Famous Publican Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Publican poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous publican poems. These examples illustrate what a famous publican poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...fine religious, decent folk,
In Virtue's flaunting gold and scarlet,
I sneer between two puffs of smoke, -
Give me the publican and harlot.
Ye dainty-spoken, stiff, severe
Seed of the migrated Philistian,
One whispered question in your ear -
Pray, what was Christ, if you be Christian?
If Christ were only here just now,
Among the city's wynds and gables
Teaching the life he taught us, how
Would he be welcome to your tables?
I go and leave your logic-straws,
Your former-...Read more of this...
by
Watts, Isaac
...The Pharisee and publican.
Luke 18:10ff.
Saints, at your heav'nly Father's word
Give up your comforts to the Lord;
Behold how sinners disagree,
The publican and Pharisee!
One doth his righteousness proclaim,
The other owns his guilt and shame.
This man at humble distance stands,
And cries for grace with lifted hands
That boldly rises near the throne,
And talk...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...they looked in their hilarious youth.
They burnt their old clothes in the yard, and their old hats as well;
The publican kicked up a row because they made a smell.
They put on bran'-new "larstin'-sides" – and, oh, they looked a yell!
Next morning, or the next (or next), from demon-haunted beds,
And very far from feeling like what sporting men call "peds",
The three rode back without their beards, with "boxers" on their heads!
They tried to get Joe lodgings ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...s past
He did his share to keep the peace,
But took to falling, and at last
Was cast for age from the Police.
A publican at Conroy's Gap
Bought him and christened him The Trap.
When grass was good and horses dear,
He changed his owner now and then
At prices ranging somewhere near
The neighbourhood of two-pound-ten:
And manfully he earned his keep
By yarding cows and ration sheep.
They brought him in from off the grass
And fed and groomed the old hor...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O i...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...es, 10 January 1982
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
With Byron three graves on I'll not go short
of company, and Wordsworth's opposite.
That's two peers already, of a sort,
and we'll all be thrown together if the pit,
whose galleries once ran beneath this plot,
causes the distinguished dead to drop
into the rabblement of...Read more of this...
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