Famous Armistice Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Battle

by Robert William Service
 Dames should be doomed to dungeons
Who masticate raw onions.

She was the cuddly kind of Miss
 A man can love to death;
But when I sought to steal a kiss
 I wilted from a breath
With onion odour so intense
 I lost my loving sense.

Yet she was ever in my thought
 Like some exotic flower,
And so a garlic bulb I bought
 And...Read more of this...

The Player Piano

by Randall Jarrell
 I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
Run by a lady my age. She was gay.
When I told her that I came from Pasadena
She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena
When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."

I felt that I had met someone from home.
No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.
Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common
Like...Read more of this...

The Twelve-Forty-Five

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Edward J. Wheeler)

Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts --
And passes on,...Read more of this...

Armistice Day (1953)

by Robert William Service
 Don't jeer because we celebrate
 Armistice Day,
Though thirty years of sorry fate
 Have passed away.
Though still we gaurd the Sacred Flame,
 And fly the Flag,
That World War Two with grief and shame
 Revealed--a rag.

For France cannot defend to-day
 Her native land;
And she is far to proud to pray
 For helping hand.
Aye, though she stands amid the Free,
 In love...Read more of this...

Salts And Oils

by Philip Levine
 In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived...Read more of this...

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