Famous Babylon Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Questions From A Worker Who Reads

by Bertolt Brecht
 Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finnished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of...Read more of this...

Hi-spy

by Eugene Field
 Strange that the city thoroughfare,
Noisy and bustling all the day,
Should with the night renounce its care,
And lend itself to children's play!

Oh, girls are girls, and boys are boys,
And have been so since Abel's birth,
And shall be so till dolls and toys
Are with the children swept from earth.

The self-same sport that crowns the day
Of many a Syrian shepherd's son,
Beguiles the...Read more of this...

Hymn 59

by Isaac Watts
 Babylon fallen.

Rev. 18:20,21. 

In Gabriel's hand a mighty stone
Lies, a fair type of Babylon:
"Prophets, rejoice, and all ye saints,
God shall avenge your long complaints."

He said, and dreadful as he stood,
He sunk the millstone in the flood:
"Thus terribly shall Babel fall,
Thus, and no more be found at all."...Read more of this...

Darling Daughter of Babylon

by Vachel Lindsay
 Too soon you wearied of our tears.
And then you danced with spangled feet,
Leading Belshazzar's chattering court
A-tinkling through the shadowy street.
With mead they came, with chants of shame.
DESIRE'S red flag before them flew.
And Istar's music moved your mouth
And Baal's deep shames rewoke in you.

Now you could drive the royal car;
Forget our Nation's breaking load:
Now you could sleep on silver beds.—
(Bitter...Read more of this...

The City In the Sea

by Edgar Allan Poe
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West 
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around by lifting winds forgot 
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from...Read more of this...

High Conspiratorial Person

by Carl Sandburg
 OUT of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars, out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to the white sun before all men,

Out of a rag saturated with smears and smuts gathered from the footbaths of kings and the loin cloths of whores, from the scabs of Babylon and...Read more of this...

To Babylon

by Mother Goose
How many miles is it to Babylon?--
    Threescore miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?--
    Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candle-light....Read more of this...

Lion And Lioness

by Edwin Markham
 ONE night we were together, you and I, 
And had unsown Assyria for a lair, 
Before the walls of Babylon rose in air. 
How languid hills were heaped along the sky, 
And white bones marked the wells of alkali, 
When suddenly down the lion-path a sound . . . 
The wild man-odor . . . then a crouch, a...Read more of this...

Hymn 56

by Isaac Watts
 The song of Moses and the Lamb.

Rev. 15:3; 16:19; 17:6. 

We sing the glories of thy love,
We sound thy dreadful name;
The Christian church unites the songs
Of Moses and the Lamb.

Great God! how wondrous are thy works
Of vengeance and of grace!
Thou King of saints, Almighty Lord,
How just and true thy ways!

Who dares refuse to fear thy name,
Or worship at thy...Read more of this...

A Poets Voice XV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One


The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry. 

My soul gives life to the grapevine and I press its bunches and give the juice to the thirsty. 

Heaven fills my lamp with oil and I place it at my window to direct...Read more of this...

Pirate Story

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, 
Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea. 
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring, 
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. 

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat, 
Wary of the weather and steering by...Read more of this...

A Look Into The Gulf

by Edwin Markham
 I LOOKED one night, and there the Semiramis, 
With all her mourning doves about her head, 
Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell, 
Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon 
Snatches of song they sang to her of old 
Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh. 
And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh: 
"The bugles! they are...Read more of this...

Bilbea

by Carl Sandburg
 BILBEA, I was in Babylon on Saturday night.
I saw nothing of you anywhere.
I was at the old place and the other girls were there, but no Bilbea.

Have you gone to another house? or city?
Why don’t you write?
I was sorry. I walked home half-sick.

Tell me how it goes.
Send me some kind of a letter.
And take care of yourself....Read more of this...

Babylon

by George William Russell
 THE BLUE dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind,
It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run
Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the...Read more of this...

The Iron Age

by George William Russell
 HOW came this pigmy rabble spun,
After the gods and kings of old,
Upon a tapestry begun
With threads of silver and of gold?
In heaven began the heroic tale
What meaner destinies prevail!


They wove about the antique brow
A circlet of the heavenly air.
To whom is due such reverence now,
The thought “What deity is there”?
We choose the chieftains of our race
From hucksters in the...Read more of this...

By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept

by George (Lord) Byron
 We sat down and wept by the waters 
Of Babel, and thought of the day 
When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters, 
Made Salem's high places his prey; 
And ye, oh her desolate daughters! 
Were scattered all weeping away. 

While sadly we gazed on the river 
Which rolled on in freedom below, 
They demanded the song; but,...Read more of this...

Sonnet CVII

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 137] SONNET CVII. Fontana di dolore, albergo d' ira. HE ATTRIBUTES THE WICKEDNESS OF THE COURT OF ROME TO ITS GREAT WEALTH.  Spring of all woe, O den of curssed ire,Scoole of errour, temple of heresye;Thow Pope, I meane, head of hypocrasye,Thow and thie churche, unsaciat of desyre,Read more of this...

Waters Of Babylon

by Louis Untermeyer
What presses about us here in the evening
As you open a window and stare at a stone-gray sky,
And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement
That is tired of life and almost too tired to die.
Night comes on, and even the night is wounded;
There, on its breast, it carries a curved, white scar.
What will you find out there that...Read more of this...

Imagination

by Robert William Service
 A gaunt and hoary slab of stone
 I found in desert place,
And wondered why it lay alone
 In that abandoned place.
Said I: 'Maybe a Palace stood
 Where now the lizards crawl,
With courts of musky quietude
 And turrets tall.

Maybe where low the vultures wing
 'Mid mosque and minaret,
The proud pavilion of a King
 Was luminously set.
'Mid fairy fountains, alcoves dim,
...Read more of this...

If I Were King

by Alan Alexander (A A) Milne
I often wish I were a King,
And then I could do anything.

If only I were King of Spain,
I'd take my hat off in the rain.

If only I were King of France,
I wouldn't brush my hair for aunts.

I think, if I were King of Greece,
I'd push things off the mantelpiece.

If I were King of Norroway,
I'd ask an elephant to stay.

If I...Read more of this...

Dance Me To The End Of Love

by Leonard Cohen
 Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin 
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in 
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove 
Dance me to the end of love 
Dance me to the end of love 
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone 
Let me feel you...Read more of this...

The Dawn

by William Butler Yeats
 I would be ignorant as the dawn
That has looked down
On that old queen measuring a town
With the pin of a brooch,
Or on the withered men that saw
From their pedantic Babylon
The careless planets in their courses,
The stars fade out where the moon comes.
And took their tablets and did sums;
I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering...Read more of this...

The Burglar Of Babylon

by Elizabeth Bishop
 On the fair green hills of Rio
 There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
 And can't go home again.

On the hills a million people,
 A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
 That's had to light and rest,

Building its nests, or houses,
 Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
 They perch...Read more of this...

Lepanto

by G K Chesterton
 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...

Babylon

by Robert Graves
 The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all’s poetry with him. 
Rhyme and music flow in plenty
For the lad of one-and-twenty, 
But Spring for him is no more now 
Than daisies to a munching cow; 
Just a cheery pleasant season, 
Daisy buds to live at ease on.
He’s forgotten how he smiled...Read more of this...

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