Famous Wager Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wager poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wager poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wager poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lowell, Amy
...British,
Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George.
What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager.
Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for.
Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target!
Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the
house-top
Through Father's spy-glass.
The red city, and the blue, bright water,
And puffs of smoke which you made.
Twenty miles away,
Round by Cambri...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...for they held discourse
Concerning a new chum who there of late
Had bought such a thoroughly lazy horse;
They would wager that no one could ride him down
The length of the city of Walgett Town.
The stranger was born on a horse's hide;
So he took the wagers, and made them good
With his hard-earned cash -- but his hopes they died,
For the horse was a clothes-horse, made of wood! --
'Twas a well-known horse that had taken down
Full many a stranger in Walgett Town...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...o veil them? No, no! O'er them to raise
thee on high!
DEMOCRATIC food soon cloys on the multitude's stomach;
But I'll wager, ere long, other thou'lt give them instead.
WHAT in France has pass'd by, the Germans continue
to practise,
For the proudest of men flatters the people and
fawns.
WHO is the happiest of men? He who values the merits
of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.
NOT in the morning alone, not only at mid-da...Read more of this...
by
Herrick, Robert
...At draw-gloves we'll play,
And prithee let's lay
A wager, and let it be this :
Who first to the sum
Of twenty shall come,
Shall have for his winning a kiss....Read more of this...
by
Jong, Erica
...cream.
He did not join her
on that final cruise.
(He was on his own final cruise).
Did he want to?
I would wager yes.
I look back with love and sorrow
at them both--
dear teachers--
but she shines like Miss Liberty
to Emma Lazarus' hordes,
while he gazes within,
always, at his own
impenetrable jungle....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...that with a spurt of my sword point. Good
luck
to your pleasure. She will be quite complaisant, my friend,
I wager."
The end was a splashed flourish of ink.
Hark! In the passage is heard the clink
of armour, the tread of a heavy man.
The door bursts open and standing there, his thin hair wavering
in the glare of steely daylight, is my Lord of Clair.
Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip -- hiss
-- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops.Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
...des a protection from significance"
and "we are responsible for the universe."
*
I have put on my doubting, my wager, it is cold.
It is an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,
so coarse and woolen, also of unknown origin,
a barely apprehensible dilution of evening into
an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,
to twitter bodily a makeshift coat,
that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know,
not shade-giving, not chronological,
my ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still--hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria i...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er,
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
She smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before,
Both have ruled from shore to shore, -
That incestuous pair, who follow
...Read more of this...
by
Southey, Robert
...persuaded by fear,
"Some ugly old Abbot's white spirit appear,
"For this wind might awaken the dead!"
IX.
"I'll wager a dinner," the other one cried,
"That Mary would venture there now."
"Then wager and lose!" with a sneer he replied,
"I'll warrant she'd fancy a ghost by her side,
"And faint if she saw a white cow."
X.
"Will Mary this charge on her courage allow?"
His companion exclaim'd with a smile;
"I shall win, for I know she will venture there now,...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...To Policeman G. the Inspector said:
"When you pass the 'shops' you must turn your head;
If you took a wager, that would be a sin;
So you'll earn no stripes if you run them in."
Mush-a-ring-tiy-ah,
Fol-de-diddle-doh!
To the House Committee, the Inspector said:
"'Tis a terrible thing how the gamblers spread,
For they bet on the steeple, and they bet on the Cup,
And the magistrates won't lock them up."
Mush-a-ring-tiy-ah,
Fol-de-diddle-doh!
B...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...or the squall'Il twist her
Broadside on to it!--Row!
Heark'ee, Thor of the Thunder!
We are not here for a jest--
For wager, warfare, or plunder,
Or to put your power to test.
This work is none of our wishing--
We would house at home if we might--
But our master is wrecked out fishing.
We go to find him to-night.
For we hold that in all disaster--
As the Gods Themselves have said--
A Man must stand by his Master
Till one of the two is dead.
That is our way...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...'em cared to run;
And it don't say whether they shot him -- it don't even give his name --
But whatever they did I'll wager that he went to his graveyard game.
I tell you those old hidalgos, so stately and so polite,
They turn out the real Maginnis when it comes to an uphill fight.
There was General Alcantara, who died in the heaviest brunt,
And General Alzereca was killed in the battle's front;
But the king of 'em all, I reckon -- the man that could stand a pi...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
..."One moment, Max," said Franz. "We've gone too far.
I ask your pardon for our foolish joke.
It started in a wager ere you came.
The talk somehow had fall'n on drugs, a jar
I brought from China, herbs the natives smoke,
Was with me, and I thought merely to play a game.
53
Its properties are to induce a sleep
Fraught with adventure, and the flight of time
Is inconceivable in swiftness. Deep
Sunken in slumber, imageries sublime
Flatter the senses, or som...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...The hostile life,
With struggle and strife
To plant or to watch.
To snare or to snatch,
To pray and importune,
Must wager and venture
And hunt down his fortune!
Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,
And the garners are filled with the gold of the grain,
Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!
Within sits another,
The thrifty housewife;
The mild one, the mother--
Her home is her life.
In its circle she rules,
And the daughters she schools
And she ca...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...goes Jim to see his child;
Says, "The old man's after Stager, which he'll find is no light job,
And tomorrow I will wager he will try and yard the mob.
Will you come with me tomorrow? I will let the parson know,
And for ever, joy or sorrow, he will join us here below.
"I will bring the nags so speedy, Crazy Jane and Tambourine,
One more kiss -- don't think I'm greedy -- good-bye, lass, before I'm seen --
Just one more -- God bless you, dearie! Don't forget t...Read more of this...
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