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Famous Wastrel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...Shannon's, having known
The faces of each other for so long
As they had listened there to an old song,
Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone
By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown
Too many times and with a wing too strong
To save himself; and so done heavy wrong
To more frail elements than his alone.

Slowly away they went, leaving behind
More light than was before them. Neither met
The other's eyes again or said a word.
Each to his loneliness or to his kind,
Went ...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...ips are blue, but none have heed
 My songs to buy.

Only a rhymer,--just a chiel
 Spewed from the land of Burns,
 A wastrel and a ne'er-do-weel,
 From whom the public turns.
Alas! It is to late to mend
 The error of my ways,
So I will jingle to the end
 Of all my days....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...to know with a sense of woe
That a limpet's lot is to cling.
but she couldn't cling to a jelly fish,
Or clutch at a wastrel weed,
So she raised a cry as the waves went by,
but the waves refused to heed.

Then when she came to the glaucous deep
Where the congers coil and leer,
The flesh in her shell began to creep,
And she shrank in utter fear.
It was good to reach that silver beach,
That gleamed in the morning light,
Where a shining band of the silver sand
Looked ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...ard them speak:
His name is Jock MacPherson, and he lives on Boulder Creek;
An old-time hard-rock miner, and a wild and wastrel loon,
Who spends his nights in glory, playing pibrochs to the moon.
I'll seek him out; beyond a doubt on next Saint Andrew's night
We'll proudly hear the pipes to cheer and charm our appetite.

Oh lads were neat and lassies sweet who graced Saint Andrew's Ball;
But there was none so full of fun as Treasurer MacCall.
And as Maloney's rag-t...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...s done with the setting sun
 Will ye follow into the night?

He gave you your own old words, Red Earl,
 For food on the wastrel way;
Will ye rise and eat in the night, Red Earl,
 That fed so full in the day?

Ye have followed fast, ye have followed far,
 And where did the wandering lead?
From the day that ye praised the spoken word
 To the day ye must gloss the deed.

And as ye have given your hand for gain,
 So must ye give in loss;
And as ye ha' come to the brink of the...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...at your desire."

True Thomas smiled above his harp,
 And turned his face to the naked sky,
Where, blown before the wastrel wind,
 The thistle-down she floated by.

"I ha' vowed my vow in another place,
 And bitter oath it was on me,
I ha' watched my arms the lee-long night,
 Where five-score fighting men would flee.

"My lance is tipped o' the hammered flame,
 My shield is beat o' the moonlight cold;
And I won my spurs in the Middle World,
 A thousand fathom bene...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...l a crown! 

No power of nature shall withstand
At last the spirit of mankind:
It is not built upon the sand;
It is not wastrel to the wind.
Courage!
Disaster and destruction tend
To taller triumph in the end....Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...ook or a letter,
But she never, never forgot— either one—
Percy and John—though I knew she loved one better—
Percy, the wastrel, the gambler, the eldest son.
I think I shall always remember
Until I die
Her face that day in December,
When in a hospital ward together, she and I
Were writing letters for wounded men and dying,
Writing and crying
Over their words, so silly and simple and loving,
Suddenly, looking up, I saw the old Vicar moving
Like fate down the hospital ward,...Read more of this...

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