Famous Banded Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Swarm

by Sylvia Plath
 Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The hump of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are chess people...Read more of this...

Dream Song 107: Three coons come at his garbage. He be cross

by John Berryman
 Three 'coons come at his garbage. He be cross,
I figuring porcupine & took Sir poker
unbarring Mr door,
& then screen door. Ah, but the little 'coon,
hardly a foot (not counting tail) got in with 
two more at the porch-edge

and they swirled, before some two swerve off
this side of crab tree, and my dear friend held
with the torch in his tiny...Read more of this...

You Ask Me Why Tho Ill at Ease

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From...Read more of this...

Song Of The German Lanzknecht

by Victor Hugo
 ("Sonnex, clarions!") 
 
 {Bk. VI. vii.} 


 Flourish the trumpet! and rattle the drum! 
 The Reiters are mounted! the Reiters will come! 
 
 When our bullets cease singing 
 And long swords cease ringing 
 On backplates of fearsomest foes in full flight, 
 We'll dig up their dollars 
 To string for girls' collars— 
...Read more of this...

The Fabulists

by Rudyard Kipling
 When all the world would keep a matter hid,
 Since Truth is seldom Friend to any crowd,
Men write in Fable, as old AEsop did,
 Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.

When desperate Folly daily laboureth
 To work confusion upon all we...Read more of this...

Prelude to an Evening

by John Crowe Ransom
 Do not enforce the tired wolf
Dragging his infected wound homeward
To sit tonight with the warm children
Naming the pretty kings of France.

The images of the invaded mind
Being as the monsters in the dreams
Of your most brief enchanted headful,
Suppose a miracle of confusion:

That dreamed and undreamt become each other
And mix the night and day of your mind;
And it does not matter...Read more of this...

Light and Dark

by George William Russell
 NOT the soul that’s whitest
 Wakens love the sweetest:
When the heart is lightest
 Oft the charm is fleetest.


While the snow-frail maiden,
 Waits the time of learning,
To the passion laden
 Turn with eager yearning.


While the heart is burning
 Heaven with earth is banded:
To the stars returning
 Go not empty-handed.


Ah, the snow-frail maiden!
 Somehow truth has missed her,
Left the heart unladen
...Read more of this...

Gallios Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 "And Gallio cared for none of these things."-- Acts xviii. 17 "Little Foxes"-- Actions and Reactions.
All day long to the judgment-seat
The crazed Provincials drew--
All day long at their ruler's feet
Howled for the blood of the Jew.
Insurrection with one accord
Banded itself and woke,
And Paul was about to open his mouth
When Achaia's Deputy spoke--

"Whether the God descend from above
Or the Man...Read more of this...

The Pool

by Hilda Doolittle
 Are you alive? 
I touch you. 
You quiver like a sea-fish. 
I cover you with my net. 
What are you - banded one?...Read more of this...

The Song of Seven Cities

by Rudyard Kipling
 I was Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded.
Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute from far.
Ivory their outposts were--the guardrooms of them gilded,
And garrisoned with Amazons invincible in war.

All the world went softly when it walked before my Cities--
Neither King nor Army vexed my peoples at their toil.
Never horse nor chariot irked or overbore my Cities.
Never Mob nor Ruler questioned...Read more of this...

Bridge-Guard in the Karroo

by Rudyard Kipling
 1901 ". . . and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge." District Orders-Lines of Communication, South African War.
Sudden the desert changes,
 The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
 Stand up like the thrones of Kings --

Ramparts of slaughter and peril --
 Blazing, amazing, aglow --
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
 And the wine-dark flats...Read more of this...

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

by Amy Lowell
 What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream
Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.
Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,
The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese
Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky
Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly
And...Read more of this...

The Black Cottage

by Robert Frost
 We chanced in passing by that afternoon 
To catch it in a sort of special picture 
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, 
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, 
The little cottage we were speaking of, 
A front with just a door between two windows, 
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black. 
We paused, the minister...Read more of this...

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