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Famous Arms Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...sfaction to our blood,
That we must curb it upon others' proof;
To be forbod the sweets that seem so good,
For fear of harms that preach in our behoof.
O appetite, from judgment stand aloof!
The one a palate hath that needs will taste,
Though Reason weep, and cry, 'It is thy last.'

'For further I could say 'This man's untrue,'
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others' orchards grew,
Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;
Knew vows we...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William



...ne man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William
...drunk with swords,
beaten with the blade. Beowulf came away
from there by his own skill, by swimming—
he had in his arms thirty battle-dresses in all,
when he pressed on through the sea.
Not at all did the Hetware have need to celebrate
their foot-soldiers, who bore their shields against him.
Few ever returned from that battle-soldier
to seek their home. The son of Ecgtheow
swam across the churning of waters,
the miserable survivor, home to his people. (ll. 2354b-6...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...wheels of passion sweep too near,
Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.

More barren - ay, those arms will never lean
Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
Some other head must wear that aureole,
For I am hers who loves not any man
Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian.

Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,
With net and spear and...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar



...'d in the sleepy west,
After the full completion of fair day,---
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease
With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;
While far within each aisle and deep recess,
His winged minions in close clusters stood,
Amaz'd and full offear; like anxious men
Who on wide plains gather in panting troops,
When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
Even now, while Saturn, rous'd fr...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...ck! 
He left it dead, and with its head 
He went galumphing back. 
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" 
He chortled in his joy. 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
And the mome raths outgrabe. ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...ch fluttering fair, 
Whose steps of lightness woke no echo there: 
He lean'd against the lofty pillar nigh 
With folded arms and long attentive eye, 
Nor mark'd a glance so sternly fix'd on his, 
Ill brook'd high Lara scrutiny like this: 
At length he caught it, 'tis a face unknown, 
But seems as searching his, and his alone; 
Prying and dark, a stranger's by his mien, 
Who still till now had gazed on him unseen; 
At length encountering meets the mutual gaze 
Of keen inquiry,...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...enly with timorous eye    She fled to me and wept.   She half inclosed me with her arms,  She press'd me with a meek embrace;  And bending back her head look'd up,    And gaz'd upon my face.   'Twas partly Love, and partly Fear,  And partly 'twas a bashful Art  That I might rather feel than see    The Swelling of her Heart.   I...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies
 of the wind; 
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms; 
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag; 
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and
 hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and
 meeting the sun. 

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth
 much? 
Have you prac...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...morn,
And the Lord has gone away.

"On things half sprung from sleeping,
All sleepy suns have shone,
They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,
The beasts blink upon hands and knees,
Man is awake and does and sees--
But Heaven has done and gone.

For who shall guess the good riddle
Or speak of the Holiest,
Save in faint figures and failing words,
Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,
Labours, and is at rest?

"But some see God like Guthrum,
Crowned, with a great beard curl...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...of its slender wood,
That courtesied in joy to every breeze; 
But scath'd, but knotted trunks that raise on high
Their arms in stiff contortion, strain'd and bare
Whose patriarchal crowns in sorrow sigh.
So, little children, ye--nay nay, ye ne'er
From me shall learn how sure the change and nigh,
When ye shall share our strength and mourn to share. 

43
When parch'd with thirst, astray on sultry sand
The traveller faints, upon his closing ear
Steals a fantastic music: he may ...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...'Tis he whom you so long have lost,  He whom you love, your idiot boy.   She looks again-her arms are up—  She screams—she cannot move for joy;  She darts as with a torrent's force,  She almost has o'erturned the horse,  And fast she holds her idiot boy.   And Johnny burrs, and laughs aloud,  Whether in cunning or in joy,  I cannot tell; but while he laughs,  Bett...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...other wight, *knowledge
That here I will be founden as a knight,
And bringe harness* right enough for thee; *armour and arms
And choose the best, and leave the worst for me.
And meat and drinke this night will I bring
Enough for thee, and clothes for thy bedding.
And if so be that thou my lady win,
And slay me in this wood that I am in,
Thou may'st well have thy lady as for me."
This Palamon answer'd, "I grant it thee."
And thus they be departed till the morrow,
When each of ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ce borne,
     Were heard the clanging hoof and horn.
     II.

     As Chief, who hears his warder call,
     'To arms! the foemen storm the wall,'
     The antlered monarch of the waste
     Sprung from his heathery couch in haste.
     But ere his fleet career he took,
     The dew-drops from his flanks he shook;
     Like crested leader proud and high
     Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky;
     A moment gazed adown the dale,
     A moment snuffed the tai...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you
yours? he laughd at my proposal: but I by force suddenly caught
him in my arms, & flew westerly thro' the night, till we were
elevated above the earths shadow: then I flung myself with him
directly into the body of the sun, here I clothed myself in
white, & taking in my hand Swedenborgs volumes sunk from the
glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to
saturn, here I staid to rest & then leap'd into the void, between...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...eir heads & loose their streaming hair,
And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
Maidens & youths fling their wild arms in air
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
Bending within each other's atmosphere
Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
Like moths by light attracted & repelled,
Oft to new bright destruction come & go.
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain,--the fiery band which held
Their...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
––Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.
 Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me: they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life. They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances. I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare organ,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard. I have t...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...Someone called from the bridge to us,
As with both hands I was clutching
On my chest the rim of the cross.

On your arms, as I lost all my power,
Like a little girl you carried me,
That on deck of a yacht alabaster
Incorruptible day's light we'd meet.



x x x

When with a strong but tired hand
In dreary capital of nation
Upon the whiteness of the page
I did record my recantations,

And wind into the window round
Poured in a wet and silent stream
The sky...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things