Famous Showed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Grumpy Grandpa

by Robert William Service
 Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails,
As if they had been dipped in gore,
I'd like to set you lugging pails
And make you scrub the kitchen floor.
I'm old and crotchety of course,
And on this point my patience fails;
I'd sue my old girl for divorce
If she showed up with painted nails.

Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails,
Like to a Jezebel are you;
Do you expect to...Read more of this...

The Palace of Humbug

by Lewis Carroll
 Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor 

Number 1 

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls. 

Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze. 

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere. 

One showed a vain...Read more of this...

Eddis Service

by Rudyard Kipling
 Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
 In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
 For such as cared to attend.

But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,
 And the night was stormy as well.
Nobody came to service,
 Though Eddi rang the bell.

"'Wicked weather for walking,"
 Said Eddi of Manhood End.
"But I must go on with the service
 For such as care...Read more of this...

I showed her Heights she never saw

by Emily Dickinson
 I showed her Heights she never saw --
"Would'st Climb," I said?
She said -- "Not so" --
"With me --" I said -- With me?
I showed her Secrets -- Morning's Nest --
The Rope the Nights were put across --
And now -- "Would'st have me for a Guest?"
She could not find her Yes --
And then, I brake my life -- And Lo,
A...Read more of this...

Johnson's Antidote

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Down along the Snakebite River, where the overlanders camp, 
Where the serpents are in millions, all of the most deadly stamp; 
Where the station-cook in terror, nearly every time he bakes, 
Mixes up among the doughboys half-a-dozen poison-snakes: 
Where the wily free-selector walks in armour-plated pants, 
And defies the stings of scorpions, and the bites of bull-dog ants: 
Where...Read more of this...

Identification In Belfast

by Robert Lowell
 (I.R.A. Bombing)

The British Army now carries two rifles,
one with rubber rabbit-pellets for children,
the other's of course for the Provisionals....
'When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh good,
it's not him because he's blonde—
I imagine his hair was singed dark by the bomb.
He had nothing on him to identify him,
except this box of joke trick matches;
he liked to have...Read more of this...

The Old Swimmin-Hole

by James Whitcomb Riley
 OH! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth...Read more of this...

Great-Heart

by Rudyard Kipling
 Theodore Roosevelt

"The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart."--Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Process

 Concerning brave Captains
 Our age hath made known
 For all men to honour,
 One standeth alone,
 Of whom, o'er both oceans,
 Both peoples may say:
 "Our realm is diminished
 With Great-Heart away."

 In purpose unsparing,
 In action no less,
 The labours he praised
 He would...Read more of this...

The Baldness Of Chewed-Ear

by Robert William Service
 When Chewed-ear Jenkins got hitched up to Guinneyveer McGee,
His flowin' locks, ye recollect, wuz frivolous an' free;
But in old Hymen's jack-pot, it's a most amazin' thing,
Them flowin' locks jest disappeared like snow-balls in the Spring;
Jest seemed to wilt an' fade away like dead leaves in the Fall,
An' left old Chewed-ear balder than a white-washed cannon ball.

Now Missis Chewed-ear Jenkins,...Read more of this...

Seven Watchmen

by Rudyard Kipling
 1918
SEVEN Watchmen sitting in a tower,
 Watching what had come upon mankind,
Showed the Man the Glory and the Power,
 And bade him shape the Kingdom to his mind.
"All things on Earth your will shall win you."
 ('Twas so their council ran)
" But the Kingdom--the Kingdom is within you,"
 Said the Man's own mind to the Man.
 For time--and some...Read more of this...

John Barleycorn

by Robert Burns
 There were three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
An' they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and ploughed him down,
Put clods upon his head;
An' they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerfu' spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them all.

The...Read more of this...

The Working Party

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Three hours ago he blundered up the trench, 
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots; 
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls 
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk. 
He couldn't see the man who walked in front; 
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet 
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing 
Wretchedly where...Read more of this...

II. The Pauper Witch of Grafton

by Robert Frost
 Now that they've got it settled whose I be,
I'm going to tell them something they won't like:
They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.
Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting
To make a present of me to each other.
They don't dispose me, either one of them,
To spare them any trouble. Double trouble's
Always the witch's motto anyway.
I'll...Read more of this...

Skipper Iresons Ride

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, -
On Apuleius' Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, -
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of...Read more of this...

Imanuel Ehrenhardt

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I began with Sir William Hamilton's lectures.
Then studied Dugald Stewart;
And then John Locke on the Understanding,
And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,
Kant and then Schopenhauer --
Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.
All read with rapturous industry
Hoping it was reserved to me
To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret,
And drag it out of its hole.
My soul flew up ten thousand miles,
And...Read more of this...

The Capture of Lucknow

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas near the Begum Kothie the battle began,
Where innocent blood as plentiful as water ran;
The Begum Kothie was a place of honour given to the 93rd,
Which heroically to a man they soon did begird. 

And the 4th Punjaub Rifles were their companions in glory,
And are worthy of their names enrolled in story,
Because they performed prodigious wonders in the fight,
By...Read more of this...

A Soldier

by Robert Frost
 He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an...Read more of this...

Don Juan In Hades

by Charles Baudelaire
 WHEN Juan sought the subterranean flood, 
And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore, 
Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood 
With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. 

With open robes and bodies agonised, 
Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; 
There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: 
Behind him all the dark was one long cry. 

And...Read more of this...

The Lovers Litany

by Rudyard Kipling
 Eyes of grey -- a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
 Sing, for Faith and Hope are high --
 None so true as you and I --
 Sing the Lovers' Litany:
 "Love like ours can never die!"

Eyes of black -- a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse...Read more of this...

When First We Faced And Touching Showed

by Philip Larkin
 When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your...Read more of this...

Fridolin (The Walk To The Iron Factory)

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,
He would have studied to fulfil,
To please his God, with earnest will.

From the first hour when daylight shone
Till rang the vesper-chime,
He lived but for her will alone,
And deemed e'en that scarce...Read more of this...

The Princes Progress (excerpt)

by Christina Rossetti
 "Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate.
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

"Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in...Read more of this...

From Snow-Bound 11:1-40 116-154

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein,...Read more of this...

The Scottish Engineer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 With eyes that searched in the dark, 
Peering along the line, 
Stood the grim Scotsman, Hector Clark, 
Driver of "Forty-nine". 
And the veldt-fire flamed on the hills ahead, 
Like a blood-red beacon sign. 

There was word of a fight to the north, 
And a column too hardly pressed, 
So they started the Highlanders forth. 
Heedless of food or rest....Read more of this...

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth

by Pam Ayres
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies...Read more of this...

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