Famous Nancy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On My Wifes Birth-Day

by Christopher Smart
 'Tis Nancy's birth-day--raise your strains, 
Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains, 
And sing with more than usual glee 
To Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell the blythe Graces as they bound, 
Luxuriant in the buxom round; 
They're not more elegantly free, 
Than Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell royal Venus, tho' she rove, 
The queen of the...Read more of this...

A Wreath To The Fish

by Nancy Willard
 Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth,
flat on my drainboard, dead asleep,
its suit of mail proof only against the stream?
What is it to live in a stream,
to dwell forever in a tunnel of cold,
never to leave your shining birthsuit,
never to spend your inheritance of thin coins?
And who is the stream, who lolls all day
in an unmade bed, living...Read more of this...

Nancy

by Elinor Wylie
 You are a rose, but set with sharpest spine; 
You are a pretty bird that pecks at me; 
You are a little squirrel on a tree, 
Pelting me with the prickly fruit of the pine; 
A diamond, torn from a crystal mine, 
Not like that milky treasure of the sea, 
A smooth, translucent pearl, but skilfully 
Carven to cut,...Read more of this...

Ae Fond Kiss And Then We Sever

by Robert Burns
 Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was...Read more of this...

Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else Except Richer

by Ogden Nash
 This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage...Read more of this...

Cousin Nancy

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 MISS NANCY ELLICOTT
Strode across the hills and broke them,
Rode across the hills and broke them—
The barren New England hills—
Riding to hounds
Over the cow-pasture.

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
But they knew that it was modern.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The...Read more of this...

362. Song—Thou Gloomy December

by Robert Burns
 ANCE mair I hail thee, thou gloomy December!
 Ance mair I hail thee wi’ sorrow and care;
Sad was the parting thou makes me remember—
 Parting wi’ Nancy, oh, ne’er to meet mair!


Fond lovers’ parting is sweet, painful pleasure,
 Hope beaming mild on the soft parting hour;
But the dire feeling, O farewell for ever!
 Anguish unmingled, and agony pure!


Wild as...Read more of this...

360. Song—Ae fond Kiss

by Robert Burns
 AE fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.


I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy:
But to see her was to...Read more of this...

Farmer Dying

by Richard Hugo
 for Hank and Nancy

Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow
from his cough. These limp days, his anger,
legend forty years from moon to Stevensville,
lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore.
Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam
unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves
of cottonwoods ride Burnt Fork creek away.
His geese grow fat without him. Same...Read more of this...

Nancy Dawson

by Mother Goose
Nancy Dawson was so fine
She wouldn't get up to serve the swine;
She lies in bed till eight or nine,
So it's Oh, poor Nancy Dawson.

And do ye ken Nancy Dawson, honey?
The wife who sells the barley, honey?
She won't get up to feed her swine,
And do ye ken Nancy Dawson, honey?...Read more of this...

Fire-Logs

by Carl Sandburg
 NANCY HANKS dreams by the fire;
Dreams, and the logs sputter,
And the yellow tongues climb.
Red lines lick their way in flickers.
Oh, sputter, logs.
 Oh, dream, Nancy.
Time now for a beautiful child.
Time now for a tall man to come....Read more of this...

On the Ruins of a Country Inn

by Philip Freneau
 WHERE now these mingled ruins lie 
A temple once to Bacchus rose, 
Beneath whose roof, aspiring high, 
Full many a guest forgot his woes. 

No more this dome, by tempests torn, 
Affords a social safe retreat; 
But ravens here, with eye forlorn, 
And clustering bats henceforth will meet. 

The Priestess of this ruined shrine, 
Unable to survive the stroke,...Read more of this...

On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age

by Phillis Wheatley
From dark abodes to fair etherial light
Th' enraptur'd innocent has wing'd her flight;
On the kind bosom of eternal love
She finds unknown beatitude above.
This known, ye parents, nor her loss deplore,
She feels the iron hand of pain no more;
The dispensations of unerring grace,
Should turn your sorrows into grateful praise;
Let then no tears for her henceforward flow,
No more distress'd in our dark...Read more of this...

439. Song—My Spouse Nancy

by Robert Burns
 “HUSBAND, husband, cease your strife,
 Nor longer idly rave, Sir;
Tho’ I am your wedded wife
 Yet I am not your slave, Sir.”
“One of two must still obey,
 Nancy, Nancy;
Is it Man or Woman, say,
 My spouse Nancy?’


“If ’tis still the lordly word,
 Service and obedience;
I’ll desert my sov’reign lord,
 And so, good bye, allegiance!”
“Sad shall I be, so bereft,
...Read more of this...

353. Poem on Sensibility

by Robert Burns
 SENSIBILITY, how charming,
 Dearest Nancy, thou canst tell;
But distress, with horrors arming,
 Thou alas! hast known too well!


Fairest flower, behold the lily
 Blooming in the sunny ray:
Let the blast sweep o’er the valley,
 See it prostrate in the clay.


Hear the wood lark charm the forest,
 Telling o’er his little joys;
But alas! a prey the surest
 To each pirate of...Read more of this...

California Plush

by Frank Bidart
 The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars

--descending through the city
 fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to...Read more of this...

Barry Holden

by Edgar Lee Masters
 The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
Set fire to the house
They were trying Dr. Duval
For the murder of Zora Clemens,
And I sat in the court two weeks
Listening to every witness.
It was clear he had got her in a family way;
And to let the child be born
Would not do.
Well, how about me with eight children,
And one coming, and the farm
Mortgaged...Read more of this...

361. Song—Behold the Hour the Boat arrive

by Robert Burns
 BEHOLD the hour, the boat, arrive!
 My dearest Nancy, O fareweel!
Severed frae thee, can I survive,
 Frae thee whom I hae lov’d sae weel?


Endless and deep shall be my grief;
 Nae ray of comfort shall I see,
But this most precious, dear belief,
 That thou wilt still remember me!


Alang the solitary shore
 Where flitting sea-fowl round me cry,
Across the rolling,...Read more of this...

Occasional Poems

by Delmore Schwartz
 I Christmas Poem for Nancy

Noel, Noel
We live and we die
Between heaven and hell
Between the earth and the sky
And all shall be well
And all shall be unwell
And once again! all shall once again!
 All shall be well
By the ringing and the swinging
 of the great beautiful holiday bell
Of Noel! Noel!

II Salute Valentine

I'll drink to thee only with my eyes
When two...Read more of this...

258. Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner

by Robert Burns
 AULD comrade dear, and brither sinner,
How’s a’ the folk about Glenconner?
How do you this blae eastlin wind,
That’s like to blaw a body blind?
For me, my faculties are frozen,
My dearest member nearly dozen’d.
I’ve sent you here, by Johnie Simson,
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on;
Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling,
An’ Reid, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
An’ meikle Greek an’...Read more of this...

Lucille

by Robert William Service
 Of course you've heard of the Nancy Lee, and how she sailed away
On her famous quest of the Arctic flea, to the wilds of Hudson's Bay?
For it was a foreign Prince's whim to collect this tiny cuss,
And a golden quid was no more to him than a copper to coves like us.
So we sailed away and our hearts were...Read more of this...

Going Back to School

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past 
And all the grey waves flamed to red again 
At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast 
The Sausalito lights burned suddenly 
In little dots and clumps, as if a pen 
Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills; 
The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills,...Read more of this...

437. Song—Thine am I my faithful Fair

by Robert Burns
 THINE am I, my faithful Fair,
 Thine, my lovely Nancy;
Ev’ry pulse along my veins,
 Ev’ry roving fancy.
To thy bosom lay my heart,
 There to throb and languish;
Tho’ despair had wrung its core,
 That would heal its anguish.


Take away those rosy lips,
 Rich with balmy treasure;
Turn away thine eyes of love,
 Lest I die with pleasure!
What is life when wanting...Read more of this...

Nancy Knapp

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Well, don't you see this was the way of it:
We bought the farm with what he inherited,
And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning
His fathers mind against the rest of them.
And we never had any peace with our treasure.
The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.
And lightning struck the granary.
So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.
And...Read more of this...

Bridge Over The Aire Book 3

by Barry Tebb
 THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART





1



The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days

Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two

Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?



I am the mad poet first love

You never got over

You are my blue-eyed

Madonna virgin bride

I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’

On the bark of every 

Wind-bent tree in 

East End Park



2



The park itself will blossom

And...Read more of this...

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