Famous Bandage Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Carol of Harvest for 1867

...giments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever!
O my land’s maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch! 
Lo! your pallid army follow’d!) 

7
But on these days of brightness, 
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled
 farm-wagons, and
 the fruits and barns, 
Shall the dead intrude?

Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Nature; 
They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass, 
A...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


A Terre

...fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

I tried to peg out soldierly -- no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my medals? -- Discs to make eyes close.
My glorious ribbons? -- Ripped from my own back
In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

A short life and a merry one, my brick!
We used to say we'd hate to live dead old, --
Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,
And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys
At lea...Read more of this...
by Owen, Wilfred

Apologia Pro Poemate Meo

...look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips, --
 But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
 Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
 Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
 In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
 Heard music in the silentness of duty;
 Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
 With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
 Whose world is but the trembli...Read more of this...
by Owen, Wilfred

Berck-Plage

...ttendant,

I am not a smile. 
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man: his red ribs,

The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon:
One mirrory eye----

A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room

An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.

Where are the eye-stones, yellow and vvaluable,
And the tongue, sapphire of...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Blindmans Buff

...OH, my Theresa dear!
Thine eyes, I greatly fear,

Can through the bandage see!
Although thine eyes are bound,
By thee I'm quickly found,

And wherefore shouldst thou catch but me?

Ere long thou held'st me fast,
With arms around me cast,

Upon thy breast I fell;
Scarce was thy bandage gone,
When all my joy was flown,

Thou coldly didst the blind repel.

He groped on ev'ry side,
His limbs he sorely tried,

While scoffs aros...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang


Carl Hamblin

...rred and feathered,
For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
"I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her,
Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword,
Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were ...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Dresser The

...he doors—(while
 for
 you up
 there,
Whoever you are, follow me without noise, and be of strong heart.) 

3
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, 
Straight and swift to my wounded I go, 
Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in; 
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground;
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital; 
To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return; 
To each and all, one after another, I draw ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Justice

...That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes....Read more of this...
by Hughes, Langston

Peace XVIII

...ay to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him." 

Quietly a young man entered. His head was wrapped in bandage soaked with escaping life. 

He approached he with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

Richard Coeur de Lion

...urned out a good wife to Richard, 
In spite of a name like that there. 

For when he came home from his fighting 
She'd bandage the wounds in his sconce, 
And every time a snake bit him 
She'd suck out the poison at once. 

In their 'ouse they'd a minstrel called Blondel 
To amuse them at t'end of the day' 
And the King had but one thing against him...
He had nobbut one tune he could play. 

The Queen saw nowt wrong with the number 
And would have it again and again, 
And whe...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott

Sadness

...he highway, at home in the dark thicket.

3
I say the wood within is the dark wood,
Or wound no torn shirt can entirely bandage,
But the sad hand returns to it in secret
Repeatedly, encouraging the bandage
To speak of that other world we might have borne,
The lost world buried before it could be born.

4
Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets
Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine
Just as an evil August night comes down,
All umber, but for one smudge of du...Read more of this...
by Justice, Donald

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

...w White opened the door
and bought a bit of lacing.
The queen fastened it tightly
around her bodice,
as tight as an Ace bandage,
so tight that Snow White swooned.
She lay on the floor, a plucked daisy.
When the dwarfs came home they undid the lace
and she revived miraculously.
She was as full of life as soda pop.
Beware of your stepmother,
they said.
She will try once more.

Snow White, the dumb bunny,
opened the door
and she bit into a poison apple
and fell down for the fina...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Alcázar

...do not give in . . .
But never mind, Dad - carry on:
You know we've got to win."

And so they shot him at the dawn.
No bandage irked his eyes,
A lonely lad, so wistful wan,
He made his sacrifice.
he saw above the Citadel
His flag of glory fly,
And crying: "long live Spain!" he fell
And died as heroes die....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Dong with a Luminous Nose

...back of his head.
-- In a hollow rounded space it ended
With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
All fenced about 
With a bandage stout
To prevent the wind from blowing it out; --
And with holes all round to send the light,
In gleaming rays on the dismal night.

And now each night, and all night long,
Over those plains still roams the Dong;
And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe
You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe
While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
To meet with...Read more of this...
by Lear, Edward

The English Flag

...llness to yelp at the English Flag!

Must we borrow a clout from the Boer -- to plaster anew with dirt?
An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?
We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.
What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!

The North Wind blew: -- "From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go;
I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
And the liner splits on the ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Princess (part 1)

...This I sealed: 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, 
And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes: 
I gave the letter to be sent with dawn; 
And then to bed, where half in doze I seemed 
To float about a glimmering night, and watch 
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell 
On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. 


As through the land at eve we went, 
And plucked the ripened ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fe...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Truce of the Bear

...Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in --
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless -- toothless, broken of speech,
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over the story, ending as he began:
"Make ye no truce with Adam-zad -- the Bear that walks like a Man!

"There was a flint in my musket -- pricked and primed was the pan,
When I went hunting Adam-zad ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Visit

...but based on error,
Were the love I bear thee self-deception,
I must now have found it out, since Amor
Is, without his bandage, placed beside me."

Long I sat thus, full of heartfelt pleasure
At my love, and at her matchless merit;
She had so delighted me while slumbering,
That I could not venture to awake her.

Then I on the little table near her
Softly placed two oranges, two roses;
Gently, gently stole I from her chamber.
When her eyes the darling one shall open,
She will...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

The White Cliffs

...othing much to do 
But get to know each other; 
She did and I did, too. 
Mornings at the rectory 
Learning how to roll 
Bandages, and always 
Saving light and coal.
Oh, that house was bitter
As winter closed in,
In spite of heavy stockings
And woollen next the skin.
I was cold and wretched,
And never unaware
Of John more cold and wretched
In a trench out there.

XXIX 
All that long winter I wanted so much to complain, 
But my mother-in-Iaw, as far as I could see,
Felt no such...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

Three Women

...und that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind. I leave someone
Who would adhere to me: I undo her fingers like bandages: I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again. There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

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