Famous Allegiance Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Joshua 24:14-15

by The Bible
We should always serve the Lord
And Him alone we should fear
For the throne of our hearts,
He does not want to share
We should never allow another
The place reserved for Him,
But to give Him that place of Lordship
That will keep our hearts from sin
For we must choose whom to serve
And whom our allegiance is for
But as for me and my household,
We shall...Read more of this...

Metro North

by Mark Doty
 Over the terminal,
 the arms and chest
 of the god

brightened by snow.
 Formerly mercury,
 formerly silver,

surface yellowed
 by atmospheric sulphurs
 acid exhalations,

and now the shining
 thing's descendant.
 Obscure passages,

dim apertures:
 these clouded windows
 show a few faces

or some empty car's
 filmstrip of lit flames
 --remember them

from school,
 how they were supposed
 to teach us something?--

waxy light hurrying
 inches away...Read more of this...

John Brown

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though for your sake I would not have you now 
So near to me tonight as now you are, 
God knows how much a stranger to my heart 
Was any cold word that I may have written; 
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear, 
Than I—though I have been the...Read more of this...

For All

by Gary Snyder
For All

 Ah to be alive
 on a mid-September morn
 fording a stream
 barefoot, pants rolled up,
 holding boots, pack on,
 sunshine, ice in the shallows,
 northern rockies.

 Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
 stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
 cold nose dripping
 singing inside
 creek music, heart music,
 smell of sun on gravel.

 I pledge allegiance

...Read more of this...

439. Song—My Spouse Nancy

by Robert Burns
 “HUSBAND, husband, cease your strife,
 Nor longer idly rave, Sir;
Tho’ I am your wedded wife
 Yet I am not your slave, Sir.”
“One of two must still obey,
 Nancy, Nancy;
Is it Man or Woman, say,
 My spouse Nancy?’


“If ’tis still the lordly word,
 Service and obedience;
I’ll desert my sov’reign lord,
 And so, good bye, allegiance!”
“Sad shall I be, so bereft,
...Read more of this...

The Master of the Dance

by Vachel Lindsay
 A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher.


I

A master deep-eyed
Ere his manhood was ripe,
He sang like a thrush,
He could play any pipe.
So dull in the school
That he scarcely could spell,
He read but a bit,
And he figured not well.
A bare-footed fool,
Shod only with grace;
Long hair streaming down
Round a...Read more of this...

The Married Lover

by Coventry Patmore
 Why, having won her, do I woo? 
Because her spirit's vestal grace 
Provokes me always to pursue, 
But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; 
Because her womanhood is such
That, as on court-days subjects kiss 
The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch 
Affirms no mean familiarness; 
Nay, rather marks more fair the height 
Which can with safety so neglect 
To dread, as...Read more of this...

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry
 Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head. 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer. 

When they want...Read more of this...

Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind--

by Fernando Pessoa
Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind--

All who, stamped separate by curtailing birth,

Owe no duty's allegiance to mankind

Nor stand a valuing in their scheme of worth!

But I, whom Fate, not Nature, did curtail,

By no exterior voidness being exempt,

Must bear accusing glances where I fail,

Fixed in the general orbit of contempt.

Fate, less than Nature in being kind to lacking,

Giving...Read more of this...

Name

by Chris Jones
 His name has been ghosted over the fence,
leaving an alias, burn, prison clothes. 
I'm half the man, he says, not my sentence,
waiting on time that other people chose.

From their windows men sing out numbers, names,
hands to the grille light for the come-back call,
but words get lost, change allegiance, and blame's
out of their mouths, love's over the wall.

Later when I...Read more of this...

Wapentake

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 To Alfred Tennyson 

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
Not as a knight, who on the listed field
Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
In token of defiance, but in sign
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
In English song; nor will I keep concealed,
And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,
My admiration for thy verse divine.
Not of the howling dervishes...Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

by Robert Pinsky
 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

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