Famous Parody Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Parody on 'A Psalm of Life'

...Life is real, life is earnest, 
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting, 
Be our bills then sharpened well, 
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle, 
In the great barnyard of life, 
Be not like those lazy ca...Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell


Ancient Music

...am, Goddamm, 
So 'gainst the winter's balm. 

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm. 
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM. 

A parody of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Cuckoo Song...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra

Berenda Slough

...on, entombed 
in nothing; it is too late 
to bring forth branches, to bloom 
or die, only the long wait 

lies ahead, a parody 
of perfection. Who denies 
this is creation, this sea 
constant before the stunned eye's 

insatiable gaze, shall find 
nothing he can comprehend. 
Here the mind beholds the mind 
as it shall be in the end....Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

O Why Do You Walk (a Parody)

...O why do you walk through the fields in boots,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,
Why do you walk through the fields in boots,
When the grass is soft as the breast of coots
And shivering-sweet to the touch?...Read more of this...
by Housman, A E

Sex Goddess

...too busy taking care of
important SEX GODDESS BUSINESS,
yeah,
I gotta go on The Charlie Rose Show
and MTV and become a parody
of myself and make
buckets full of money off my own inane brand
of self-righteous POP PSYCHOLOGY
because my pain is different
because I am a SEX GODDESS
and when I talk,
people listen 
why ?
Because, you guessed it,
I AM THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
and you're not....Read more of this...
by Estep, Maggie


Shakespeares Ghost - A Parody

...I, too, at length discerned great Hercules' energy mighty,--
Saw his shade. He himself was not, alas, to be seen.
Round him were heard, like the screaming of birds,
the screams of tragedians,
And, with the baying of dogs, barked dramaturgists around.
There stood the giant in all his terrors; his bow was extended,
And the bolt, fixed on the string, steadily...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Donkey

..., 
Then, surely, I was born. 

With monstrous head and sickening bray 
And ears like errant wings— 
The devil's walking parody 
Of all four-footed things: 

The battered outlaw of the earth 
Of ancient crooked will; 
Scourge, beat, deride me—I am dumb— 
I keep my secret still. 

Fools! For I also had my hour— 
One far fierce hour and sweet: 
There was a shout around my head 
And palms about my feet....Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Road To Haworth Moor

...illingbeck, buried among

The graves his own hands dug, lay beside your mother,

‘In death as in life together,’ - what parody lies hidden

Beneath the marble chips of the unmarked grave?

Where is the cross of weathered wood and stapled names?

The thirty roses that you left had withered on the stem,

The weeds had spread and spread and you yourself

Were paler than the dead.



There may be little time or time enough for ills

We have to bear for others with our own. Madnes...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Virgin In A Tree

...How this tart fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black

Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back

For...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

When We Were Here Together

...s born a thing that had neither 
the character of a man nor the character of a child, but was a 
horrible and monstrous parody of the two; and it is in this world 
now that the flesh of man’s spirit lies twisted and despoiled under 
the indifferent stars.
When we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one 
another.
O green the bit of warm grass between our teeth. O beautiful the hair 
of our mortal goddess on the indifferent wind....Read more of this...
by Patchen, Kenneth

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