Famous Waywardness Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry

by Robert William Service
 Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank;
That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all;
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
To see it yield...Read more of this...

legs rivers and age

by Rg Gregory
 with landbound legs a wish
for the easy flow of a river - not 
the clambering up crags to seek 
more favour from the sun
(or long-haired moon) harped for
since those sparks of who am i 
first clicked through consciousness

how the river sidles round 
rocks blocking the painful straight
seems to brush aside
all snags disrupting its ambition
to be sea - certain from...Read more of this...

Orlie Wilde

by James Whitcomb Riley
 A goddess, with a siren's grace,--
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.

Wrought was she of a painter's dream,--
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.

I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece's history.
He turned--REturned--and thus beguiled
Me with the...Read more of this...

from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

South Africa

by Rudyard Kipling
 1903
Lived a woman wonderful,
 (May the Lord amend her!)
Neither simple, kind, nor true,
But her Pagan beauty drew
Christian gentlemen a few
 Hotly to attend her.

Christian gentlemen a few
 From Berwick unto Dover;
For she was South Africa,
Ana she was South Africa,
She was Our South Africa,
 Africa all over!

Half her land was dead with drouth,
 Half was red with battle;
She was fenced...Read more of this...

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