Famous Africa Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Africa poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous africa poems. These examples illustrate what a famous africa poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Walcott, Derek
...A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...her hundred fleets;
Full many: league their vent'rous seamen sail'd
Thro' strait Gibraltar down the western shore
Of Africa, and to Canary isles
By them call'd fortunate, so Flaccus sings,
Because eternal spring there crowns the fields,
And fruits delicious bloom throughout the year.
From voyaging here this inference I draw,
Perhaps some barque with all her num'rous crew
Caught by the eastern trade wind hurry'd on
Before th' steady blast to Brazil's shore,
New ...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...singUnder an arch of the railway:'Love has no ending. 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love youTill China and Africa meet,And the river jumps over the mountainAnd the salmon sing in the street, 'I'll love you till the oceanIs folded and hung up to dryAnd the seven stars go squawkingLike geese about the sky. 'The years shall run like rabbits,For in my arms I holdThe Flower of the Ages,And the first love of the world.' B...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...I loved the
Best was worst of all;
She slept away the war
With every man she knew
While Uncle Jack played
Tanks in Africa and learned
Pontoon at Alamein and then
Broke every window pane on
His return and Grandad
Nicky said, “Decide to go
Or keep your bride” and
Pride lost that day
And Lucifer lay low
And six children grew
In Rough Lea by the
Poplar’s side and when I
Shared their meal; it was
A feast of love and Auntie
Betty smiled as I sat
Beside her on the...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...l the griesly legions that troop
Under the sooty flag of Acheron,
Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms
'Twixt Africa and Ind, I'll find him out,
And force him to return his purchase back,
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,
Cursed as his life.
SPIR. Alas! good venturous youth,
I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise;
But here thy sword can do thee little stead.
Far other arms and other weapons must
Be those that quell the might of hellish charms....Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...uth still waters...
FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTEBOOK
Now our plane swims
within the hot winds
swarming over Africa.
Seen from above,
Africa looks like a huge violin.
I swear
they're playing Tchaikovsky on a cello
on the angry dark island
of Africa.
And waiving his long hairy arms,
a gorilla is sobbing...
FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTEBOOK
We're crossing the Indian Ocean.
We're drinking in the air
like a heavy, faint-smelling syrup....Read more of this...
by
Cullen, Countee
...What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric b...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
prehensible leaflets,...Read more of this...
by
Milligan, Spike
...nd, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.
'I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti's Plain',
'Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?'.
He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing lane,
And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.
The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,
So they tied him to a lampost and he slept against the wall.
But as the policemen...Read more of this...
by
Ali, Muhammad
...Last night I had a dream, When I got to Africa,
I had one hell of a rumble.
I had to beat Tarzan’s behind first,
For claiming to be King of the Jungle.
For this fight, I’ve wrestled with alligators,
I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I m...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...ss
and it was no dream? If your life
ended the way a book ends
with half a blank page and the survivors
gone off to Africa or madness?
If my life ended in late spring
of 1964 while I walked alone
back down the mountain road?
I sing an old song to myself. I study
the way the snow remains, gray
and damp, in the deep shadows of the firs.
I wonder if the bike is safe hidden
just off the highway. Up ahead
the road, black and winding, falls
away, and there...Read more of this...
by
Hayden, Robert
...us.
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,
we were no match for them. Our men went down
before the murderous Africans. Our loyal
Celestino ran from below with gun
and lantern and I saw, before the cane-
knife's wounding flash, Cinquez,
that surly brute who calls himself a prince,
directing, urging on the ghastly work.
He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then
he turned on me. The decks were slippery
when daylight finally came. It sickens me ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...you alone, proud truths of the world!
Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science!
But myths and fables of eld—Asia’s, Africa’s fables!
The far-darting beams of the spirit!—the unloos’d dreams!
The deep diving bibles and legends;
The daring plots of the poets—the elder religions;
—O you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun!
O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!
You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, r...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...
Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon or off to Malabar?
Hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea--
Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!
Quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be,
The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...icken wood and stone;)
Or to Hindu flutes, and the fretting twang of the vina,
A band of bayaderes.
12
Now Asia, Africa leave me—Europe, seizing, inflates me;
To organs huge, and bands, I hear as from vast concourses of voices,
Luther’s strong hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott;
Rossini’s Stabat Mater dolorosa;
Or, floating in some high cathedral dim, with gorgeous color’d windows,
The passionate Agnus Dei, or Gloria in Excelsis.
13
Composers! mighty maestr...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...?
What myriads of dwellings are they, fill’d with dwellers?
2
Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens;
Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for in the west;
Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends;
Within me is the longest day—the sun wheels in slanting rings—it does not set for months;
Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon, and sinks
again;
...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...1344: the Earls of Derby and Salisbury took part in the siege.
Belmarie is supposed to have been a Moorish state in Africa;
but "Palmyrie" has been suggested as the correct reading. The
Great Sea, or the Greek sea, is the Eastern Mediterranean.
Tramissene, or Tremessen, is enumerated by Froissart among
the Moorish kingdoms in Africa. Palatie, or Palathia, in
Anatolia, was a fief held by the Christian knights after the
Turkish conquests -- the holders paying tr...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa,
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.
AUGUST REIN:
from a last camp near St. Remy
...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...re the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images. They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched. They are walkers of air.
Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry. It is the hook I hang on.
A...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...is strict account of all.
The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
The common people of Europe are not nothing—the American aborigines are not nothing,
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing—the murderer or mean person is
not
nothing,
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go,
The lowest prostitute is not nothing—the mocker of religion is not...Read more of this...
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