Humor poems
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At The Commencement Dinner
© James Russell Lowell
'Tis a dreadful oppression, this making men speak
What they're sure to be sorry for all the next week;
Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, to bud
Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood,
As if the dull brain that you vented your spite on
Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, to Brighton.
Mark Antony
© John Cleveland
Whenas the nightingale chanted her vespers,
And the wild forester couched on the ground,
Fitz Adam's Story
© James Russell Lowell
The next whose fortune 'twas a tale to tell
Was one whom men, before they thought, loved well,
Ode to W. Kitchener, M.D.
© Thomas Hood
Author of The Cook's Oracle, Observations on Vocal Music, The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life, Practical Observations on Telescopes, Opera-Glasses, and Spectacles, The Housekeeper's Ledger and The Pleasure of Making a Will.
"I rule the roast, as Milton says!"Caleb Quotem.
Oh! multifarious man!
Ancestors
© Cesare Pavese
Stunned by the world, I reached an age
when I threw punches at air and cried to myself.
Dickens In Camp
© Francis Bret Harte
Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
Ode To The Confederate Dead
© Allen Tate
You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.
Our Humming-Bird
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
AH, well I know the reason why
They called her by that graceful name:
She seems a creature born with wings,
O'er which a rainbow spirit flings
The Second Booke Of Qvodlibets
© Robert Hayman
Epigrams are much like to Oxymell,
Hony and Vineger compounded well:
Hony, and sweet in their inuention,
Vineger in their reprehension.
As sowre, sweet Oxymell, doth purge though fleagme:
These are to purge Vice, take them as they meane.
Cyder: Book II
© John Arthur Phillips
Sometimes thou shalt with fervent Vows implore
A moderate Wind; the Orchat loves to wave
With Winter-Winds, before the Gems exert
Their feeble Heads; the loosen'd Roots then drink
Large Increment, Earnest of happy Years.
A Farewell
© Nikolay Alekseyevich Nekrasov
Farewell! Forget the days of trial,
Of grudge, ill humor, misery--
The Lay of the Last Minstrel: Canto VI.
© Sir Walter Scott
XI
Albert Graeme.
It was an English ladye bright,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,)
And she would marry a Scottish knight,
For Love will still be lord of all.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 04:
© Conrad Aiken
She played this tune. And in the middle of it
Abruptly broke it off, letting her hands
Fall in her lap. She sat there so a moment,
With shoulders drooped, then lifted up a rose,
One great white rose, wide opened like a lotos,
And pressed it to her cheek, and closed her eyes.
'The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 12
© Publius Vergilius Maro
WHEN Turnus saw the Latins leave the field,
Their armies broken, and their courage quelld,
Army Of Northern Virginia
© Stephen Vincent Benet
He only said it once-the marble closed-
There was a man enclosed within that image.
There was a force that tried Proportion's rule
And died without a legend or a cue
To bring it back. The shadow-Lees still live.
But the first-person and the singular Lee?
Raschi In Prague
© Emma Lazarus
Raschi of Troyes, the Moon of Israel,
The authoritative Talmudist, returned
Fair Dog, Which So My Heart
© Fulke Greville
Kill therefore in the end, and end my anguish,
Give me my death, methinks even time upbraideth
A fullness of the woes, wherein I languish;
Or if thou wilt I live, then pity pleadeth
Help out of thee, since nature hath reveal'd,
That with thy tongue thy bitings may be heal'd.
