Famous Very Silly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Dark Girls Rhyme

by Dorothy Parker
 Who was there had seen us
Wouldn't bid him run?
Heavy lay between us
All our sires had done.

There he was, a-springing
Of a pious race,
Setting hags a-swinging
In a market-place;

Sowing turnips over
Where the poppies lay;
Looking past the clover,
Adding up the hay;

Shouting through the Spring song,
Clumping down the sod;
Toadying, in sing-song,
To a crabbed god.

There I was, that came of
Folk of mud and name-
I that...Read more of this...

Sonnets 07: When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In...Read more of this...

Sonnet XX

by Edmund Spenser
 IN vaine I seeke and sew to her for grace,
and doe myne humbled hart before her poure:
the whiles her foot she in my necke doth place,
and tread my life downe in the lowly floure.
And yet the Lyon that is Lord of power,
and reigneth ouer euery beast in field:
in his most pride disdeigneth to deuoure
the silly lambe that to his...Read more of this...

This silly sorrow-laden heart of mine

by Omar Khayyam
This silly sorrow-laden heart of mine
Is ever pining for that Love of mine;
When the Cupbearer poured the wine of love,
With my heart's blood he filled this cup of mine!...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Red Earl

by Rudyard Kipling
 (It is not for them to criticize too minutely
the methods the Irish followed, though they might deplore some of
their results. During the past few years Ireland had been going
through what was tantamount to a revolution. -- EARL SPENCER)



Red Earl, and will ye take for guide
 The silly camel-birds,
That ye bury your head in an Irish thorn,
 On a desert...Read more of this...

Tamerlane

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme-
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in-
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope- Oh God! I can-
Its fount is holier- more...Read more of this...

Grif of the Bloody Hand

by William Topaz McGonagall
 In an immense wood in the south of Kent,
There lived a band of robbers which caused the people discontent;
And the place they infested was called the Weald,
Where they robbed wayside travellers and left them dead on the field. 

Their leader was called Grif, of the Bloody Hand,
And so well skilled in sword practice there's few could him withstand;
And sometimes...Read more of this...

242. The Poet's Progress

by Robert Burns
 THOU, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign;
Of thy caprice maternal I complain.
 The peopled fold thy kindly care have found,
The hornèd bull, tremendous, spurns the ground;
The lordly lion has enough and more,
The forest trembles at his very roar;
Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell.
Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour,
In all th’...Read more of this...

392. Song—Poortith cauld and restless love

by Robert Burns
 O POORTITH cauld, and restless love,
 Ye wrack my peace between ye;
Yet poortith a’ I could forgive,
 An ’twere na for my Jeanie.


Chorus.—O why should Fate sic pleasure have,
 Life’s dearest bands untwining?
Or why sae sweet a flower as love
 Depend on Fortune’s shining?


The warld’s wealth, when I think on,
 It’s pride and a’ the lave o’t;
O fie on...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Harp-Weaver

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 "Son," said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
"you've need of clothes to cover you,
and not a rag have I.

"There's nothing in the house
To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with,
Nor thread to take stitches.

"There's nothing in the house
But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman's head
Nobody will buy,"
And she began to cry.

That was in the...Read more of this...

From Sunset to Star Rise

by Christina Rossetti
 Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not: 
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, 
A silly sheep benighted from the fold, 
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. 
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, 
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; 
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, 
Athirst and hungering on...Read more of this...

Superior

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!
She does not know the difference between the lights in the
streets and the stars.
When we play at eating with pebbles, she thinks they are real
food, and tries to put them into her mouth.
When I open a book before her and ask her to learn her a, b,
c, she tears the...Read more of this...

The Danger Of Writing Defiant Verse

by Dorothy Parker
 And now I have another lad!
No longer need you tell
How all my nights are slow and sad
For loving you too well.

His ways are not your wicked ways,
He's not the like of you.
He treads his path of reckoned days,
A sober man, and true.

They'll never see him in the town,
Another on his knee.
He'd cut his laden orchards down,
If that would pleasure...Read more of this...

Oonts

by Rudyard Kipling
 Wot makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, wot makes 'im to perspire?
It isn't standin' up to charge nor lyin' down to fire;
But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' road
For the commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load.
 O the oont*, O the oont, O the commissariat oont!
 With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes;
 We packs...Read more of this...

Backdropp Addresses Cowboy

by Margaret Atwood
 Starspangled cowboy 
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face 
a porcelain grin, 
tugging a papier-mache cactus 
on wheels behind you with a string, 


you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets.


Your righteous eyes, your laconic 
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains: 
as you move, the air in front of you 
blossoms with targets


and you leave behind you a...Read more of this...

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

by Imamu Amiri Baraka
Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I...Read more of this...

The Last Chantey

by Rudyard Kipling
 "And there was no more sea."


Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
 Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
 "Lo! Earth has passed away
 On the smoke of Judgment Day.
 That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 "Plague upon the...Read more of this...

A Silly Poem

by Spike Milligan
 Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?...Read more of this...

Cape Breton

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Out on the high "bird islands," Ciboux and Hertford, 
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand 
with their backs to the mainland 
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff's brown grass-frayed edge, 
while the few sheep pastured there go "Baaa, baaa." 
(Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede 
and fall over into the sea or onto the rocks.)...Read more of this...

Babys World

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never
could move, come creeping to his window...Read more of this...

Two Travellers in the Place Vendome

by Amy Lowell
 Reign of Louis Philippe

A great tall column spearing at the sky
With a little man on top. Goodness! Tell me 
why?
He looks a silly thing enough to stand up there so high.
What a strange fellow, like a soldier in a play,
Tight-fitting coat with the tails cut away,
High-crowned hat which the brims overlay.
Two-horned hat makes an outline like a bow.
Must have...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...

A Greek Girl

by Amy Levy
 I may not weep, not weep, and he is dead.
A weary, weary weight of tears unshed
Through the long day in my sad heart I bear;
The horrid sun with all unpitying glare
Shines down into the dreary weaving-room,
Where clangs the ceaseless clatter of the loom,
And ceaselessly deft maiden-fingers weave
The fine-wrought web; and I from morn till eve
Work with the rest, and...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Teller a Gypsy Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LUBIN and KATE, as gossips tell,
Were Lovers many a day;
LUBIN the damsel lov'd so well,
That folks pretend to say
The silly, simple, doting Lad,
Was little less than loving mad:
A malady not known of late--
Among the little-loving Great!

KATE liked the youth; but woman-kind
Are sometimes giv'n to range.
And oft, the giddy Sex, we find,
(They know not why)
When most they promise, soonest change,
And...Read more of this...

Devonshire Street W.1

by John Betjeman
 The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
 Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet. 
The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene
 With Edwardian faience adornment -- Devonshire Street. 

No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm
 Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.
The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm
 Its chimneys steady against...Read more of this...

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