Famous Treats Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Dover Bitch: A Criticism Of Life

by Anthony Hecht
 So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to...Read more of this...

Curriculum Vitae

by Anthony Hecht
 1992

1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.

2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into 
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of 
course I do not remember this.

3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The 
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.

4) A cornucopia filled...Read more of this...

A Pigs-Eye View Of Literature

by Dorothy Parker
 The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and...Read more of this...

Phantasmagoria CANTO IV ( Hys Nouryture )

by Lewis Carroll
 "OH, when I was a little Ghost, 
A merry time had we! 
Each seated on his favourite post, 
We chumped and chawed the buttered toast 
They gave us for our tea." 

"That story is in print!" I cried. 
"Don't say it's not, because 
It's known as well as Bradshaw's Guide!" 
(The Ghost uneasily replied 
He hardly thought it was)....Read more of this...

The New Mistress

by A E Housman
 "Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be? 
You may be good for something, but you are not good for me. 
Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here. 
And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear. 

"I will go where I am wanted, to a...Read more of this...

Canzone XIII

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XIII. Se 'l pensier che mi strugge. HE SEEKS IN VAIN TO MITIGATE HIS WOE.  Oh! that my cheeks were taughtBy the fond, wasting thoughtTo wear such hues as could its influence speak;Then the dear, scornful fairMight all my ardour share;And where Love slumbers now he might awake!Less...Read more of this...

Im In Love

by Charles Bukowski
 she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a 
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you...Read more of this...

Psalm 135 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-4,14,19-21 
L. M.
The church is God's house and care.

Praise ye the Lord, exalt his name,
While in his holy courts ye wait,
Ye saints, that to his house belong,
Or stand attending at his gate.

Praise ye the Lord, the Lord is good;
To praise his name is sweet employ:
Isr'el he chose of old, and still
His church is his peculiar joy.

The Lord himself will...Read more of this...

Huddersfield - The Second Poetry Capital Of England

by Barry Tebb
 It brings to mind Swift leaving a fortune to Dublin

‘For the founding of a lunatic asylum - no place needs it more’.

The breathing beauty of the moors and cheap accommodation

Drew me but the total barbarity of the town stopped me from

Writing a single line: from the hideous facade of its railway

Station - Betjeman must have been drunk or mad...Read more of this...

Long Distance I

by Tony Harrison
 Your bed's got two wrong sides. You life's all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:

Ah can't stand it no more, this empty house!

Carrots choke us wi'out your mam's white sauce!

Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back.
Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronaries and cataracts.)

Ah've allus liked...Read more of this...

Grotty And The Quarryman

by Barry Tebb
 (To Paul Sykes, author of 'Sweet Agony')

He demolished five doors at a sitting

And topped it off with an outsize window

One Christmas afternoon, when drunk;

Sober he smiled like an angel, bowed,

Kissed ladies’ hands and courtesy

Was his middle name.

She tried to pass for thirty at fifty-six,

Called him "My Sweet piglet" and laid out

Dainty doylies for his teatime treats; always

She wore black...Read more of this...

Secretary

by Robert William Service
 My Master is a man of might
 With manners like a hog;
He makes me slave from morn to night
 And treats me like a dog.
He thinks there's nothing on this earth
 His money cannot buy,
And claims to get full wages worth
 From hirelings such as I.

But does he? Though a Man of State,
 And fabulously rich,
He little guesses that...Read more of this...

Penmaen Pool

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 For the Visitors' Book at the Inn


Who long for rest, who look for pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school
O where live well your lease of leisure
But here at, here at Penmaen Pool? 
You'll dare the Alp? you'll dart the skiff?— 
Each sport has here its tackle and tool:
Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff;
Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen...Read more of this...

Blood Oranges

by Lisel Mueller
 In 1936, a child
in Hitler's Germany,
what did I know about the war in Spain?
Andalusia was a tango
on a wind-up gramophone,
Franco a hero's face in the paper.
No one told me about a poet
for whose sake I might have learned Spanish
bleeding to death on a barren hill.
All I knew of Spain
were those precious imported treats
we splurged on for Christmas.
I remember pulling...Read more of this...

The Pannikin Poet

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 There's nothing here sublime, 
But just a roving rhyme, 
Run off to pass the time, 
With nought titanic in. 
The theme that it supports, 
And, though it treats of quarts, 
It's bare of golden thoughts -- 
It's just a pannikin. 

I think it's rather hard 
That each Australian bard -- 
Each wan, poetic card -- 
With thoughts galvanic in...Read more of this...

On Mr. Miltons Paradise Lost

by Andrew Marvell
 When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,
In slender Book his vast Design unfold,
Messiah Crown'd, Gods Reconcil'd Decree,
Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Heav'n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the Argument
Held me a while misdoubting his Intent,
That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)
The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song,
(So Sampson groap'd the Temples Posts in spight)
The World o'rewhelming to...Read more of this...

Alcidor

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 While Monarchs in stern Battle strove 
For proud Imperial Sway; 
Abandon'd to his milder Love, 
Within a silent peaceful Grove, 
Alcidor careless lay. 

Some term'd it cold, unmanly Fear; 
Some, Nicety of Sense, 
That Drums and Trumpets cou'd not hear, 
The sullying Blasts of Powder bear, 
Or with foul Camps dispense. 

A patient Martyr to their Scorn, 
And each...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Banished And Returning Count

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe began to write an opera called Lowenstuhl, 
founded upon the old tradition which forms the subject of this Ballad, 
but he never carried out his design.]

OH, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,

The portals we straightway will bar.
Our mother is praying, our father is gone

To the forest, on wolves to make...Read more of this...

At Night

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Whut time 'd dat clock strike?
Nine? No—eight;
I didn't think hit was so late.
Aer chew! I must 'a' got a cough,
I raally b'lieve I did doze off—
Hit's mighty soothin' to de tiah,
A-dozin' dis way by de fiah;
Oo oom—hit feels so good to stretch
I sutny is one weary wretch!
Look hyeah, dat boy done gone to sleep!
He des ain't wo'th his boa'd an'...Read more of this...

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