Famous Kensington Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Two Kopjes

by Rudyard Kipling
 (Made Yeomanry towards End of Boer War)
Only two African kopjes,
 Only the cart-tracks that wind
Empty and open between 'em,
 Only the Transvaal behind;
Only an Aldershot column
 Marching to conquer the land . . .
Only a sudden and solemn
 Visit, unarmed, to the Rand.

 Then scorn not the African kopje,
 The kopje that smiles in the heat,
 The wholly unoccupied...Read more of this...

Hard Luck

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I left the course, and by my side 
There walked a ruined tout -- 
A hungry creature, evil-eyed, 
Who poured this story out. 
"You see," he said, "there came a swell 
To Kensington today, 
And, if I picked the winners well, 
A crown at least he's pay. 

"I picked three winners straight, I did; 
I filled his purse with...Read more of this...

The Moon of Other Days

by Rudyard Kipling
 Beneath the deep veranda's shade,
 When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch -- alas! --
 Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
 She rises through the haze.
Sainted Diana! can that be
 The Moon of Other Days?

Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
 Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say, was it ever thus at Home
 The Moon of August shone,
When...Read more of this...

Lines Written in Kensington Gardens

by Matthew Arnold
 In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a...Read more of this...

You

by Barry Tebb
 “Remember, you loved me, when we were young, one day”



The words of the song in Tauber’s mellifluous tenor

Haunt my nights and days, make me tremble when I hear

Your voice on the phone, sadden me when I can’t make into your smile

The pucker of your lips, the gleam in your eye.



The day we met is with me still, you asked...Read more of this...

Devonshire Street W.1

by John Betjeman
 The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
 Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet. 
The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene
 With Edwardian faience adornment -- Devonshire Street. 

No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm
 Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.
The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm
 Its chimneys steady against...Read more of this...

London Roses

by Willa Cather
 "ROWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you-- 
Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you. 
Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun, 
Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you-- 
Roses of London town, red till the summer is done. 


Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming 
West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming 
Out of...Read more of this...

The Garden

by Louise Gluck
 En robe de parade.
 Samain

Like a skien of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
 of a sort of emotional anaemia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her...Read more of this...

Mungojerrie And Rumpelteazer

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple 
 of cats.
As knockabout clown, quick-change comedians, tight-rope 
 walkers and acrobats
They had extensive reputation. They made their home in 
 Victoria Grove--
That was merely their centre of operation, for they were 
 incurably given to rove.
They were very well know in Cornwall Gardens, in Launceston 
 Place and in Kensington...Read more of this...

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