Famous Whimsey Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Strange Jokes

by Sidney Lanier
 Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad
Grim squatting on a twilight road.
He catcheth all that Circumstance
Hath tossed to him.
He curseth all who upward glance
As lost to him.

Once in a whimsey mood he sat
And talked of life, in proverbs pat,
To Eve in Eden, -- "Death, on Life" --
As if he knew!
And so he toadied Adam's wife
There, in the dew.

O dainty...Read more of this...

Causation

by Robert William Service
 Said darling daughter unto me:
"oh Dad, how funny it would be
If you had gone to Mexico
A score or so of years ago.
Had not some whimsey changed your plan
I might have been a Mexican.
With lissome form and raven hair,
Instead of being fat and fair.

"Or if you'd sailed the Southern Seas
And mated with a Japanese
I might have been a squatty girl
With...Read more of this...

To An Orphan Child

by Thomas Hardy
 A Whimsey

AH, child, thou art but half thy darling mother's;
Hers couldst thou wholly be,
My light in thee would outglow all in others;
She would relive to me.
But niggard Nature's trick of birth
Bars, lest she overjoy,
Renewal of the loved on earth
Save with alloy.

The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,
For love and loss like mine--
No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;
Only with fickle...Read more of this...

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