Famous Short London Poems
Famous Short London Poems. Short London Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best London short poems
by
Spike Milligan
Why is there no monument
To Porridge in our land?
It it's good enough to eat,
It's good enough to stand!
On a plinth in London
A statue we should see
Of Porridge made in Scotland
Signed, "Oatmeal, O.
B.
E.
"
(By a young dog of three)
by
Victor Hugo
("Aveugle comme Homère.")
{Improvised at the Café de Paris.}
Blind, as was Homer; as Belisarius, blind,
But one weak child to guide his vision dim.
The hand which dealt him bread, in pity kind—
He'll never see; God sees it, though, for him.
H.L.C., "London Society."
by
Patrick Kavanagh
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
"I was once your father.
"
by
Thomas Hardy
I
Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
The tragedy of things.
II
Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter
By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;
Death waited Nature's wont; Peace smiled unshent
From Ind to Occident.
by
Hilaire Belloc
To-night in million-voiced London I
Was lonely as the million-pointed sky
Until your single voice.
Ah! So the sun
Peoples all heaven, although he be but one.
by
Amy Levy
Out of town the sky was bright and blue,
Never fog-cloud, lowering, thick, was seen to frown;
Nature dons a garb of gayer hue,
Out of town.
Spotless lay the snow on field and down,
Pure and keen the air above it blew;
All wore peace and beauty for a crown.
London sky, marred by smoke, veiled from view,
London snow, trodden thin, dingy brown,
Whence that strange unrest at thoughts of you
Out of town?
by
Mother Goose
"Pussy-cat, pussy-cat,
Where have you been?"
"I've been to London
To look at the Queen.
"
"Pussy-cat, pussy-cat,
What did you there?"
"I frightened a little mouse
Under the chair.
"
by
A E Housman
Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
There, in the windless night-time,
The wanderer, marvelling why,
Halts on the bridge to hearken
How soft the poplars sigh.
He hears: no more remembered
In fields where I was known,
Here I lie down in London
And turn to rest alone.
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
by
Carl Sandburg
BOTH were jailbirds; no speechmakers at all; speaking best with one foot on a brass rail; a beer glass in the left hand and the right hand employed for gestures.
And both were lights snuffed out … no warning … no lingering:
Who knew the hearts of these boozefighters?
by
Ezra Pound
O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.
The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
But he dies also, presently.
Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
Woeful is this human lot.
Woe! woe, etcetera .
.
.
.
London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter.
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera .
.
.
by
Mother Goose
Hey diddle dinkety poppety pet,
The merchants of London they wear scarlet,
Silk in the collar and gold in the hem,
So merrily march the merchant men.
by
David Lehman
The wonderful thing
about being with
you in this hotel
lift in London full
of people is that none
of them knows what you
and I are about to do
in bed or possibly
on the floor in fact not
even you realize yet
how much you're going
to enjoy this act for
which we have no name
not clinical or hideous, just
a double digit number, perfect
as a skater's figure eight
by
Amy Levy
Straw in the street where I pass to-day
Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet.
'Tis for a failing life they lay
Straw in the street.
Here, where the pulses of London beat,
Someone strives with the Presence grey;
Ah, is it victory or defeat?
The hurrying people go their way,
Pause and jostle and pass and greet;
For life, for death, are they treading, say
Straw in the street?