Famous Trifling Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Trifling poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous trifling poems. These examples illustrate what a famous trifling poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mary Darby Robinson
"HERE POPE FIRST SUNG!" O, hallow'd Tree !
Such is the boast thy bark displays;
Thy branches, like thy Patron's lays,
Shall ever, ever, sacred be;
Nor with'ring storm, nor woodman's stroke,
Shall harm the POET'S favourite Oak.
'Twas HERE, he woo'd his MUSE of fire,
While Inspiration's wond'rous art,
Sublimely stealing thro' his heart
Did Fancy's proudest themes inspire:
'Twas HERE he wisely learnt...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see
him when he came, but didn't seem to miss him if he stayed away.
And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
And yet bear parting?
And must I then, at Friendship's call,
Calmly...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Romance was always young.
You come today
Just eight years old
With marvellous dark hair.
Younger than Dante found you
When you turned
His heart into the way
That found the heavenly stair.
Perhaps we must be strangers.
I confess
My soul this hour is Dante's,
And your care
Should be for dolls
Whose painted hands caress
Your marvellous dark hair.
Romance, with moonflower face
And morning eyes,
And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
The canticles...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
HALF vex'd, half pleased, thy love will feel,
Shouldst thou her knot or ribbon steal;
To thee they're much--I won't conceal;
Such self-deceit may pardon'd be;
A veil, a kerchief, garter, rings,
In truth are no mean trifling things,
But still they're not enough for me.
She who is dearest to my heart,
Gave me, with well dissembled smart,
Of her own life, a living part,
No charm in...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad.
The outer day, void statue of lit blue,
Is altogether outward, other, glad
At mere being not-I (so my aches construe).
I, that have failed in everything, bewail
Nothing this hour but that I have bewailed,
For in the general fate what is't to fail?
Why, fate being past for Fate, 'tis but to have failed.
Whatever hap-or...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
A.D. 980-1016
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night -- we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask ti explain
That you've only to pay 'em the...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Back of my back, they talk of me,
Gabble and honk and hiss;
Let them batten, and let them be-
Me, I can sing them this:
"Better to shiver beneath the stars,
Head on a faithless breast,
Than peer at the night through rusted bars,
And share an irksome rest.
"Better to see the dawn come up,
Along of a trifling one,
Than set a steady man's cloth and...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
A True Incident of Pre-Revolutionary French History.
Now the lovely autumn morning breathes its freshness in earth's face,
In the crowned castle courtyard the blithe horn proclaims the chase;
And the ladies on the terrace smile adieux with rosy lips
To the huntsmen disappearing down the cedar-shaded groves,
Wafting delicate aromas from their scented finger tips,
And the gallants wave in answer, with their gold-embroidered...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
So soon as our lips touch, we feel so much more luminous together that it would seem as though two Gods loved and united in us.
We feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and so renewed by their virgin light that, in their brightness, the universe is made manifest to us.
In our eyes, joy is the only ferment of...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Old MISTRESS GURTON had a Cat,
A Tabby, loveliest of the race,
Sleek as a doe, and tame, and fat
With velvet paws, and whisker'd face;
The Doves of VENUS not so fair,
Nor JUNO'S Peacocks half so grand
As MISTRESS GURTON'S Tabby rare,
The proudest of the purring band;
So dignified in all her paces--
She seem'd, a pupil of the Graces!
There never was a finer creature
In...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
Time! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die---
Hail thou! who on my birth bestowed
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.
I would not one fond heart should share
The bitter moments thou hast given;
And pardon...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
At four o'clock in late October
I sat alone in the country school-house
Back from the road 'mid stricken fields,
And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
With its open door blurring the shadows
With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
In an idle mood I was running the planchette --
All at once my...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
SO grieves th' adventurous merchant, when he throws
All the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main, to save from wrack
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back
These letters : yet so powerful is your sway
As if you bid me die, I must obey.
Go then, blest papers, you shall kiss those...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands,
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased
when...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
HOW wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite,
How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white,
How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I—let the Critics go whistle!
But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
The friends I made have slipped and strayed,
And who's the one that cares?
A trifling lot and best forgot-
And that's my tale, and theirs.
Then if my friendships break and bend,
There's little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die....Read more of this...
by
Ann Taylor
"Dear me! what signifies a pin!
I'll leave it on the floor;
My pincushion has others in,
Mamma has plenty more:
A miser will I never be,"
Said little heedless Emily.
So tripping on to giddy play,
She left the pin behind,
For Betty's broom to whisk away,
Or some one else to find;
She never gave a thought, indeed,
To what...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THIS page a chain to bring thee burns,
That, train'd to suppleness of old,
On thy fair neck to nestle, yearns,
In many a hundred little fold.
To please the silly thing consent!
'Tis harmless, and from boldness free;
By day a trifling ornament,
At night 'tis cast aside by thee.
But if the chain they bring thee ever,
Heavier, more fraught with weal or woe,
I'd then, Lisette,...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This fine poem is introduced in the second
book of Wilhelm Meister.]
"WHAT tuneful strains salute mine ear
Without the castle walls?
Oh, let the song re-echo here,
Within our festal halls!"
Thus spake the king, the page out-hied;
The boy return'd; the monarch cried:
"Admit the old man yonder!"
"All hail, ye noble lords to-night!
All hail, ye beauteous dames!
Star placed by star! What heavenly sight!
Whoe'er can...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Death's the lover that I'd be taking;
Wild and fickle and fierce is he.
Small's his care if my heart be breaking-
Gay young Death would have none of me.
Hear them clack of my haste to greet him!
No one other my mouth had kissed.
I had dressed me in silk to meet him-
False young Death would not hold the tryst.
Slow's the blood that...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCIX. Parrà forse ad alcun, che 'n lodar quella. HE INVITES THOSE TO WHOM HIS PRAISES SEEM EXCESSIVE TO BEHOLD THE OBJECT OF THEM. Haply my style to some may seem too freeIn praise of her who holds my being's chain,Queen of her sex describing her to reign,Wise, winning, good, fair,...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
O SORROW!
Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?--
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
O Sorrow!
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?--
To give the glow-worm light?
Or, on...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Man wants but little here below."
LITTLE I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,
(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own;
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.
Plain food is quite enough for me;
Three courses are as good as ten;--
If Nature can subsist on three,
Thank...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I could die -- to know --
'Tis a trifling knowledge --
News-Boys salute the Door --
Carts -- joggle by --
Morning's bold face -- stares in the window --
Were but mine -- the Charter of the least Fly --
Houses hunch the House
With their Brick Shoulders --
Coals -- from a Rolling Load -- rattle -- how -- near --
To the very Square...Read more of this...
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