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Famous Ironically Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Doolittle, Hilda
...ut them, 
no crevice unpacked with the honey, 
rare, measureless. 

So he built a new city, 
ah can we believe, not ironically 
but for new splendour 
constructed new people 
to lift through slow growth 
to a beauty unrivalled yet -- 
and created new cells, 
hideous first, hideous now -- 
spread larve across them, 
not honey but seething life. 

And in these dark cells, 
packed street after street, 
souls live, hideous yet -- 
O disfigured, defaced, 
with no trace of ...Read more of this...



by Raine, Craig
...awkwardly under my chin

like Richard Crookback,
crying, A horse! A horse!
My kingdom for a horse!
but only to myself,

ironically: the tube
is semi-stiff with stallion whangs,
the chairman's Mercedes
has windscreen wipers

like a bird's broken tongue,
and I am perfectly happy
to see your head, quick
round the door like a dryad,

as I pretend to be Ovid
in exile, composing Tristia
and sad for the shining,
the missed, the muscular beach....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...useous, undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me, 
Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; 
—The cities I loved so well, I abandon’d and left—I sped to the certainties
 suitable
 to me;
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature’s dauntlessness, 
I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only; 
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I waited long; 
—But now I no long...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...ravels
In satires, libels, lying travels!
Not sparing his own clergy-cloth,
But eats into it, like a moth!"

"His vein, ironically grave,
Exposed the fool and lashed the knave.
To steal a hint was never known,
But what he writ was all his own.
He never thought an honour done him
Because a duke was proud to own him;
Would rather slip aside and choose
To talk with wits in dirty shoes;
Despised the fools with stars and garters,
So often seen caressing Chartres.
He ne...Read more of this...

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