Famous Winners Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Canute the Great

by Marriott Edgar
 I'll tell of Canute, King of England,
A native of Denmark was he,
His hobbies was roving and raiding
And paddling his feet in the sea. 

By trade he were what's called a Viking,
Every summer he'd visit our shore,
Help himself to whatever he wanted,
And come back in the autumn for more.

These trips always showed him a profit,
But what stumped him to know...Read more of this...

Fall In My Men Fall In

by Henry Lawson
 The short hour's halt is ended, 
The red gone from the west, 
The broken wheel is mended, 
And the dead men laid to rest. 
Three days have we retreated 
The brave old Curse-and-Grin – 
Outnumbered and defeated – 
Fall in, my men, fall in. 

Poor weary, hungry sinners, 
Past caring and past fear, 
The camp-fires of the winners 
Are...Read more of this...

All My Pretty Ones

by Anne Sexton
 Father, this year's jinx rides us apart 
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; 
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,...Read more of this...

The Matrimonial Stakes

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I wooed her with a steeplechase, I won her with a fall, 
I made her heartstrings quiver on the flat 
When the pony missed his take-off, and we crached into the wall; 
Well, she simply had to have me after that! 
It awoke a thrill of int'rest when they pulled me out for dead 
From beneath the shattered ruins...Read more of this...

Auguries Of Innocence

by William Blake
 To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse...Read more of this...

A Disqualified Jockeys Story

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 You see, the thing was this way -- there was me, 
That rode Panopply, the Splendor mare, 
And Ikey Chambers on the Iron Dook, 
And Smith, the half-caste rider on Regret, 
And that long bloke from Wagga -- him that rode 
Veronikew, the Snowy River horse. 
Well, none of them had chances -- not a chance 
Among the lot,...Read more of this...

Life Cycles

by Nikki Giovanni
Life Cyclesshe realized  she wasn't one  of life's winners  when she wasn't sure  life to her was some dark  dirty secret that  like some unwanted child  too late for an abortion  was to be borne  alone    she had so many private habits  she would masturbate sometimes  she...Read more of this...

The Winners

by Rudyard Kipling
 What the moral? Who rides may read.
When the night is thick and the tracks are blind
A friend at a pinch is a friend, indeed,
But a fool to wait for the laggard behind.
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

White hands cling to the tightened rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel,
Tenderest voices cry...Read more of this...

Hard Luck

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I left the course, and by my side 
There walked a ruined tout -- 
A hungry creature, evil-eyed, 
Who poured this story out. 
"You see," he said, "there came a swell 
To Kensington today, 
And, if I picked the winners well, 
A crown at least he's pay. 

"I picked three winners straight, I did; 
I filled his purse with...Read more of this...

Upper Lambourne

by John Betjeman
 Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
Up the ivy climbs the sun,
With a twenty-thousand pattering,
Has a valley breeze begun,
Feathery ash, neglected elder,
Shift the shade and make it run -

Shift the shade toward the nettles,
And the nettles set it free,
To streak the stained Carrara headstone,
Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,
He who trained a hundred winners,
Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,
Leathery...Read more of this...

Burning of the Exeter Theatre

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight. 

The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
And all...Read more of this...

Song Of The German Lanzknecht

by Victor Hugo
 ("Sonnex, clarions!") 
 
 {Bk. VI. vii.} 


 Flourish the trumpet! and rattle the drum! 
 The Reiters are mounted! the Reiters will come! 
 
 When our bullets cease singing 
 And long swords cease ringing 
 On backplates of fearsomest foes in full flight, 
 We'll dig up their dollars 
 To string for girls' collars— 
...Read more of this...

The Tied Maverick

by Badger Clark
  Lay on the iron! the tie holds fast
    And my wild record closes.
  This maverick is down at last
    Just roped and tied with roses.
  And one small girl's to blame for it,
  Yet I don't fight with shame for it--
  Lay on the iron; I'm game for...Read more of this...

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

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