Famous Triple Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To A Stuffed Shirt

by Robert William Service
 On the tide you ride head high,
Like a whale 'mid little fishes;
I should envy you as I
Help my wife to wash the dishes.
Yet frock-coat and stove-pipe hat
Cannot hide your folds of fat.

You are reckoned a success,
And the public praise you win;
There's your picture in the Press,
Pouchy eyes and triple chin.
Wealth,--of it you fairly stink;
Health,--what does your Doctor think?

Dignity is...Read more of this...

The Triple Fool

by John Donne
 I am two fools, I know— 
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wiseman that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then, as th' earths inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea waters fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhymes vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For...Read more of this...

Epistle to Katherine, Lady Aubigny

by Ben Jonson
  XIII. — EPISTLE TO KATHARINE LADY AUBIGNY.           As what they have lost t' expect, they dare deride. So both the prais'd and praisers suffer ; yet, For others ill ought none their good forget. I therefore, who profess myself in love With every virtue, wheresoe'er it move, And howsoever ;  as I am at feudBy arts, and practice of the...Read more of this...

Triple Time

by Philip Larkin
 This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This air, a little indistinct with autumn
Like a reflection, constitute the present --
A time traditionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.

But equally they make up something else:
This is the furthest future childhood saw
Between long houses, under travelling skies,
Heard in contending bells --
An air lambent with adult enterprise,

And on another day will be the...Read more of this...

Ballad for Gloom

by Ezra Pound
 For God, our God is a gallant foe 
That playeth behind the veil. 

I have loved my God as a child at heart 
That seeketh deep bosoms for rest, 
I have loved my God as a maid to man— 
But lo, this thing is best: 

To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil; 
To...Read more of this...

To Charlotte Cushman

by Sidney Lanier
 Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when...Read more of this...

Go Plant a Tree

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 God, what a joy it is to plant a tree, 
And from the sallow earth to watch it rise, 
Lifting its emerald branches to the skies 
In silent adoration; and to see 
Its strength and glory waxing with each spring. 
Yes, 'tis a goodly, and a gladsome thing 
To plant a tree. 

Nature has many marvels; but a tree...Read more of this...

To The Sound Of Violins

by Barry Tebb
 Give me life at its most garish

Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle

And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff

Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants

‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming...Read more of this...

An Ode For Ben Jonson

by Robert Herrick
 Ah Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun;
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad?
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

My Ben!
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend;
And...Read more of this...

Bleezers Ice Cream

by Jack Prelutsky
 I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI
TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY
CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW
CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW
TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER...Read more of this...

The Maldive Shark

by Herman Melville
 About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there...Read more of this...

The Ancestral Dwelling

by Henry Van Dyke
 Dear to my heart are the ancestral dwellings of America,
Dearer than if they were haunted by ghosts of royal splendour;
These are the homes that were built by the brave beginners of a nation,
They are simple enough to be great, and full of a friendly dignity. 

I love the old white farmhouses nestled in New England valleys,
Ample and long and...Read more of this...

Late Spring

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

Ah, who will tell me, in these leaden days, 
Why the sweet Spring delays, 
And where she hides, -- the dear desire
Of every heart that longs
For bloom, and fragrance, and the ruby fire 
Of maple-buds along the misty hills, 
And that immortal call which fills
The waiting wood with songs?
The snow-drops came so long ago, 
It seemed that Spring...Read more of this...

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

by Robert Graves
 There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of...Read more of this...

Triple Feature

by Denise Levertov
 Innocent decision: to enjoy.
And the pathos
of hopefulness, of his solicitude:

--he in mended serape,
she having plaited carefully
magenta ribbons into her hair,
the baby a round half-hidden shape
slung in her rebozo, and the young son steadfastly
gripping a fold of her skirt,
pale and severe under a handed-down sombrero --
all regarding 
the stills with full attention, preparing
to pay ad go in--
to worlds of shadow-violence,...Read more of this...

Of Consciousness her awful Mate

by Emily Dickinson
 Of Consciousness, her awful Mate
The Soul cannot be rid --
As easy the secreting her
Behind the Eyes of God.

The deepest hid is sighted first
And scant to Him the Crowd --
What triple Lenses burn upon
The Escapade from God --...Read more of this...

My Cicely

by Thomas Hardy
 "ALIVE?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.

"She lives, in a plenteous well-being,
To-day as aforehand;
The dead bore the name--though a rare one--
The name that bore she."

She lived ... I, afar in the city
Of frenzy-led factions,
Had squandered green years and maturer
In bowing the knee

To Baals illusive and specious,
Till chance...Read more of this...

Sonnet 15

by John Milton
 XV

On The Late Massacher In Piemont

Avenge O lord thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our Fathers worship't Stocks and Stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groanes
Who were thy Sheep and in their antient Fold
Slayn by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd
Mother with Infant down...Read more of this...

Oh the Shamrock

by Thomas Moore
 Through Erin's Isle 
To sport awhile 
As Love and Valour wander'd, 
With Wit, the sprite, 
Whose quiver bright 
A thousand arrows squander'd; 
Where'er they pass, 
A triple grass
Shoots up, with dew-drops streaming, 
As softly green 
As emeralds seen 
Through purest crystal gleaming. 
Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock! 
Chosen leaf 
Of Bard and Chief, 
Old Erin's native Shamrock!...Read more of this...

The Last Rhyme of True Thomas

by Rudyard Kipling
 The King has called for priest and cup,
 The King has taken spur and blade
To dub True Thomas a belted knight,
 And all for the sake o' the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
 They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
 That guards the gates...Read more of this...

The Cathedral of Rheims

by Joyce Kilmer
 (From the French of Emile Verhaeren)

He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed...Read more of this...

To Milton

by Oscar Wilde
 Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we...Read more of this...

A Death-Bed

by Rudyard Kipling
 1918
This is the State above the Law.
 The State exists for the State alone."
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
 And an answering lump by the collar-bone.],


Some die shouting in gas or fire;
 Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, caught on the wire -
 Some die suddenly. This will not.


"Regis suprema voluntas Lex"
[It...Read more of this...

A Sunset

by Victor Hugo
 I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, 
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, 
In numerous leafage bosomed close; 
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, 
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere 
On cloudy archipelagos. 

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,...Read more of this...

The Long Trail

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
 And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
Singing: "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the dover,
 "And your English summer's done."
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
 You have heard the song --...Read more of this...

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