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Famous Toys Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilmot, John
..., who would be adored
For domineering at the Council board;

A greater fop, in business at fourscore,
Fonder of serious toys, affected more,
Than the gay, glittering fool at twenty proves,
With all his noise, his tawdry clothes and loves.
But a meek, humble man, of honest sense,
Who preaching peace does practise continence;
Whose pious life's a proof he does believe
Mysterious truths which no man can conceive.

If upon Earth there dwell such god-like men,
I'll here re...Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...can reach,
Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,
Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys
And sink into its own delight at last.

And I call up MacGregor from the grave,
For in my first hard springtime we were friends.
Although of late estranged.
I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;
And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,
When thoughts rise up unbid
On gen...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold a...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...beans.

Her jowls shiver in accusation
Of crimes cliched by Repetition. 
Her children, strangers
To childhood's TOYS, play
Best the games of darkened doorways,
Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
Other people's property.

Too fat to whore,
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
Into a den of bereaucrats for her portion.

'They don't give me welfare.
I take it.'...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...tines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
They bide their time, and well can prove,
If need were, their line from Jove,
Of the same stuff, and so allayed,
As that whereof the sun is made;
And of that fibre quick and strong
Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song. 
Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
Their secret now in dulness keep.
Yet, ...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
..., and scarred, and riven. -Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply - all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
B...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...k?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore. 
Or, if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace? All our Law and Story strewed
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That ple...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...moulding themselves to the anthill have choked
Their natures until the souls the in them;
They have sold themselves for toys and protection:
No, but consider awhile: what else? Men sold for toys.

Uneasy and fractional people, having no center
But in the eyes and mouths that surround them,
Having no function but to serve and support
Civilization, the enemy of man,
No wonder they live insanely, and desire
With their tongues, progress; with their eyes, pleasure; with their ...Read more of this...

by Nin, Anais
..."Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of eating Jesus's flesh and drinking His blood that I couldn't swallow the host well, and I dreaded ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...a power and a Race
That would have still in sight 
A manifest end of ashes and eternal night? 
Is this the music of the toys we shake 
So loud,—as if there might be no mistake 
Somewhere in our indomitable will?
Are we no greater than the noise we make 
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage 
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go 
Because our brains and bones and cartilage 
Will have it so?
If this we say, then let us all be still 
About our share in it, and live and die 
More qu...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...tt'st, and with thy cypress bind
Thy votary's hair, and seal him for thy son.
But never let Euphrosyne beguile
With toys of wanton mirth my fixed mind,
Nor in my path her primrose-garland cast.
Though 'mid her train the dimpled Hebe bare
Her rosy bosom to th' enamour'd view;
Though Venus, mother of the Smiles and Loves,
And Bacchus, ivy-crown'd, in citron bower
With her on nectar-streaming fruitage feast:
What though 'tis hers to calm the lowering skies,
And at her pr...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...f 
Never to wed. You likewise will do well, 
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 
The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so, 
Some future time, if so indeed you will, 
You may with those self-styled our lords ally 
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.' 

At those high words, we conscious of ourselves, 
Perused the matting: then an officer 
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these: 
Not for three years to correspond with home; 
Not for ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...st bones of Time; 
And on the tables every clime and age 
Jumbled together; celts and calumets, 
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans 
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, 
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, 
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls, 
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, 
His own forefathers' arms and armour hung. 

And 'this' he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt; 
And that was old Sir Ralp...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...f death

With none of the anticipated solace,

No children’s children visiting in spite of the spare room

Stacked with toys, with shelves of dusty books, Baum’s ‘Magical Land of Oz’

Its spine laid bare, Mombi the witch, Dorothy and Toto

Gathered forlornly round the saw-horse, the scarlet and crimson

Of their Edwardian rig slightly ridiculous, the Gothic typeface

Evoking sepia prints of my father at five in a pinafore or seven

In a sailor-suit feeding the Sunday birds, m...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...erve the people and protect the State.
Another pride was his, and other joys:
To him the crown and sceptre were but toys,
With which he played at glory's idle game,
To please himself and win the wreaths of fame.
The throne his fathers held from age to age
Built for King Martin to diplay at will,
His mighty strength and universal skill.


No conscious child, that, spoiled with praising, tries
At every step to win admiring eyes, ----
No favourite mountebank, whose a...Read more of this...

by Johnson, Samuel
...gibe?
63 Attentive truth and nature to decry,
64 And pierce each scene with philosophic eye.
65 To thee were solemn toys or empty show,
66 The robes of pleasure and the veils of woe:
67 All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain,
68 Whose joys are causeless, or whose griefs are vain.

69 Such was the scorn that fill'd the sage's mind,
70 Renew'd at ev'ry glance on humankind;
71 How just that scorn ere yet thy voice declare,
72 Search every state, and canvas ev'ry p...Read more of this...

by Levis, Larry
..., my father said,
Far away, in snow, & without his cameras.
But Mr. Hirata did not work. He played.
His toys gleamed there. That much was clear to me . . . .
That was the day I decided I would never work.
It felt like a conversion. Play was sacred.
My father waited behind us on a sofa made
From car seats. One spring kept nosing through.
I remember the camera opening into the light . . . .
And I remember t...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...e, 
 And pointless compasses, and dear 
 Old lacquer-work; and stoneware clear 
 Through glass protecting; all man's toys 
 So coveted by girls and boys. 
 Great China monsters—bodies much 
 Like cucumbers—you all shall touch. 
 I yield up all! my picture rare 
 Found beneath antique rubbish heap, 
 My great and tapestried oak chair 
 I will from you no longer keep. 
 You shall about my table climb, 
 And dance, or drag, without a cry 
 From me as if it were a cr...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...oom 
Of some dusty dining-room; 
See the pictures on the walls, 
Heroes fights and festivals; 
And in a corner find the toys 
Of the old Egyptian boys....Read more of this...

by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...then 
And we'll leave it far and far away-
(Only you and I understand!)

You have played 
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of 
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break and-
Just tired.
So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight 
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart-
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows 
And if you like 
The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah come with me!
I'l...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things