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Famous Merriment Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...aks sudden --
It doesn't state you how
It contemplated -- smiling --
Just consummated -- now --
But this one, wears its merriment
So patient -- like a pain --
Fresh gilded -- to elude the eyes
Unqualified, to scan --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily



...her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred i...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...had fallen to ground
hushed by its hurt, its hoard all near,
no longer lusty aloft to whirl
at midnight, making its merriment seen,
proud of its prizes: prone it sank
by the handiwork of the hero-king.
Forsooth among folk but few achieve,
-- though sturdy and strong, as stories tell me,
and never so daring in deed of valor, --
the perilous breath of a poison-foe
to brave, and to rush on the ring-board hall,
whenever his watch the warden keeps
bold in the barrow. ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...ADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
I...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...o the nightingale,
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among?

 "O Sorrow,
 Why dost borrow
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?--
 A lover would not tread
 A cowslip on the head,
Though he should dance from eve till peep of day--
 Nor any drooping flower
 Held sacred for thy bower,
Wherever he may sport himself and play.

 "To Sorrow
 I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
 But cheerly, cheerly,
 She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...cant playes; 
The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft; 
So goodly all agree, with sweet consent, 
To this dayes merriment. 
Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long? 85 
When meeter were that ye should now awake, 
T' awayt the comming of your joyous make, 
And hearken to the birds love-learn¨¨d song, 
The deawy leaves among! 
Nor they of joy and pleasance to you sing, 90 
That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. 

My love is now awake out o...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund
...
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of shoes and floors. 

And One (we name him not) that flies the flowers,
That dreads the dances, and that shuns the salads,
They doom to pass in solitude the hours,
Writing acrostic-ballads. 

How late it grows! The hour is surely past
That should have warned us with its double knock?
The twilight wanes, and morning comes at last -
"Oh, U...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...g north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
So, as we rode, we talk'd; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not,
But flew from brain to brain--such glee was ours,
Charg'd with light memories of remember'd hours,
None slow enough for sadness: till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, a...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale
Messenger for spicy ale.

 Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe";
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...htingale, 
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among? 

O Sorrow! 
Why dost borrow 20 
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?¡ª 
A lover would not tread 
A cowslip on the head, 
Though he should dance from eve till peep of day¡ª 
Nor any drooping flower 25 
Held sacred for thy bower, 
Wherever he may sport himself and play. 

To Sorrow 
I bade good morrow, 
And thought to leave her far away behind; 30 
But cheerly, cheerly, 
She loves me dearly; 
She ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...nightingale, 
 That thou mayst listen the cold dews among? 

 O Sorrow! 
 Why dost borrow 
 Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?-- 
 A lover would not tread 
 A cowslip on the head, 
 Though he should dance from eve till peep of day-- 
 Nor any drooping flower 
 Held sacred for thy bower, 
 Wherever he may sport himself and play. 

 To Sorrow 
 I bade good morrow, 
 And thought to leave her far away behind; 
 But cheerly, cheerly, 
 She loves me dearly; 
 She is so c...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...nightingale, 
 That thou mayst listen the cold dews among? 

 O Sorrow! 
 Why dost borrow 
 Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?-- 
 A lover would not tread 
 A cowslip on the head, 
 Though he should dance from eve till peep of day-- 
 Nor any drooping flower 
 Held sacred for thy bower, 
 Wherever he may sport himself and play. 

 To Sorrow 
 I bade good morrow, 
 And thought to leave her far away behind; 
 But cheerly, cheerly, 
 She loves me dearly; 
 She is so c...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...he young man all
 color’d, red, ashamed, angry; 
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never
 turning her vigilant eyes from them, 
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts; 
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals, 
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and
 animals never once ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...I

Hear the sledges with the bells-
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingli...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...vory-headed wand,
 To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame,
 Behind a broad half-pillar, far beyond
 The sound of merriment and chorus bland:
 He startled her; but soon she knew his face,
 And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand,
 Saying, "Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;
They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!

 "Get hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand;
 He had a fever late, and in the fit
 He cursed thee and thine, both house ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...me:
3.33 My gifts abus'd, my education lost,
3.34 My woful Parents' longing hopes all crost;
3.35 My wit evaporates in merriment;
3.36 My valour in some beastly quarrel's spent;
3.37 Martial deeds I love not, 'cause they're virtuous,
3.38 But doing so, might seem magnanimous.
3.39 My Lust doth hurry me to all that's ill,
3.40 I know no Law, nor reason, but my will;
3.41 Sometimes lay wait to take a wealthy purse
3.42 Or stab the man in's own defence, that's worse.
3.43 Somet...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne
...lothing.

Not so, I; for I caught an expression
In her brow's undisturbed self-possession
Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,---
As if from no pleasing experiment
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful
So long as the process was needful,---
As if she had tried in a crucible,
To what ``speeches like gold'' were reducible,
And, finding the finest prove copper,
Felt the smoke in her face was but proper;
To know what she had _not_ to trust to,
Was worth all the ashes and dus...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...se on earth,
'Tis in man's love: all else is nothing worth. 

21
O flesh and blood, comrade to tragic pain
And clownish merriment whose sense could wake
Sermons in stones, and count death but an ache,
All things as vanity, yet nothing vain:
The world, set in thy heart, thy passionate strain
Reveal'd anew; but thou for man didst make
Nature twice natural, only to shake
Her kingdom with the creatures of thy brain. 
Lo, Shakespeare, since thy time nature is loth
To yield to art ...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...nd chase
     Give little choice of resting-place;—
     A summer night in greenwood spent
     Were but to-morrow's merriment:
     But hosts may in these wilds abound,
     Such as are better missed than found;
     To meet with Highland plunderers here
     Were worse than loss of steed or deer.—
     I am alone;—my bugle-strain
     May call some straggler of the train;
     Or, fall the worst that may betide,
     Ere now this falchion has been tried.'
     X...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...nd amplified,
In utter mirth forgot both Zeal and Pride!


High over Heaven the lamps of midnight burned
Ere, weak with merriment, the Four returned,
Not in that order they were wont to keep--
Pinion to pinion answering, sweep for sweep,
In awful diapason heard afar--
But shoutingly adrift 'twixt star and star;
Reeling a planet's orbit left or right
As laughter took them in the abysmal Night;
Or, by the point of some remembered jest,
Winged and brought helpless down through g...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things