Famous Laughs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Letter Home

by Siegfried Sassoon
 (To Robert Graves) 

I 

Here I'm sitting in the gloom 
Of my quiet attic room. 
France goes rolling all around, 
Fledged with forest May has crowned. 
And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted, 
Thinking how the fighting started, 
Wondering when we'll ever end it, 
Back to hell with Kaiser sent it, 
Gag the noise, pack up and go, 
Clockwork soldiers...Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

The Song against Grocers

by G K Chesterton
 God made the wicked Grocer
For a mystery and a sign,
That men might shun the awful shops
And go to inns to dine;
Where the bacon's on the rafter
And the wine is in the wood,
And God that made good laughter
Has seen that they are good.

The evil-hearted Grocer
Would call his mother "Ma'am,"
And bow at her and bob at her,
Her aged soul to damn,
And...Read more of this...

The Meadow Lark

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Though the winds be dank,
And the sky be sober,
And the grieving Day
In a mantle gray
Hath let her waiting maiden robe her,—
All the fields along
I can hear the song
Of the meadow lark,
As she flits and flutters,
And laughs at the thunder when it mutters.
O happy bird, of heart most gay
To sing when skies are gray!
When the clouds are full,
And the tempest master
Lets...Read more of this...

Sonnet 54

by Edmund Spenser
 Of this worlds theatre in which we stay,
My love like the spectator ydly sits
Beholding me that all the pageants play,
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in myrth lyke to a comedy:
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in...Read more of this...

Writing

by Robert Herrick
 often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman's love,
no wealth
can
match it. 
nothing can save
you
except
writing. 
it keeps the walls
from
failing.
the hordes from
closing in. 
it blasts the
darkness. 
writing is the
ultimate
psychiatrist, 
the kindliest
god of all the
gods. 
writing stalks
death.
it knows no
quit. 
and writing
laughs
at itself,
at pain. 
it is the last
expectation,
the last
explanation. 
that's
what it
is. 
from blank gun silencer - 1991...Read more of this...

Cavalier Tunes: Boot and Saddle

by Robert Browning
 Boot, saddle, to horse and away!
Rescue my Castle, before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray,
(Chorus)
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--
(Chorus)
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"
Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
Flouts Castle Brancepeth...Read more of this...

On Gray Eyes

by William Strode
 Looke how the russet morne exceeds the night,
How sleekest Jett yields to the di'monds light,
So farr the glory of the gray-bright eye
Out-vyes the black in lovely majesty.
A morning mantl'd with a fleece of gray
Laughs from her brow and shewes a spotlesse day:
This di'mond-like doth not his lustre owe
To borrowed helpe, as black thinges cast a show,
It needs noe day...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts XLII: Are You a Mere Picture

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as
this dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are
immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form.
The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your
limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in your voice, and
touched my heart with your face....Read more of this...

Apologia Pro Poemate Meo

by Wilfred Owen
 I, too, saw God through mud --
 The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
 War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
 And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there --
 Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
 For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
 Not...Read more of this...

In Memory of Walter Savage Landor

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Back to the flower-town, side by side,
The bright months bring,
New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
Freedom and spring.
The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
Filled full of sun;
All things come back to her, being free;
All things but one.
In many a tender wheaten plot
Flowers that were dead
Live, and old suns revive; but not
That holier head.

By this white wandering waste of sea,
Far...Read more of this...

Why the Jackass Laughs

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boastful Crow and the Laughing Jack 
Were telling tales of the outer back: 
"I've just been travelling far and wide, 
At the back of Bourke and the Queensland side; 
There isn't a bird in the bush can go 
As far as me," said the old black crow. 
"There isn't a bird in the bush can fly 
A course...Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

One And Twenty

by Samuel Johnson
 LONG-EXPECTED one and twenty 
Ling'ring year at last has flown, 
Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty 
Great Sir John, are all your own. 

Loosen'd from the minor's tether, 
Free to mortgage or to sell, 
Wild as wind, and light as feather 
Bid the slaves of thrift farewell. 

Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jenneys 
Ev'ry name that laughs at care,...Read more of this...

The Widow and Her Son XXI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Night fell over North Lebanon and snow was covering the villages surrounded by the Kadeesha Valley, giving the fields and prairies the appearance of a great sheet of parchment upon which the furious Nature was recording her many deeds. Men came home from the streets while silence engulfed the night. 

In a lone house near those villages lived a...Read more of this...

Laws XIII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?" 

And he answered: 

You delight in laying down laws, 

Yet you delight more in breaking them. 

Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter. 

But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore, 

And when...Read more of this...

Communion

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the silence of my heart,
I will spend an hour with thee,
When my love shall rend apart
All the veil of mystery:
All that dim and misty veil
That shut in between our souls
When Death cried, "Ho, maiden, hail!"
And your barque sped on the shoals.
On the shoals? Nay, wrongly said.
On the breeze of Death that sweeps
Far from life, thy soul has sped
Out into...Read more of this...

Tom Mays Death

by Andrew Marvell
 As one put drunk into the Packet-boat,
Tom May was hurry'd hence and did not know't.
But was amaz'd on the Elysian side,
And with an Eye uncertain, gazing wide,
Could not determine in what place he was,
For whence in Stevens ally Trees or Grass.
Nor where the Popes head, nor the Mitre lay,
Signs by which still he found and lost his way.
At last...Read more of this...

The Hostage

by Friedrich von Schiller
 The tyrant Dionys to seek,
Stern Moerus with his poniard crept;
The watchful guard upon him swept;
The grim king marked his changeless cheek:
"What wouldst thou with thy poniard? Speak!"
"The city from the tyrant free!"
"The death-cross shall thy guerdon be."

"I am prepared for death, nor pray,"
Replied that haughty man, "I to live;
Enough, if thou one grace wilt give
For three brief suns the...Read more of this...

The bow-leg boy

by Eugene Field
 Who should come up the road one day
But the doctor-man in his two-wheel shay!
And he whoaed his horse and he cried "Ahoy!
I have brought you folks a bow-leg boy!
Such a cute little boy!
Such a funny little boy!
Such a dear little bow-leg boy!"

He took out his box and he opened it wide,
And there was the bow-leg boy inside!
And when they...Read more of this...

A Match

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 If love were what the rose is, 
And I were like the leaf, 
Our lives would grow together 
In sad or singing weather, 
Blown fields or flowerful closes, 
Green pasture or gray grief; 
If love were what the rose is, 
And I were like the leaf. 

If I were what the words are, 
And love were like the tune,...Read more of this...

The Task: Book II The Time-Piece (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...Read more of this...

The First Black Flag

by Victor Hugo
 ("Avez-vous oui dire?") 
 
 {LES BURGRAVES, Part I., March, 1843.} 


 JOB. Hast thou ne'er heard men say 
 That, in the Black Wood, 'twixt Cologne and Spire, 
 Upon a rock flanked by the towering mountains, 
 A castle stands, renowned among all castles? 
 And in this fort, on piles of lava built, 
 A burgrave...Read more of this...

Portrait Of A Machine

by Louis Untermeyer
What nudity is beautiful as this
Obedient monster purring at its toil;
These naked iron muscles dripping oil
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss.
This long and shining flank of metal is
Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil;
While this vast engine that could rend the soil
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.

It does not vent its loathing, does not turn
Upon its makers with destroying...Read more of this...

As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed

by Jack Prelutsky
 As soon as Fred gets out of bed,
his underwear goes on his head.
His mother laughs, "Don't put it there,
a head's no place for underwear!"
But near his ears, above his brains,
is where Fred's underwear remains.

At night when Fred goes back to bed,
he deftly plucks it off his head.
His mother switches off the light
and softly croons, "Good night! Good night!"
And then,...Read more of this...

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