Famous Scotch Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Scotch poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scotch poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scotch poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...A’ YE wha live by sowps o’ drink,
A’ ye wha live by crambo-clink,
A’ ye wha live and never think,
Come, mourn wi’ me!
Our billie ’s gien us a’ a jink,
An’ owre the sea!
Lament him a’ ye rantin core,
Wha dearly like a random splore;
Nae mair he’ll join the merry roar;
In social key;
For now he’s taen anither shore.
An’ owre the sea!
The bonie la...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...pleasant Orange-tree;
How Vlster likes of that same golden bit
Wherewith my father once made it half tame;
If in the Scotch Court be no weltring yet;
These questions busy wits to me do frame:
I, cumbred with good manners, answer doe,
But know not how; for still I thinke of you.
XXXI
With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climbst the skies!
How silently, and with how wanne a face!
What, may it be that euen in heau'nly place
That busie archer his sharpe arrowes tr...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ps
Were slides of mirror glass
And as we passed
There seemed to be a spirit
Guarding us.
34
We drew our hop-scotch
Squares in rainbow chalks
And in the binyards
Played at hide and seek:
When I found Margaret
I had the right to kiss her
How I miss her forty years on,
Too much in love for love,
And now our time is gone.
35
Margaret, the streets are weeping at midnight,
Over the suspension bridge the traffic flow is
Heavy as a haemorrhage, the F...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...k walls
Of factories
Grimy glass
Flickering firelight
In black-leaded grates.
41
Hunslet de Ledes
Hop-scotch, hide and seek,
Bogies-on-wheels
Not one tree in Hunslet
Except in the cemetery
The lake filled in
For fifty years,
The bluebell has rung
Its last perfumed peal.
42
I couldn’t play out on Sunday
Mam and dad thought us a cut
Above the rest, it was another
Test I failed, keeping me and
Margaret apart was like the Aztecs
Tearing t...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...in and out
3 more pickups and into the station
I'd be, my car
waiting to get me to Miriam who sat on my blue couch
with scotch on the rocks
crossing her legs and swinging her ankles
like she did,
2 more stops. . .
the truck stalled at a traffic light, it was hell
kicking it over
again. . .
I had to be home by 8,8 was the deadline for Miriam.
I made the last pickup and the truck stalled at a signal
1/2 block from the station. . .
it woul...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...te construction of the spiritual herbs and flowers.
For the Planet Mercury is the WORD DISCERNMENT.
For the Scotchman seeks for truth at the bottom of a well, the Englishman in the Heavn of Heavens.
For the Planet Venus is the WORD PRUDENCE or providence.
For GOD nevertheless is an extravagant BEING and generous unto loss.
For there is no profit in the generation of man and the loss of millions is not worth God's tear.
For this is the twelf...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches
of music --
snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a Scotch
regiment
is besieging Saint-Denis. The Emperor wipes his face,
or is it his eyes.
His tired eyes which see nowhere the grace they long for. Josephine!
Somebody asks him a question, he does not answer, somebody else
does that.
There are voices, but one voice he does not hear, and yet he hears
it
all the time. Josephine! The Empe...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...y fist at the enemies of the human race.”
Named by a grand jury as a murderer
He went to Chihuahua, forgot his old Scotch name,
Smoked cheroots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock of the people.
How can I tell how Don Magregor went?
Three riders emptied lead into him.
He lay on the main street of an inland town.
A boy sat near all day throwing stones
To keep pigs away.
The Villa men buried him in a pit
With twenty Carranzistas.
...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...lack whereon to live?
Have they not rack'd their whole inventions
To feed their brats on posts and pensions;
Made their Scotch friends with taxes groan,
And pick'd poor Ireland to the bone:
Yet have on hand, as well deserving,
Ten thousand bastards, left for starving?
And can you now, with conscience clear,
Refuse them an asylum here,
And not maintain, in manner fitting,
These genuine sons of mother Britain?
"T' evade these crimes of blackest grain
You prate of liberty in v...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...se!
See plund'ring Dunmore's ***** band
Fly headlong from Virginia's strand;
And far on southern hills our cousins,
The Scotch M'Donalds, fall by dozens;
Or where King's Mountain lifts its head,
Our ruin'd bands in triumph led!
Behold, o'er Tarlton's blustring train
Defeat extends the captive chain!
Afar near Eutaw's fatal springs,
Lo, rebel Vict'ry spreads her wings!
Through all the land, in varied chace,
We hunt the rainbow of success,
In vain! their Chief, superior still,
...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...er the names of my child-
ren. "
The guy on the next stool, like a bird on the next island,
took a sip from his Scotch and soda. The guy liked the sound
of the alcohol in his drink. He put the glass back on the bar.
"That's no problem, " he said to Mr. Norris. "The best
thing I know for remembering the names of children from
previous marriages, is to go out camping, try a little trout
fishing. Trout fishing is one of the best things in th...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...wings and sail on down the hill.
O he was the one who was born to be king! That one, turn-
ing down through the Scotch broom and going over an upside-
down car abandoned in the yellow grass. That one, his gray
wings .
One morning last week, part way through the dawn, I awoke
under the apple tree, to hear a dog barking and the rapid
sound of hoofs coming toward me. The millennium? An in-
vasion of Russians all wearing deer feet?
I opened my eyes ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e German airs of friendship, wine and love,
Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances—English warbles,
Chansons of France, Scotch tunes—and o’er the rest,
Italia’s peerless compositions.
Across the stage, with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion,
Stalks Norma, brandishing the dagger in her hand.
I see poor crazed Lucia’s eyes’ unnatural gleam;
Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevell’d.
I see where Ernani, walking the bridal garden,
Amid the scent o...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...n the watches of the night he is always fresh and bright;
Every now and then he has a cup of tea
With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he's keeping on the watch,
Only stopping here and there to catch a flea.
You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.
But you saw him at Dumfries, where he speaks to the police
If th...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...tugee.
Yet like ripe grain before the gale that national hotch-potch
Went down before the fury of the Irish and the Scotch.
Aye, though they closed their gaping ranks and rallied to the fray,
To the Shamrock and the Thistle went the glory of the day.
You should have seen the carnage in the drooling light of dawn,
Yet 'mid the scene of slaughter Jock MacPherson playing on.
Though all lay low about him, yet he held his head on high,
And piped as if he stood upo...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ard: cheat a scholar; French, "faire la
barbe;" and Boccaccio uses the proverb in the same sense.
16. "Gar" is Scotch for "cause;" some editions read, however,
"get us some".
17. Chalons: blankets, coverlets, made at Chalons in France.
18. Crock: pitcher, cruse; Anglo-Saxon, "crocca;" German,
"krug;" hence "crockery."
19. Dwale: night-shade, Solanum somniferum, given to cause
sleep.
20. Burdoun: bass; "burden" of a song. It ori...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...e sails of the schooner Flight.
But let me tell you how this business begin.
2 Raptures of the Deep
Smuggled Scotch for O'Hara, big government man,
between Cedros and the Main, so the Coast Guard couldn't touch us,
and the Spanish pirogues always met us halfway,
but a voice kept saying: "Shabine, see this business
of playing pirate?" Well, so said, so done!
That whole racket crash. And I for a woman,
for her laces and silks, Maria Concepcion.
Ay, ay! Next t...Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...rts and such-like foolish toys he dressed;
And then, more smartly to expound the riddle
Of all his prattle, gives her a Scotch fiddle.
Tired with this dismal stuff, away I ran
Where were two wives, with girl just fit for man -
Short-breathed, with pallid lips and visage wan.
Some curtsies past, and the old compliment
Of being glad to see each other, spent,
With hand in hand they lovingly did walk,
And one began thus to renew the talk:
"I pray, good madam, if it may b...Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...nd furs, and gowns, when they like thee look wise.
French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy,
Hibernian learning, Scotch civility,
Spaniard's dispatch, Dane's wit are mainly seen in thee.
The great man's gratitude to his best friend,
King's promises, whore's vows, towards thee they bend,
Flow swiftly to thee, and in thee never end....Read more of this...
by
Kumin, Maxine
...t of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.
The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian...Read more of this...
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