Famous Stuffy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Meeting With The Princess

by Barry Tebb
 Just a family get-together in a terrace house in Bradford

High tea with a few stuffy aunts I hadn’t seen for years

Their husbands in tow like lost dogs sniffing round for food

But she came all the same, ushered in politely as a friend

Of a friend or somebody’s cousin twice removed though

Everybody was a bit put out at first except me...Read more of this...

Forard

by Henry Lawson
 It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep, 
For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep, -- 
They are trav'lers for the most part in a straight 'n' honest path; 
But their linen's rather scanty, an' there isn't any bath -- 
Stowed away like ewes and wethers that is shore 'n' marked 'n'...Read more of this...

Portrait

by Robert William Service
 Painter, would you make my picture?
Just forget the moral stricture.
 Let me sit
With my belly to the table,
Swilling all the wine I'm able,
 Pip a-lit;
Not a stiff and stuffy croaker
In a frock coat and a choker
 Let me be;
But a rollicking old fellow
With a visage ripe and mellow
 As you see.

Just a twinkle-eyed old codger,
And of death as artful...Read more of this...

The Grey-Eyed King

by Anna Akhmatova
Hail! Hail to thee, o, immovable pain!
The young grey-eyed king had been yesterday slain.

This autumnal evening was stuffy and red.
My husband, returning, had quietly said,

"He'd left for his hunting; they carried him home;
They'd found him under the old oak's dome.

I pity the queen. He, so young, past away!...
During one night her black hair turned to grey."

He found his pipe on...Read more of this...

The Ape And I

by Robert William Service
 Said a monkey unto me:
"How I'm glad I am not you!
See, I swing from tree to tree,
Something that you cannot do.
In gay greenery I drown;
Swift to skyey hights I scale:
As you watch me hang head down
Don't you wish you had a tail?

"Don't you wish that you could wear
In the place of stuffy clothes,
Just a silky coat of hair,
Never shoes...Read more of this...

The House

by Philip Levine
 This poem has a door, a locked door, 
and curtains drawn against the day, 
but at night the lights come on, one 
in each room, and the neighbors swear 
they hear music and the sound of dancing. 
These days the neighbors will swear 
to anything, but that is not why 
the house is locked up and no one goes...Read more of this...

Dream Song 58: Industrious affable having brain on fire

by John Berryman
 Industrious, affable, having brain on fire,
Henry perplexed himself; others gave up;
good girls gave in;
geography was hard on friendship, Sire;
marriages lashed & languished, anguished; dearth of group
and what else had been;

the splendour & the lose grew all the same,
Sire. His heart stiffened, and he failed to smile,
catching (enfit) on.
The law: we must, owing to chiefly shame
lacing our pride, down what...Read more of this...

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