Famous Smugly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Sing The Body Electric

by Philip Levine
 People sit numbly at the counter 
waiting for breakfast or service. 
Today it's Hartford, Connecticut 
more than twenty-five years after 
the last death of Wallace Stevens. 
I have come in out of the cold 
and wind of a Sunday morning 
of early March, and I seem to be 
crying, but I'm only freezing 
and unpeeled. The waitress brings 
me...Read more of this...

Elegy for an Enemy

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 (For G. H.) 

Say, does that stupid earth 
Where they have laid her, 
Bind still her sullen mirth, 
Mirth which betrayed her? 
Do the lush grasses hold, 
Greenly and glad, 
That brittle-perfect gold 
She alone had? 

Smugly the common crew, 
Over their knitting, 
Mourn her -- as butchers do 
Sheep-throats they're slitting! 
She was my enemy, 
One of the...Read more of this...

Frustration

by Robert William Service
 Gazing to gold seraph wing,
With wistful wonder in my eyes,
A blue-behinded ape, I swing
Upon the palms of Paradise.

A parakeet of gaudy hue
Upon a flame tree smugly rocks;
Oh, we're a precious pair, we two,
I gibber while the parrot squawks.

"If I had but your wings," I sigh,
"How ardently would I aspire
To soar celestially high
And mingle with yon angel choir."

His beady eye...Read more of this...

Tim

by Robert William Service
 My brother Tim has children ten,
 While I have none.
Maybe that's why he's toiling when
 To ease I've won.
But though I would some of his brood
 Give hearth and care,
I know that not a one he would
 Have heart to spare.

'Tis children that have kept him poor;
 He's clad them neat.
They've never wanted, I am sure,
 For bite to...Read more of this...

The Sunset Years of Samuel Shy

by Ogden Nash
 Master I may be,
But not of my fate.
Now come the kisses, too many too late.
Tell me, O Parcae,
For fain would I know,
Where were these kisses three decades ago?
Girls there were plenty,
Mint julep girls, beer girls,
Gay younger married and headstrong career girls,
The girls of my friends
And the wives of my friends,
Some smugly settled and some at loose ends,
Sad girls, serene...Read more of this...

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