Famous Parker Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Fair Weather

by Dorothy Parker
 This level reach of blue is not my sea;
Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,
Whose quiet ripples meet obediently
A marked and measured line, one after one.
This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves
Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.
I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

So let a love beat...Read more of this...

Thomas Carlyle

by Dorothy Parker
 Carlyle combined the lit'ry life
With throwing teacups at his wife,
Remarking, rather testily,
"Oh, stop your dodging, Mrs. C.!"...Read more of this...

Two-Volume Novel

by Dorothy Parker
 The sun's gone dim, and
The moon's turned black;
For I loved him, and
He didn't love back....Read more of this...

Somebodys Song

by Dorothy Parker
 This is what I vow;
He shall have my heart to keep,
Sweetly will we stir and sleep,
All the years, as now.
Swift the measured sands may run;
Love like this is never done;
He and I are welded one:
This is what I vow.

This is what I pray:
Keep him by me tenderly;
Keep him sweet in pride of me,
Ever and a day;
Keep me from the...Read more of this...

Interior

by Dorothy Parker
 Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain....Read more of this...

Speaking Of Operations

by Ellis Parker Butler
 I know something wonderful—wonderful;
So strange it will quite startle you;
So strange and absurd and unusual
It seems it can hardly be true!

I know something wonderful—wonderful;
You’ll hardly believe it can be—
You know my appendix? Well, honest,
I’ve still got it inside of me!...Read more of this...

A Study In Feeling

by Ellis Parker Butler
 To be a great musician you must be a man of moods,
You have to be, to understand sonatas and etudes.
To execute pianos and to fiddle with success,
With sympathy and feeling you must fairly effervesce;
It was so with Paganini, Remenzi and Cho-pang,
And so it was with Peterkin Von Gabriel O’Lang.

Monsieur O’Lang had sympathy to such a great degree.
No virtuoso ever...Read more of this...

Dilemma

by Dorothy Parker
 If I were mild, and I were sweet,
And laid my heart before your feet,
And took my dearest thoughts to you,
And hailed your easy lies as true;
Were I to murmur "Yes," and then
"How true, my dear," and "Yes," again,
And wear my eyes discreetly down,
And tremble whitely at your frown,
And keep my words unquestioning
My love, you'd run like anything!

Should I be...Read more of this...

Cupid Caught Napping

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Cupid on a summer day,
Wearied by unceasing play,
In a rose heart sleeping lay,
 While, to guard the tricksy fellow,
Close above the fragrant bed
Back and forth a gruff bee sped,
And, to lull the sleepy head,
 Played “Zoom! Zoom!” upon his ‘cello.

Little did the god surmise
That sweet Anna’s cerule eyes
Gazed on him with glad surprise,
 Or that he was in such...Read more of this...

Of a Woman Dead Young

by Dorothy Parker
 If she had been beautiful, even,
Or wiser than women about her,
Or had moved with a certain defiance;
If she had had sons at her sides,
And she with her hands on their shoulders,
Sons, to make troubled the Gods-
But where was there wonder in her?
What had she, better or eviler,
Whose days were a pattering of peas
From the pod to the bowl in...Read more of this...

To A Much Too Unfortunate Lady

by Dorothy Parker
 He will love you presently
If you be the way you be.
Send your heart a-skittering.
He will stoop, and lift the thing.
Be your dreams as thread, to tease
Into patterns he shall please.
Let him see your passion is
Ever tenderer than his....
Go and bless your star above,
Thus are you, and thus is Love.

He will leave you white with woe,
If you go the way...Read more of this...

The Whale

by Ellis Parker Butler
 The Whale is found in seas and oceans,
Indulging there in fishlike motions,
But Science shows that Whales are mammals,
Like Jersey cows, and goats, and camels.

When undisturbed, the Whale will browse
Like camels, goats, and Jersey cows,
On food that satisfies its tongue,
Thus making milk to feed its young.

Asking no costly hay and oats,
Like camels, Jersey cows, and goats,
The Whale, prolific milk producer,
Should...Read more of this...

Love Song

by Dorothy Parker
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled—
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world,—
And I wish I’d never met him.

My love, he’s mad, and my...Read more of this...

The Small Hours

by Dorothy Parker
 No more my little song comes back;
And now of nights I lay
My head on down, to watch the black
And wait the unfailing gray.

Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;
And sad's a song that's dumb;
And sad it is to lie and know
Another dawn will come....Read more of this...

At Variance

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When with me the play she goes,
I much admire the buds and bows
And all that on Kate’s headgear grows.
But when some other night I see
That hat between the stage and me,
My taste and Kate’s do not agree....Read more of this...

Mortal Enemy

by Dorothy Parker
 Let another cross his way-
She's the one will do the weeping!
Little need I fear he'll stray
Since I have his heart in keeping-

Let another hail him dear-
Little chance that he'll forget me!
Only need I curse and fear
Her he loved before he met me....Read more of this...

Song in a Minor Key

by Dorothy Parker
 There's a place I know where the birds swing low, 
And wayward vines go roaming, 
Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god 
Is pale, in scented gloaming. 
And at sunset there comes a lady fair 
Whose eyes are deep with yearning. 
By an old, old gate does the lady wait 
Her own true love's returning. 

But the days...Read more of this...

The Last Question

by Dorothy Parker
 New love, new love, where are you to lead me?
All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.
How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?
With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.

New love, new love, shall I be forsaken?
One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh.
Sweet it is to slumber,...Read more of this...

Trespassers

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When Love and I drew softly nigh
And gazed in modest Chloe’s eye
We saw reflected there in part
The lovely mansion of her heart,
A sight so fair that, quite bereft
Of sense and shame, we had but left
One wish, that we by foul or fair
Might enter in and tarry there.

But when, with vagabondish art,
We nearer crept to Chloe’s heart
That we might steal...Read more of this...

How'd You Like It?

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Well, then! How’d you like to bear the name of Butler
 As an honor badge eight centuries at least,
And then have the Prohibitionists inform you
 That a butler is a sort of outlawed beast?...Read more of this...

Outbid

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When Cupid held an auction sale,
 I hastened to his mart,
For I had heard that he would sell
 The blue-eyed Dora’s heart.

I brought a wealth of truest love,
 The most that I could proffer,
Because, forsooth, of stocks or bonds
 I had not one to offer.

When Cupid offered Dora’s heart,
 I bid my whole heart’s love,
A love that reached from...Read more of this...

The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay

by Ellis Parker Butler
 You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day.
And then, of a sudden, it up and bust,
And all that was left was a mound of dust?
Holmes—O. W.—told it well
In a rhyme of his—what there was to tell—
But the one-hoss shay wasn’t “one, two, three”
With a vehicle...Read more of this...

Temps Perdu

by Dorothy Parker
 I never may turn the loop of a road
Where sudden, ahead, the sea is Iying,
But my heart drags down with an ancient load-
My heart, that a second before was flying.

I never behold the quivering rain-
And sweeter the rain than a lover to me-
But my heart is wild in my breast with pain;
My heart, that was tapping contentedly.

There's never a...Read more of this...

Fulfillment

by Dorothy Parker
 For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,
And tucked me in my bed at eight,
And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,
And watched me as I sat and stood:
That I might grow to womanhood
To hear a whistle and drop my wits
And break...Read more of this...

Prisoner

by Dorothy Parker
 `Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?' 

`It was my master,' said the prisoner. 
`I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, 
and I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king. 
When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my lord, 
and on waking...Read more of this...

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