .
My dear, your arm is trembling; I faint to feel it touching me! No,
no,
Bonaparte, not that -- spare me that -- did we not bury that last
night!
You hurt me, my friend, ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy,—will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whispered close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Makeyour best bow to her and bid ...Read more of this...
by
Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...There's a gypsy wind across the harvest land,
Let us fare forth with it lightly hand in hand;
Where cloud shadows blow across the sunwarm waste,
And the first red leaves are falling let us haste,
For the waning days are lavish of their stores,
And the joy of life is with us out o' doors!
Let us roam along the ways of golden rod
Over uplands where the spicy bracken ...Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
...her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.
Green, how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She ...Read more of this...
by
Kilmer, Joyce
...ho slept in your barn last night and left at break of
day
Will wander only until he finds another place to stay.
A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas
overhead;
Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for bed.
He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as the sun is high,
But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away the sky.
If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do
him wrong,
For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home a...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...d the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over....Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
...er away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.
I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river....Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
...d Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.
Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.
Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.
The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted g...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...your palms upon them, stare at the crystal,
And think of time . . . My father was a clown,
My mother was a gypsy out of Egypt;
And she was gotten with child in a strange way;
And I was born in a cold eclipse of the moon,
With the future in my eyes as clear as day.'
I sit before the gold-embroidered curtain
And think her face is like a wrinkled desert.
The crystal burns in lamplight beneath my eyes.
A dragon slowly coils on the scaly curtain.
Upon...Read more of this...
by
Forche, Carolyn
...r wavy loaves of flesh
Stink through my sleep
The stars on your silk robes
But I'm glad I'll look when I'm old
Like a gypsy dusha hauling milk...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...lf the money would replenish
Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
"Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
"Our business was done at the river's brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what's dead can't come to life, I think.
So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But, as for the g...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...nventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gypsy-lore,
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.
But once, years after, in the country lanes,
Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,
Met him, and of his way of life enquired;
Whereat he answered, that the gypsy-crew,
His mates, had arts to rule as ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...xhausting days,
That the cloud over dark Russia
Become cloud in the glory of rays.
x x x
"Where is your gypsy boy, tall one,
That over black kerchief did weep,
Where is your small first child
What memory of him do you keep?"
"Mother's role is a sweet torture,
I was not worthy of it.
The gate dissolved into white heaven,
Magdalene took the kid.
"Each day for me is happy and jolly,
I got lost in a too-long spring,
Only arms pine away for a ...Read more of this...
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