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Famous Pubs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Edgar, Marriott
...broaden the little lad's mind.

They took charrybank up to London
And got there at quarter to fower,
Then seeing as pubs wasn't open
They went straight away to the tower.

They didn't think much to the buildin'
'T weren't what they'd been led to suppose,
And the 'Bad Word' Tower didn't impress them,
They said Blackpool had got one of those.

At last Albert found a Beefeater
And filled the old chap with alarm.
By asking for Ghost of Anne Boleyn
As carried her '...Read more of this...



by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...here; 

For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store, 
And the theatres are in plenty, and the pubs are more and more. 
But that ends it, Mr Lawson, and it's time to say good-bye, 
So we must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I. 
Yes, we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may, 
And if fortune only favours we will take the road some day, 
And go droving down the river 'neath the sunshine and the stars, 
And then retu...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...Hill, realising where I was

From the Waterlow Unit and the Whittington’s A&E.

Some say they know their way by the pubs

But I find psychiatric units more useful.

At a reading like this you never know just who

Might have a do and need some Haldol fast.

(Especially if the poet hovering round sanity’s border

Should chance upon the critic who thinks his Word

Is law and order - the first’s a devotee of a Krishna cult

For rich retirees; the second wrote a good b...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones--
In fact, he's remarkably fat.
He doesn't haunt pubs--he has eight or nine clubs,
For he's the St. James's Street Cat!
He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers
Or such an impreccable back.
In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we're all of us pr...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...s world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age, and dying smokers sense
Walking towards them through some dappled park
As if on water that unfocused she
No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,
W...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...r>

"Kill him, kill him, the bastard!" she’d scream

As all Wakefield watched, "It’s Grotty,

Grotty’s at it again!" as pubs and clubs

Banned them, singly or together and they

Moved lodgings yet again, landlords and

Landladies left reeling behind broken doors.

Blood-smeared walls covered with a shiny

Patina of carefully applied deceits! "It was

The cat, the kids, them druggies, lads from

Football", anyone, anywhere but him and her.

Once I heard them fight, "Ba...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...
Adn dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens 
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside ont caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses 
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence 
Never before or since 
As changed itself to past
W...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...Beeston could boast

Where night turned to day and vaguely he applied 

For jobs as clerk and court usher and drank in pubs with yobs.

When the crisis came – "I feel my head coming off my body’ –

I was ready and unready, making the necessary calls

To get a bed, to keep him on the ward, to visit and reassure 

Us both that some way out could be found.

The ‘Care Home’ was the next disaster, trying to cure

Schizophrenia with sticking plaster: "We don’t want 

Carer...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...r>N.!"

There stands a little country town
Beyond the border line,
Where dusty roads go up and down,
And banks with pubs combine.
A stranger came to cash a cheque --
Few were the words he said --
A handkerchief about his neck,
An old hat on his head.

A long grey stranger, eagle-eyed --
"Know me? Of course you do?"
"It's not my work," the boss replied,
"To know such tramps as you."
"Well, look here, Mister, don't be flash,"
Replied the stranger then,
"I never ...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...seven lights danced in a row. 
There used be a custom then, 
Miss Bourne, the Friend, went round at ten 
To all the pubs in all the place, 
To bring the drunkards' souls to grace; 
Some sulked, of course, and some were stirred, 
But none give her a dirty word. 
A tall pale woman, grey and bent, 
Folk said of her that she was sent 
She wore Friend's clothes, and women smiled, 
But she'd a heart just like a child. 
She come to us near closing time 
when we were at s...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...In all the pubs from Troon to Ayr
Grandfather's father would repair
With Bobby Burns, a drouthy pair,
 The glass to clink;
And oftenwhiles, when not too "fou,"
They'd roar a bawdy stave or two,
From midnight muk to morning dew,
 And drink and drink.

And Grandfather, with eye aglow
And proper pride, would often show
An old armchair where long ago
 The Bard would si...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...O west of all that a man holds dear, on the edge of the Kingdom Come, 
Where carriage is far too high for beer, and the pubs keep only rum, 
On the sunburnt ways of the Outer Back, on the plains of the darkening scrub, 
I have followed the wandering teamster's track, and it always led to a pub. 
There's always in man some gift to show, some power he can command, 
And mine is the Gift that I always know when a pub is close at hand; 
I can pick them out on the London street...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
... 

City swells who `do the Royal' would have called the Shanty low, 
But 'twas better far and purer than some toney pubs I know; 
For the patrons of the Shanty had the principles of men, 
And the spieler, if he struck it, wasn't welcome there again. 
You could smoke and drink in quiet, yarn, or else soliloquise, 
With a decent lot of fellows in the Shanty on the Rise. 

'Twas the bullock-driver's haven when his team was on the road, 
And the waggon-wheels were gro...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...n the times were tight 
We starved in Australian scrubs; 
We froze together in parks at night, 
And laughed together in pubs. 
And I often hear a laugh like his 
From a sense of humour keen, 
And catch a glimpse in a passing phiz 
Of his broad, good-humoured grin. 

And I had a love -- 'twas a love to prize -- 
But I never went back again . . . 
I have seen the light of her kind brown eyes 
In many a face since then. 

. . . . . 

T...Read more of this...

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