Famous Band Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A poem on divine revelation

...
Far hence I go to some sequest'red vale 
By woody hill or shady mountain side, 
Where far from converse and the social band, 
My days shall pass inglorious away: [3] 
But this shall be my exultation still 
My chiefest merit and my only joy, 
That when the hunter on some western hill, 
Or furzy glade shall see my grassy tomb, 
And know the stream which mourns unheeded by, 
He for a moment shall repress his step, 
And say, There lies a Son of Nassau-Hall....Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry


Beowulf (Modern English)

...rror of Grendel. I must offer treasures
to that good chieftain for his mindful courage.
Be of haste, bid their allied band to enter and be seen,
gathered together. Say to them wordfully as well
that they are welcome among the Danish people.” (ll. 371-89a)

[Then Wulfgar went to the door of the hall,] announcing his word from within:
“My victorious lord, ruler of the East-Danes,
has ordered me to tell you that he knows of your heritage
and you are welcome by him here,...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Endymion: Book IV

...nd lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand.
He blows a bugle,--an ethereal band
Are visible above: the Seasons four,--
Green-kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store
In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar,
Join dance with shadowy Hours; while still the blast,
In swells unmitigated, still doth last
To sway their floating morris. "Whose is this?
Whose bugle?" he inquires: they smile--"O Dis!
Why is this mortal here? Dost thou not k...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...was the sunshine
Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples
She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance,
Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children.



II

Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer,
And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters.
Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound,
Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands,
Harvests ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Howl

...eft to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.


II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their b...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen


Inferno (English)

...through the murky air 
 Came those sad spirits, that not deep Hell's despair 
 Could sunder, parting from the faithless band 
 That Dido led, and with one voice, as though 
 One soul controlled them, spake, 

 "O Animate! 
 Who comest through the black malignant air, 
 Benign among us who this exile bear 
 For earth ensanguined, if the King of All 
 Heard those who from the outer darkness call 
 Entreat him would we for thy peace, that thou 
 Hast pitied us condemned, misfort...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Lara

...grace and harmony in happiest chain: 
Blest are the early hearts and gentle hands 
That mingle there in well according bands; 
It is a sight the careful brow might smooth, 
And make Age smile, and dream itself to youth, 
And Youth forget such hour was pass'd on earth, 
So springs the exulting bosom to that mirth! 

XXI. 

And Lara gazed on these sedately glad, 
His brow belied him if his soul was sad, 
And his glance follow'd fast each fluttering fair, 
Whose steps of lightn...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Love

...p; This miserable Knight!   And that, unknowing what he did,  He leapt amid a murd'rous Band,  And sav'd from Outrage worse than Death    The Lady of the Land;   And how she wept and clasp'd his knees  And how she tended him in vain—  And ever strove to expiate    The Scorn, that craz'd his Brain   And that she nurs'd him in a Cave; &nbs...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...heir growing work: for much their work out-grew 
The hands' dispatch of two gardening so wide, 
And Eve first to her husband thus began. 
Adam, well may we labour still to dress 
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower, 
Our pleasant task enjoined; but, till more hands 
Aid us, the work under our labour grows, 
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day 
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, 
One night or two with wanton growth derides 
Tending to wild. Thou there...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...d going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the s...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Song of Myself

...,
 pois’d on one leg on the string-piece; 
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band;

His glance is calm and commanding—he tosses the slouch of his hat away from
 his forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache—falls on the black of his
 polish’d and perfect limbs. 

I behold the picturesque giant, and love him—and I do not stop there; 
I go with the team also. 

In me the caresser of life wherever moving—backwar...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...ard even heathen things.

"For our God hath blessed creation,
Calling it good. I know
What spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with his hand;
Yet by God's death the stars shall stand
And the small apples grow."

And the King, with harp on shoulder,
Stood up and ceased his song;
And the owls moaned from the mighty trees,
And the Danes laughed loud and long.




BOOK IV THE WOMAN IN THE FOREST


Thick thunder of the snorting swine,
Enormous in the gloam,
...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Bride of Abydos

...k not much of blood; 
But yet the line of Carasman [7] 
Unchanged, unchangeable, hath stood 
First of the bold Timariot bands 
That won and well can keep their lands. 
Enough that he who comes to woo 
Is kinsman of the Bey Oglou: 
His years need scarce a thought employ: 
I would not have thee wed a boy. 
And thou shalt have a noble dower: 
And his and my united power 
Will laugh to scorn the death-firman, 
Which others tremble but to scan, 
And teach the messenger what fate 
...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Four Ages of Man

...pastor, I my flock did feed
4.36 And gently lead the lambs, as they had need.
4.37 A Captain I, with skill I train'd my band
4.38 And shew'd them how in face of foes to stand.
4.39 If a Soldier, with speed I did obey
4.40 As readily as could my Leader say.
4.41 Was I a laborer, I wrought all day
4.42 As cheerfully as ere I took my pay.
4.43 Thus hath mine age (in all) sometimes done well;
4.44 Sometimes mine age (in all) been worse than hell.
4.45 In meanness, greatness, rich...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

The Knights Tale

...cursed be that day: *died 
And alle we that be in this array,
And maken all this lamentatioun,
We losten all our husbands at that town,
While that the siege thereabouten lay.
And yet the olde Creon, wellaway!
That lord is now of Thebes the city,
Fulfilled of ire and of iniquity,
He for despite, and for his tyranny,
To do the deade bodies villainy*, *insult
Of all our lorde's, which that been y-slaw, *slain
Hath all the bodies on an heap y-draw,
And will not suffer them by...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Lady of the Lake

...
     And generous,—save vindictive mood
     Or jealous transport chafe his blood:
     I grant him true to friendly band,
     As his claymore is to his hand;
     But O! that very blade of steel
     More mercy for a foe would feel:
     I grant him liberal, to fling
     Among his clan the wealth they bring,
     When back by lake and glen they wind,
     And in the Lowland leave behind,
     Where once some pleasant hamlet stood,
     A mass of ashes slaked wi...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Triumph of Life

...one on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done.--
So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on . . .
The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The White Cliffs

...
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply 
Out of the sea that once made her secure. 
I had no thought then of husband or lover, 
I was a traveller, the guest of a week; 
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover', 
Startled I found there were tears on my cheek. 
I have loved England, and still as a stranger, 
Here is my home and I still am alone. 
Now in her hour of trial and danger, 
Only the English are really her own. 

II 
It happened the first evening I was...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

The Witch Of Atlas

...ral-lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery
Of second childhood's swaddling-bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch,

And there the body lay, age after age,
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,--
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arr...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

White Flock

...ill give me back him.



x x x

Ah! It is you again. You enter in this house
Not as a kid in love, but as a husband
Courageous, harsh and in control.
The calm before the storm is fearful to my soul.
You ask me what it is that I have done of late
With given unto me forever love and fate.
I have betrayed you. And this to repeat --
Oh, if you could one moment tire of it!
The killer's sleep is haunted, dead man said,
Death's angel thus awaits me at deathbed.
For...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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