Famous Humour Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Humour poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous humour poems. These examples illustrate what a famous humour poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Lowell
The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")
What use is my sense of humour?
I grin...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free
In the silken sail of infancy,
The tide of time flow'd back with me,
The forward-flowing tide of time;
And many a sheeny summer-morn,
Adown the Tigris I was borne,
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold,
High-walled gardens green and old;
True Mussulman was I and sworn,
For it was...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
He that cannot choose but love,
And strives against it still,
Never shall my fancy move,
For he loves 'gainst his will;
Nor he which is all his own,
And can at pleasure choose,
When I am caught he can be gone,
And when he list refuse.
Nor he that loves none but fair,
For such by all are sought;
Nor he that can for foul ones care,
For his...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I.
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
II.
I struck him, he grovelled of course---
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate:
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As his lot might be worse.
III.
``Were the object less mean, would he...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
against their beliefs a blue spot came slowly
out of the green
nobody expected such a thing to occur
on a thursday
the watchers switched over from their electronic
eye to their notes
the evidence undeniably placed thursday as the day
of the pink circle
they recorded having seen another pink circle
in a strange light
which had (explainably) created the illusion of
being a blue spot
(blue from green on...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
The Mother's smiling reign.
"Why warbles he that skies are fair
And coombs alight," she cried, "and fallows gay,
When I have placed no sunshine in the air
Or glow on earth to-day?"
...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas’ ears, committing short and long,
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,
With praise enough for Envy to look wan;
To after age thou shalt be writ the man
That with smooth air...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Cause of half the fun that's started --
`Hard-case' Dan --
Isn't like a broken-hearted,
Ruined man.
Walking-coat from tail to throat is
Frayed and greened --
Like a man whose other coat is
Being cleaned;
Gone for ever round the edging...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abus'd Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause cou'd find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
Still varying thy perplexing Form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A Calm of stupid Discontent,
Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm.
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,
Dissolv'd into a Panick Fear;
On...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
It ended, and the morrow brought the task.
Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in
By shutting all too zealous for their sin:
Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask.
But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had!
He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers:
A languid humour stole among the hours,
And if their smiles encountered, he went mad,
And raged deep...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Because I love the soothing weed
And am of sober type,
I'd choose me for a friend in need
A man who smokes a pipe.
A cove who hasn't much to say,
And spits into the fire,
Puffing like me a pipe of clay,
Corn-cob or briar.
A chap original of thought,
With cheery point of view,
Who has of gumption quite a lot,
...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
You want to know what's the matter with me, do yer?
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that.
Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed
Me changin' under your very nose,
Each day a little diff'rent.
But you never see nothin', you don't.
Don't touch me, Jake,
Don't you dars't to touch me,
I ain't in no humour.
That's what's come over...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
It ended, and the morrow brought the task.
Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in
By shutting all too zealous for their sin:
Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask.
But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had!
He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers:
A languid humour stole among the hours,
And if their smiles encountered, he went mad,
And raged deep...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
That hour-glass which there you see
With water fill'd, sirs, credit me,
The humour was, as I have read,
But lovers' tears incrystalled.
Which, as they drop by drop do pass
From th' upper to the under-glass,
Do in a trickling manner tell,
By many a watery syllable,
That lovers' tears in lifetime shed
Do restless run when they are dead....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
How often do I wish I were
What people call a character;
A ripe and cherubic old chappie
Who lives to make his fellows happy;
With in his eyes a merry twinkle,
And round his lips a laughing wrinkle;
Who radiating hope and cheer
Grows kindlier with every year.
For this ideal let me strive,
And keep the lad in me alive;
Nor argument nor anger know,
But my own...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
My jolly fat host with your face all a-grin,
Come, open the door to us, let us come in.
A score of stout fellows who think it no sin
If they toast till they're hoarse, and drink till they spin,
Hoofed it amain
Rain or no rain,
To crack your old jokes, and your bottle to drain.
Such a warmth in the belly that nectar begets
As...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
Author Note: The story of the following ballad was related to me, when a school boy, as a fact which had really happened in the North of England. I have
adopted the metre of Mr. Lewis's Alonzo and Imogene--a poem deservedly
popular.
I.
Who is she, the poor Maniac, whose wildly-fix'd eyes
Seem a heart overcharged to express?
She weeps not, yet often and deeply...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
Love in a humor play'd the prodigal
And bade my Senses to a solemn feast;
Yet, more to grace the company withal,
Invites my Heart to be the chiefest guest.
No other drink would serve this glutton's turn
But precious tears distilling from mine eyne,
Which with my sighs this epicure doth burn,
Quaffing carouses in this costly wine;...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden --
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Now what in the name of the sun and the stars
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars?
Do men find life so full of humour and joy
That for want of excitement they smash up the toy?
Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"
Are not quite the same. All these men by...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
professor piebald
(the oldest man in the home) was meek
at the same time ribald
he clothed his matter (so to speak)
in latin and (was it) greek
it caused no great offence
to nobody did it make sense
to make a rude joke
in languages nobody spoke
once he'd changed the word agenda
at a home's committee meeting to pudenda
this sort of thing was tolerated by the other
inmates...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Facts will not change to humour man's caprice,
So vaunt not human powers, but hold your peace;
Here must we stay, weighed down with grief for this,
That we were born so late, so soon decease....Read more of this...
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