Poems About Sports (Collection of Amazing Sports Poems)

Famous poets’ sports poetry and the finest poems about sports to make you feel wonderful. The greatest sports poetry ever written. Read all poems about sports from across the world.

Poems About Sports

Sports are complicated in that they provide both an escape from and a closer view of our life. The boundary between triumph and failure in sports is pretty obvious.

There is no doubt about which team you are on or what role you play on the team. In actual life, these things are not always obvious.

Enjoy reading these rhyming poems about sports and please share poems about sports with your family and friends.

1. At Lord’s by Francis Thompson

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,

Though my own red roses there may blow;

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,

Though the red roses crest the caps, I know.

For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,

And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,

And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host

As the run stealers flicker to and fro,

To and fro:

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago !

It’s Glo’ster coming North, the irresistible,

The Shire of the Graces , long ago!

It’s Gloucestershire up North, the irrestistable,

And new-risen Lancashire the foe!

A Shire so young that has scarce impressed its traces,

Ah, how shall it stand before all-resistless Graces ?

O, little red rose, their bats are as maces

To beat thee down, this summer long ago !

This day of seventy-eight they are come up north against thee

This day of seventy-eight long ago!

The champion of the centuries, he cometh up against thee,

With his brethren, everyone a famous foe!

The long-whiskered Doctor, that laugheth the rules to scorn,

While the bowler, pitched against him, bans the day he was born;

And G.F. with his science makes the fairest length forlorn;

They are come from the West to work thee woe!

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,

Though my own red roses there may blow;

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,

Though the red roses crest the caps, I know.

For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,

And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,

And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host

As the run stealers flicker to and fro,

To and fro:

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago !

2. They Pass On The Torch of Life by Vitai Lampada

There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night —
Ten to make and the match to win —
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote —
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

The sand of the desert is sodden red, —
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind —
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

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3. Sporty People Poem by Wendy Cope

I took her for my kind of person
And it was something of a shock
When my new friend revealed
That, once upon a time,
She was a Junior County Tennis Champion.

How could that happen?
How could I accidentally
Make friends with a tennis champion?
How could a tennis champion

Make friends with me?

She wasn’t stupid. She read books.
She had never been mean to me
For being bad at games.
I decided to forgive
Her unfortunate past.

Sporty people can be OK –
Of course they can.
Later on, I met poets
Who played football. It’s still hard
To get my head round that.

4. Victory by Sherman Alexie

When I was twelve, I shoplifted a pair
Of basketball shoes. We could not afford
Them otherwise. But when I tied them on,
I found that I couldn’t hit a shot.

When the ball clanked off the rim, I felt
Only guilt, guilt, guilt. O, immoral shoes!
O, kicks made of paranoia and rue!
Distraught but unwilling to get caught

Or confess, I threw those cursed Nikes
Into the river and hoped that was good
Enough for God. I played that season
In supermarket tennis shoes that felt

The same as playing in bare feet.
O, torn skin! O, bloody heels and toes!
O, twisted ankles! O, blisters the size
Of dimes and quarters! Finally, after

I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I told
My father what I had done. He wasn’t angry.
He wept out of shame. Then he cradled
And rocked me and called me his Little

Basketball Jesus. He told me that every cry
Of pain was part of the hoops sonata.
Then he laughed and bandaged my wounds—
My Indian Boy Poverty Basketball Stigmata.

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5. All the Thoughts at a Football Game by Juan Felipe Herrera

There are baby thoughts 

in the shape of seaweed & pirate knives

they float over strips of shores &

curl into a rainy parasol where

a laboring red papaya truck awaits

& there are the thoughts of Staff Sergeant

Melanie Lippman—she’s back

from Afghanistan & cheers as a 

rhomboid ball burns

through the flags of space—

but she

notices distant jagged

zones on fire where the Company battles &

there are the thoughts of a father 

Don Jose Emiliano in plaid

with water on his face—his only son

on the wet field

for the first time—he is a man now

how his fury tumbles &

finds a route

to launch & spin his body 

toward a shifting goal—is that

my son he says.

6. A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball by Christopher Merrill

   after practice: right foot
to left foot, stepping forward and back, 
   to right foot and left foot,
and left foot up to his thigh, holding 
   it on his thigh as he twists
around in a circle, until it rolls 
   down the inside of his leg,
like a tickle of sweat, not catching 
   and tapping on the soft
side of his foot, and juggling
   once, twice, three times,
hopping on one foot like a jump-roper 
   in the gym, now trapping
and holding the ball in midair, 
   balancing it on the instep
of his weak left foot, stepping forward 
   and forward and back, then
lifting it overhead until it hangs there; 
   and squaring off his body,
he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge 
   of his neck, heading it
from side to side, softer and softer, 
   like a dying refrain,
until the ball, slowing, balances 
   itself on his hairline,
the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes 
   as he jiggles this way
and that, then flicking it up gently, 
   hunching his shoulders
and tilting his head back, he traps it 
   in the hollow of his neck,
and bending at the waist, sees his shadow, 
   his dangling T-shirt, the bent
blades of brown grass in summer heat; 
   and relaxing, the ball slipping
down his back. . .and missing his foot.

   He wheels around, he marches 
over the ball, as if it were a rock
   he stumbled into, and pressing
his left foot against it, he pushes it
   against the inside of his right 
until it pops into the air, is heeled
   over his head—the rainbow!—
and settles on his extended thigh before
   rolling over his knee and down 
his shin, so he can juggle it again
   from his left foot to his right foot
—and right foot to left foot to thigh—
   as he wanders, on the last day
of summer, around the empty field.

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7. Run Every Race as if It’s Your Last by Lisa Olstein

as you round the bend

keep the steel and mouse-skinned

rabbit front left center

and the track and the crowd

and its cries are a blurred ovation

as you stumble and recover

and then fully fall even if

only onto the rough gravel

of your inside mind or outside

in what is called the real world

as how many drunken grandfathers

holding little girls’ hands

and broken peanut shells go

swirling by why are you racing

what are you racing from

from what fixed arm does this

moth-eaten rabbit run

captive is different than stupid

near dead is different than dead

they call it a decoy but we know

a mirror when we see ourselves

lurch and dive for one

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Daily Time Poems.