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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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...
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
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...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,
H...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...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 a...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...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
Byron, George (Lord)
...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 li...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...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 nur...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...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. Th...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...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 on...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...,
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...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...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...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...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 wha...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...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...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...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 the...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...
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
Lowell, Amy
...he centre, and blown in loose festoon
The red stones quivered on silver threads
To the outer edge, where a single, fine
Band of mother-of-pearl the line
Completed. On the other side,
The creamy porcelain of the face
Bore diamond hours, and no lace
Of cotton or silk could ever be
Tossed into being more airily
Than the filmy golden hands; the time
Seemed to tick away in rhyme.
When, at dusk, the Shadow grew
Upon the wall, Paul's work was through.
Holding the watch, ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...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,
O...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...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 e...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...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
Bronte, Charlotte
...en, the pilot's eye,
Intent to thread the maze
Of rocks, on Bretagne's dangerous coast,
And find a way to steer our band
To the one point obscure, which lost,
Flung us, as victims, on the strand;
All, elsewhere, gleamed the Gallic sword,
And not a wherry could be moored
Along the guarded land.
I feared not thenI fear not now;
The interest of each stirring scene
Wakes a new sense, a welcome glow,
In every nerve and bounding vein;
Alike on turbid Channel sea,
O...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...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 a...Read more of this...
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