Famous Waste Of Time Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Prelude

by Robert William Service
 I sing no idle songs of dalliance days,
No dreams Elysian inspire my rhyming;
I have no Celia to enchant my lays,
No pipes of Pan have set my heart to chiming.
I am no wordsmith dripping gems divine
Into the golden chalice of a sonnet;
If love songs witch you, close this book of mine,
 Waste no time on it.

Yet bring I to my...Read more of this...

Happy As The Day Is Long

by James Tate
 I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room.
Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9.
1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be...Read more of this...

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

by Robert Bly
It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around I will waste more time....Read more of this...

Happy As The Day Is Long

by Edward Taylor
 I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room.
Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9.
1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be...Read more of this...

Wood Rides

by John Clare
 Who hath not felt the influence that so calms
The weary mind in summers sultry hours
When wandering thickest woods beneath the arms
Of ancient oaks and brushing nameless flowers
That verge the little ride who hath not made
A minutes waste of time and sat him down
Upon a pleasant swell to gaze awhile
On crowding ferns bluebells and hazel leaves
And showers of lady smocks...Read more of this...

A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton

by James Thomson
 Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth, 
To mingle with his stars; and every muse,
Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight
Of honours due to his illustrious name?
But what can man?--Even now the sons of light,
In strains high-warbled to seraphic lyre,
Hail his arrival on the coast of bliss.
Yet am not I deterr'd, though high the theme,
And sung to harps...Read more of this...

Misgivings

by Herman Melville
 When ocean-clouds over inland hills 
Sweep storming in late autumn brown, 
And horror the sodden valley fills, 
And the spire falls crashing in the town, 
I muse upon my country's ills-- 
The tempest burning from the waste of Time 
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime. 

Nature's dark side is heeded now-- 
(Ah! optimist-cheer dishartened flown)--...Read more of this...

Upon a Fit of Sickness

by Anne Bradstreet
 Twice ten years old not fully told
since nature gave me breath,
My race is run, my thread spun,
lo, here is fatal death.
All men must die, and so must I;
this cannot be revoked.
For Adam's sake this word God spake
when he so high provoked.
Yet live I shall, this life's but small,
in place of highest bliss,
Where I shall have all I can crave,
no...Read more of this...

Vers De Société

by Philip Larkin
 My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's ****, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid--

Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding...Read more of this...

Our Lady of the Mine

by Eugene Field
 The Blue Horizon wuz a mine us fellers all thought well uv,
And there befell the episode I now perpose to tell uv;
'T wuz in the year uv sixty-nine,--somewhere along in summer,--
There hove in sight one afternoon a new and curious comer;
His name wuz Silas Pettibone,--a' artist by perfession,--
With a kit of tools and a big mustache and a pipe...Read more of this...

The Norsemen (From Narrative and Legendary Poems )

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 GIFT from the cold and silent Past! 
A relic to the present cast, 
Left on the ever-changing strand 
Of shifting and unstable sand, 
Which wastes beneath the steady chime 
And beating of the waves of Time! 
Who from its bed of primal rock 
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? 
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, 
Thy rude and savage...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...

A Letter Home

by Siegfried Sassoon
 (To Robert Graves) 

I 

Here I'm sitting in the gloom 
Of my quiet attic room. 
France goes rolling all around, 
Fledged with forest May has crowned. 
And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted, 
Thinking how the fighting started, 
Wondering when we'll ever end it, 
Back to hell with Kaiser sent it, 
Gag the noise, pack up and go, 
Clockwork soldiers...Read more of this...

Our Pote

by Robert William Service
 A pote is sure a goofy guy;
He ain't got guts like you or I
 To tell the score;
He ain't goy gumption 'nuff to know
The game of life's to get the dough,
 Then get some more.
Take Brother Bill, he used to be
The big shot of the family,
 The first at school;
But since about a year ago,
Through readin' Longfeller and Poe,
...Read more of this...

Thangbrand the Priest

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Short of stature, large of limb,
Burly face and russet beard,
All the women stared at him,
When in Iceland he appeared.
"Look!" they said,
With nodding head,
"There goes Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest."

All the prayers he knew by rote,
He could preach like Chrysostome,
From the Fathers he could quote,
He had even been at Rome.
A learned clerk,
A man of mark,
Was this Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest.

He was quarrelsome and...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Waste Of Time poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace