Famous Jeer Poems by Famous Poets

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

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America

by Claude McKay
 Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within...Read more of this...

The Old Issue

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
 "Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime! "
 (Trumpets in the marshes-in the eyot at Runnymede!)

"Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," peal the Trumpets,
 "Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall.
"It is the King!"--inexorable...Read more of this...

New Years Eve

by Robert William Service
 It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear;
 Only the black tide weltering, only the hissing snow;
And I, alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year,
 Shuffling along in the icy wind, ghastly and gaunt and slow.

They're playing a tune in McGuffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there
 (God!...Read more of this...

The Conspiracy

by Robert Creeley
 You send me your poems,
I'll send you mine.

Things tend to awaken
even through random communication

Let us suddenly
proclaim spring. And jeer

at the others,
all the others.

I will send a picture too
if you will send me one of you....Read more of this...

Jean Desprez

by Robert William Service
 Oh ye whose hearts are resonant, and ring to War's romance,
Hear ye the story of a boy, a peasant boy of France;
A lad uncouth and warped with toil, yet who, when trial came,
Could feel within his soul upleap and soar the sacred flame;
Could stand upright, and scorn and smite, as only heroes may:
Oh, harken! Let me try to tell...Read more of this...

An Apple-Gathering

by Christina Rossetti
 I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
With dangling basket all along the grass
As I had come I went the selfsame track:
My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
So empty-handed back.

Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by,
Their heaped-up...Read more of this...

O LUCKLESS bark! (O NAVIS, REFERENT)

by Horace

     O LUCKLESS bark! new waves will force you back
     To sea. O, haste to make the haven yours!
          E'en now, a helpless wrack,
            You drift, despoil'd of oars;
   ...Read more of this...

Lines Indited With All The Depravity Of Poverty

by Ogden Nash
 One way to be very happy is to be very rich
For then you can buy orchids by the quire and bacon by the flitch.
And yet at the same time People don't mind if you only tip them a dime,
Because it's very funny
But somehow if you're rich enough you can get away with spending
water like money
While if you're not rich...Read more of this...

Chicks

by Carl Sandburg
 THE CHICK in the egg picks at the shell, cracks open one oval world, and enters another oval world.

“Cheep … cheep … cheep” is the salutation of the newcomer, the emigrant, the casual at the gates of the new world.

“Cheep … cheep” … from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.

It is at the door of this...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXI: Methinks I See

by Michael Drayton
 To the Critic

Methinks I see some crooked mimic jeer, 
And tax my Muse with this fantastic grace, 
Turning my papers asks, "What have we here?" 
Making withal some filthy antic face. 
I fear no censure, nor what thou canst say, 
Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigor lose; 
Think'st thou my wit shall keep the pack-horse way 
That...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

by Robert William Service
 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of...Read more of this...

Against Scoffing and Calling Names

by Isaac Watts
 Our tongues were made to bless the Lord,
And not speak ill of men:
When others give a railing word,
We must not rail again.

Cross words and angry names require
To be chastised at school;
And he's in danger of hell-fire
That calls his brother fool.

But lips that dare be so profane
To mock, and jeer, and scoff
At holy things, or holy men,
The Lord shall cut...Read more of this...

In Harm's Way

by Barry Tebb
 I was never a film buff, give me Widmark and Wayne any day

Saturday matin?es with Margaret Gardener still hold sway

As my memory veers backwards this temperate Boxing Day-

Westerns and war films and a blurred Maigret,

Coupled with a worn-out sixties Penguin Mallarm?-

How about that mix for a character trait?

Try as I may I can’t get my head round the manifold...Read more of this...

Armistice Day (1953)

by Robert William Service
 Don't jeer because we celebrate
 Armistice Day,
Though thirty years of sorry fate
 Have passed away.
Though still we gaurd the Sacred Flame,
 And fly the Flag,
That World War Two with grief and shame
 Revealed--a rag.

For France cannot defend to-day
 Her native land;
And she is far to proud to pray
 For helping hand.
Aye, though she stands amid the Free,
 In love...Read more of this...

Lost Kitten

by Robert William Service
 Two men I saw reel from a bar
And stumble down the street;
Coarse and uncouth as workmen are,
They walked with wobbly feet.
I watched them, thinking sadly as
I heard their hobnails clink,
The only joy a toiler has
Is to get drowned in drink.

A kitten on a wall,
A skinny, starving stray;
It looked so pitifully small,
A fluff of silver grey.
One of the men came...Read more of this...

Houses chapter IX

by Kahlil Gibran
 A mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses." 

And he answered and said: 

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. 

For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone. 

Your house is your larger...Read more of this...

The Grave-digger

by Emile Verhaeren
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.


Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.


The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in...Read more of this...

The Foreigner

by Amy Lowell
 Have at you, you Devils!
My back's to this tree,
For you're nothing so nice
That the hind-side of me
Would escape your assault.
Come on now, all three!
Here's a dandified gentleman,
Rapier at point,
And a wrist which whirls round
Like a circular joint.
A spatter of blood, man!
That's just to anoint
And make supple your limbs.
'Tis a pity the silk
Of your waistcoat is stained.
Why! Your heart's full...Read more of this...

a man who had fallen among thieves

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest...Read more of this...

The Quip

by George Herbert
 The merry world did on a day
With his train-bands and mates agree
To meet together where I lay,
And all in sport to jeer at me.

First, Beauty crept into a rose,
Which when I plucked not, "Sir," said she,
"Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?"
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.

Then Money came, and chinking still,
"What tune is this, poor man?"...Read more of this...

At His Grave

by Alfred Austin
 LEAVE me a little while alone, 
Here at his grave that still is strown 
With crumbling flower and wreath; 
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls, 
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls, 
And he lies hush’d beneath. 

With myrtle cross and crown of rose, 
And every lowlier flower that blows, 
His new-made couch is dress’d; 
Primrose and cowslip, hyacinth wild,...Read more of this...

The Return

by Rudyard Kipling
 Peace is declared, and I return
To 'Ackneystadt, but not the same;
Things 'ave transpired which made me learn
The size and meanin' of the game.
I did no more than others did,
I don't know where the change began;
I started as a average kid,
I finished as a thinkin' man.

If England was what England seems
An' not the England of our dreams,
But only putty, brass,...Read more of this...

Babi Yar

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
 No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. 
I am afraid.
 Today I am as old in years 
as all the Jewish people. 
Now I seem to be
 a Jew. 
Here I plod through ancient Egypt. 
Here I perish crucified, on the cross, 
and to this day I bear the scars of nails. 
I seem...Read more of this...

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