Famous Wanton Poems by Famous Poets

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

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249. Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment

by Robert Burns
 BY all I lov’d, neglected and forgot,
No friendly face e’er lights my squalid cot;
Shunn’d, hated, wrong’d, unpitied, unredrest,
The mock’d quotation of the scorner’s jest!
Ev’n the poor súpport of my wretched life,
Snatched by the violence of legal strife.
Oft grateful for my very daily bread
To those my family’s once large bounty fed;
A welcome inmate at their homely fare,
My griefs, my woes,...Read more of this...

Amphion

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 MY father left a park to me, 
But it is wild and barren, 
A garden too with scarce a tree, 
And waster than a warren: 
Yet say the neighbours when they call, 
It is not bad but good land, 
And in it is the germ of all 
That grows within the woodland. 

O had I lived when song was...Read more of this...

On Chloris Walking in the Snow

by William Strode
 I saw fair Chloris walk alone,
Whilst feather'd rain came softly down,
And Jove descended from his tower
To court her in a silver shower.
The wanton snow flew on her breast
Like little birds unto their nest;
But overcome with whiteness there,
For grief it thaw'd into a tear;
Thence falling on her garment's hem,
To deck her, froze into a gem....Read more of this...

The Nymph Complaining For The Death Of Her Faun

by Andrew Marvell
 The wanton Troopers riding by
Have shot my Faun and it will dye.
Ungentle men! They cannot thrive
To kill thee. Thou neer didst alive
Them any harm: alas nor cou'd
Thy death yet do them any good.
I'me sure I never wisht them ill;
Nor do I for all this; nor will:
But, if my simple Pray'rs may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will...Read more of this...

Julie Claire

by Robert William Service
 Oh Julie Claire was very fair,
Yet generous as well,
And many a lad of metal had
A saucy tale to tell
Of sultry squeeze beneath the trees
Or hugging in the hay . . .
Of love her share had Julie Claire
When life was lush and gay.

And then the village wealth to pillage
Came the Teuton horde;
The haughty Huns with mighty guns
And clattering of sword.
And...Read more of this...

The Eagle And Dove

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IN search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,
In torment writhed
Throughout three long, three weary nights;
And then was cured,
Thanks to all-healing Nature's
Soft, omnipresent balm.
He crept away from out the copse,
And stretch'd his wing--alas!
Lost is all power...Read more of this...

The Blossom

by William Shakespeare
 ON a day--alack the day!-- 
Love, whose month is ever May, 
Spied a blossom passing fair 
Playing in the wanton air: 
Through the velvet leaves the wind 
All unseen 'gan passage find; 
That the lover, sick to death, 
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath. 
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; 
Air, would I might triumph so! 
But, alack, my...Read more of this...

His Last Request To Julia

by Robert Herrick
 I have been wanton, and too bold, I fear,
To chafe o'er-much the virgin's cheek or ear;--
Beg for my pardon, Julia! he doth win
Grace with the gods who's sorry for his sin.
That done, my Julia, dearest Julia, come,
And go with me to chuse my burial room:
My fates are ended; when thy Herrick dies,
Clasp thou his book, then close thou up...Read more of this...

Hymn 104

by Isaac Watts
 A state of nature and of grace.

1 Cor. 6:10,11. 

Not the malicious or profane,
The wanton or the proud,
Nor thieves, nor sland'rers, shall obtain
Tue kingdom of our God.

Surprising grace! and such were we
By nature and by sin,
Heirs of immortal misery,
Unholy and unclean.

But we are washed in Jesus' blood,
We're pardoned through his name;
And the good Spirit of our God
Has sanctified our...Read more of this...

A Japanese Wood-Carving

by Amy Lowell
 High up above the open, welcoming door
It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.
Once, long ago, it was a waving tree
And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves
Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.
The winter snows had bent its branches down,
The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,
Summer had run like fire through its veins,
While...Read more of this...

Rovers Rest

by Robert William Service
 By parents I would not be pinned,
 Nor in my home abide,
For I was wanton as the wind
 And tameless as the tide;
So scornful of domestic hearth,
 And bordered garden path,
I sought the wilder ways of earth,
 The roads of wrath.

It scares me now to think of how
 Foolhardily I fared;
Though mighty scarred of pelt and pow
 A dozen...Read more of this...

To the Western Wind

by Robert Herrick
 SWEET western wind, whose luck it is,
 Made rival with the air,
To give Perenna's lip a kiss,
 And fan her wanton hair:

Bring me but one, I'll promise thee,
 Instead of common showers,
Thy wings shall be embalm'd by me,
 And all beset with flowers....Read more of this...

Hymn on the Morning of Christs Nativity

by John Milton
 IT was the Winter wilde, 
While the Heav'n-born-childe, 
 All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; 
Nature in aw to him 
Had doff't her gawdy trim, 
 With her great Master so to sympathize: 
It was no season then for her 
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour. 

Only with speeches fair 
She woo's the gentle Air...Read more of this...

The Nymphs Reply To The Shepherd

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 If all the world and love were young, 
And truth in every shepherd's tongue, 
These pretty pleasures might me move 
To live with thee and be thy love. 

Time drives the flocks from field to fold 
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold, 
And Philomel becometh dumb; 
The rest complains of cares to come. 

The flowers do fade, and...Read more of this...

Persuasion

by John Drinkwater
Persuasion

I 	At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again,...Read more of this...

193. On Scaring some Water-Fowl in Lock Turit

by Robert Burns
 WHY, ye tenants of the lake,
For me your wat’ry haunt forsake?
Tell me, fellow-creatures, why
At my presence thus you fly?
Why disturb your social joys,
Parent, filial, kindred ties?—
Common friend to you and me,
yature’s gifts to all are free:
Peaceful keep your dimpling wave,
Busy feed, or wanton lave;
Or, beneath the sheltering rock,
Bide the surging billow’s shock.


 Conscious, blushing for our race,
Soon, too soon,...Read more of this...

Down Wanton Down!

by Robert Graves
 Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame 
That at the whisper of Love's name, 
Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise 
Your angry head and stand at gaze? 

Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reach 
The ravelin and effect a breach-- 
Indifferent what you storm or why, 
So be that in the breach you die! 

Love may be blind, but Love at...Read more of this...

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg
 Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I...Read more of this...

To his Girls

by Robert Herrick
 Wanton wenches do not bring
For my hairs black colouring :
For my locks, girls, let 'em be
Grey or white, all's one to me....Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

492. Dialogue Song—Philly and Willy

by Robert Burns
 He. O PHILLY, happy be that day,
When roving thro’ the gather’d hay,
My youthfu’ heart was stown away,
 And by thy charms, my Philly.
She. O Willy, aye I bless the grove
Where first I own’d my maiden love,
Whilst thou did pledge the Powers above,
 To be my ain dear Willy.
Both. For a’ the joys that gowd can gie,
I dinna care a...Read more of this...

On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 A Brother and Sister


O I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves 
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years. 
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves, 
And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears. 

Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest 
In one fair fall; but, for time’s aftercast, 
Creatures...Read more of this...

To Althea From Prison

by Richard Lovelace
 When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths...Read more of this...

On a Picture Painted by her self representing two Nimphs of DIANAs one in a posture to Hunt the other Batheing

by Anne Killigrew
 WE are Diana's Virgin-Train, 
Descended of no Mortal Strain; 
Our Bows and Arrows are our Goods, 
Our Pallaces, the lofty Woods, 
The Hills and Dales, at early Morn, 
Resound and Eccho with our Horn; 
We chase the Hinde and Fallow-Deer, 
The Wolf and Boar both dread our Spear; 

In Swiftness we out-strip the Wind, 
An Eye and Thought we...Read more of this...

Against Evil Company

by Isaac Watts
 Why should I join with those in Play, 
In whom I've no delight,
Who curse and swear, but never pray,
Who call ill Names, and fight.

I hate to hear a wanton Song,
Their Words offend my Ears:
I should not dare defile my Tongue
With Language such as theirs.

Away from Fools I'll turn my Eyes,
Nor with the Scoffers go;
I would be walking with the...Read more of this...

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