Famous Stupidity Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Poet

by Delmore Schwartz
 The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry 
His power is his left hand
 It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
 like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience 
And this he may be destroyed by the gold of the light
 which never...Read more of this...

Happy As The Day Is Long

by James Tate
 I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room.
Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9.
1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be...Read more of this...

Tractor

by Ted Hughes
 The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness. 

It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails...Read more of this...

Australia

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey 
In the field uniform of modern wars, 
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws 
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away. 

They call her a young country, but they lie: 
She is the last of lands, the emptiest, 
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast 
Still tender...Read more of this...

Stupidity

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Other name of stupidity is love, and love does not value and recognise the inteligence, that comes from mind, the mostly place of the evil, and love comes from the heart, where God lives, love is in itself symbol of perfection." 
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

Her final Summer was it --

by Emily Dickinson
 Her final Summer was it --
And yet We guessed it not --
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded Her, We thought

A further force of life
Developed from within --
When Death lit all the shortness up
It made the hurry plain --

We wondered at our blindness
When nothing was to see
But Her Carrara Guide post --
At Our Stupidity --

When duller than our dullness
The Busy Darling lay --
So...Read more of this...

two south coast poems (a) this morning i came within sound of the sea

by Rg Gregory
 for a man whose eyes till now were a bed of rock
whose hands were drier than deserts
the sea's voice drove fear up through the valley
the tributaries meandering inside me longing for outlet
shrivelled even as their own courses became straight

my demand for ocean died now the ocean approached

the clouds put up with a lot of invective from me today
not a...Read more of this...

The Spirit Medium

by William Butler Yeats
 Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet
Because of those new dead
That come into my soul and escape
Confusion of the bed,
Or those begotten or unbegotten
Perning in a band,
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.

Or those begotten or unbegotten,
For I would not recall
Some that being unbegotten
Are not individual,
But copy some one action,
Moulding it of dust or...Read more of this...

Smoky the Bear Sutra

by Gary Snyder
Smokey the Bear Sutra

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
 the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
 Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
 and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
 the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
 to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from...Read more of this...

Publishers

by Godfrey Mutiso Gorry
 And then they pretend like owls
With marble eyes and wizened stupidity
I do not know why they cannot perceive
True art
But I will write
Until sand evaporates
And the moon consumes the sun
I will write
Even for the sake of art
For myself and for those who feel
Reading could lift them
Into other spheres of fancy
Where thoughts are much clearer
And deeds best described
As a vintage of...Read more of this...

The Human Face

by Paul Eluard
 I. Soon 

Of all the springtimes of the world 
This one is the ugliest 
Of all of my ways of being 
To be trusting is the best 

Grass pushes up snow 
Like the stone of a tomb 
But I sleep within the storm 
And awaken eyes bright 

Slowness, brief time ends 
Where all streets must pass 
Through my innermost...Read more of this...

owl power

by Rg Gregory
 they say in the local sanctuary
owls are the stupidest creatures
all this wisdom business is
the mythological media at work
but the shortest nosing into books
tells you even the mythic world
is bamboozled by the creature - no
two cultures being able to agree

the bird was cherished by minerva
hebrews loathed it as unclean
buddhists treasure its seclusion
elsewhere night-hag evil omen

the baker's daughter's silly cry
ungrateful chinese...Read more of this...

Her final summer was it

by Emily Dickinson
Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought

A further force of life
Developed from within,--
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.

We wondered at our blindness,--
When nothing was to see
But her Carrara guide-post,--
At our stupidity

When, duller than our dulness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing,
So leisurely were we!...Read more of this...

Reptiles And Roses

by Robert William Service
 So crystal clear it is to me
That when I die I cease to be,
All else seems sheer stupidity.

All promises of Paradise
Are wishful thinking, preacher's lies,
Dogmatic dust flung in our eyes.

Yea, life's immortal, swift it flows
Alike in reptile and in rose,
But as it comes, so too it goes.

Dead roses will not bloom again;
The lifeless lizard writhes in vain;
Cups shattered will...Read more of this...

Stupidity

by Amy Lowell
 Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch
I broke and bruised your rose.
I hardly could suppose
It were a thing so fragile that my clutch
Could kill it, thus.
It stood so proudly up upon its stem,
I knew no thought of fear,
And coming very near
Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem,
Tearing it down.
Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one,
The crimson petals, all
Outspread about my...Read more of this...

Account

by Czeslaw Milosz
 The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle's flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, thought it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I...Read more of this...

A Performance Of Henry V At Stratford-Upon-Avon

by Elizabeth Jennings
 Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language - Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today...Read more of this...

Stupidity

by Robert William Service
 Stupidity, woe's anodyne,
Be kind and comfort me in mine;
Smooth out the furrows of my brow,
Make me as carefree as a cow,
Content to sleep and eat and drink
 And never think

Stupidity, let me be blind
To all the ills of humankind;
Fill me with simple sentiment
To walk the way my father went;
School me to sweat with robot folk
 Beneath the yoke.

Stupidity, keep...Read more of this...

Yesterday and Today XII

by Kahlil Gibran
 The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary. 

He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...

On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes

by G K Chesterton
 Impetuously I sprang from bed,
Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
From the day's first golden cup.

In swift devouring ecstasy
Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigars.

But could my kind engross me? No!
Stern Art-what...Read more of this...

Strayed Crab

by Elizabeth Bishop
 This is not my home. How did I get so far from water? It must 
be over that way somewhere. 
 I am the color of wine, of tinta. The inside of my powerful 
right claw is saffron-yellow. See, I see it now; I wave it like a 
flag. I am dapper and elegant; I move with great precision,...Read more of this...

Ghazal of Love

by Dejan Stojanovic
I love the new sounds of love; 
Only the new cures an old love.

Watching the love making of waves and the shore
I desire to be the wave of love. 

There is no real hate in quarrels,
Only stupidity and lack of love.

The Sun shone upon me
And I shone upon the world with love.

I fly through memory
To find a newborn love.

Sing to...Read more of this...

Retrospect

by Rupert Brooke
 In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,
Like a bird in the wide air,
And, as the bird, it left no trace
In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found
The...Read more of this...

Man And The Echo

by William Butler Yeats
 Man. In a cleft that's christened Alt
 Under broken stone I halt
 At the bottom of a pit
 That broad noon has never lit,
 And shout a secret to the stone.
 All that I have said and done,
 Now that I am old and ill,
 Turns into a question till
 I lie awake night after night
 And never get...Read more of this...

Mac Flecknoe

by John Dryden
 All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
This aged prince now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To...Read more of this...

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