Famous Bands Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dream Song 122: He published his girls bottom in staid pages

by John Berryman
 He published his girl's bottom in staid pages
of an old weekly. Where will next his rages
ridiculous Henry land?
Tranquil & chaste, de-hammocked, he descended-”
upon which note the fable should have ended-”
towards the ground, and

while fable wound itself upon him thick
and coats upon his tongue formed, white, terrific:
he stretched out still.
Assembled bands to do obsequious music
at hopeless noon. He bayed before...Read more of this...

The Great Franchise Demonstration

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1884, and on Saturday the 20th of September,
Which the inhabitants of Dundee will long remember
The great Liberal Franchise Demonstration,
Which filled their minds with admiration. 

Oh! it was a most magnificent display,
To see about 20 or 30 thousand men all in grand array;
And each man with a medal on his breast;
And every man in the...Read more of this...

Before A Crucifix

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Here, down between the dusty trees,
At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have branded black, the rains
Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;
The face is full of prayers and pains,
To which they bring their pains and prayers;
Lean...Read more of this...

Psalm 4

by Isaac Watts
 v. 1-3,5-7 
L. M.
Hearing of prayer.

O God of grace and righteousness,
Hear and attend when I complain;
Thou hast enlarged me in distress,
Bow down a gracious ear again.

Ye sons of men, in vain ye try
To turn my glory into shame;
How long will scoffers love to lie,
And dare reproach my Savior's name?

Know that the Lord divides his saints
From all the tribes of...Read more of this...

Lichtenberg

by Rudyard Kipling
 Smells are surer than sounds or sights
 To make your heart-strings crack--
They start those awful voices o' nights
 That whisper, " Old man, come back! "
That must be why the big things pass
 And the little things remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
 Riding in, in the rain.


 There was some silly fire on the flank
 And...Read more of this...

Psalm 83

by John Milton
 Be not thou silent now at length
O God hold not thy peace,
Sit not thou still O God of strength
We cry and do not cease.
For lo thy furious foes now *swell
And *storm outrageously, *Jehemajun.
And they that hate thee proud and fill
Exalt their heads full hie.
Against thy people they *contrive *Jagnarimu.
*Their Plots and Counsels deep, *Sod. 
*Them to ensnare they chiefly...Read more of this...

Cholera Camp

by Rudyard Kipling
 We've got the cholerer in camp -- it's worse than forty fights;
 We're dyin' in the wilderness the same as Isrulites;
It's before us, an' be'ind us, an' we cannot get away,
 An' the doctor's just reported we've ten more to-day!

Oh, strike your camp an' go, the Bugle's callin',
 The Rains are fallin' --
The dead are bushed an' stoned to...Read more of this...

The Lost Battle

by Victor Hugo
 ("Allah! qui me rendra-") 
 
 {XVI., May, 1828.} 


 Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array? 
 My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day; 
 My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the sight, 
 Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow of night, 
 Seemed oft unto the sentinel that...Read more of this...

Where Thou art -- that -- is Home --

by Emily Dickinson
 Where Thou art -- that -- is Home --
Cashmere -- or Calvary -- the same --
Degree -- or Shame --
I scarce esteem Location's Name --
So I may Come --

What Thou dost -- is Delight --
Bondage as Play -- be sweet --
Imprisonment -- Content --
And Sentence -- Sacrament --
Just We two -- meet --

Where Thou art not -- is Woe...Read more of this...

The Cautious Lovers

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Silvia, let's from the Crowd retire; 
For, What to you and me 
(Who but each other do desire) 
Is all that here we see? 

Apart we'll live, tho' not alone; 
For, who alone can call 
Those, who in Desarts live with One, 
If in that One they've All? 

The World a vast Meander is, 
Where Hearts confus'dly stray; 
Where...Read more of this...

Victory

by Henry Lawson
 The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride, 
The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside; 
Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear, 
The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there, 
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air! 

The Girls' High School,...Read more of this...

Etude Realiste

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.

II.

A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled
Whence yet no...Read more of this...

Roast Leviathan

by Louis Untermeyer
"Old Jews!" Well, David, aren't we?
What news is that to make you see so red,
To swear and almost tear your beard in half?
Jeered at? Well, let them laugh.
You can laugh longer when you're dead.
What? Are you still too blind to see?
Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right,
The little goyim, with their angry stones.
You should be buried in the desert...Read more of this...

The Destruction Of Magdeburg

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [For a fine account of the fearful sack of Magdeburg, 
by Tilly, in the year 1613, see SCHILLER's History of the Thirty 
Years' War.]

OH, Magdeberg the town!
Fair maids thy beauty crown,
Thy charms fair maids and matrons crown;
Oh, Magdeburg the town!

Where all so blooming stands,
Advance fierce Tilly's bands;
O'er gardens and o'er well--till'd lands
Advance fierce Tilly's bands.

Now Tilly's at the gate.
Our...Read more of this...

The Violet Pressed in a Copy of Shakespeare

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 Here in the inmost of the master's heart
This violet crisp with early dew
Has come to leave her beauty and to part
With all her vivid hue.

And while in hollow glades and dells of musk,
Her fellows will reflower in bands,
Clasping the deeps of shade and emerald dusk,
With sweet inviolate hands,

She will lie here, a ghost of their delight,
Their lucent stems all...Read more of this...

De Gustibus---

by Robert Browning
 I.

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice---
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,---
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers' boon, 
And the...Read more of this...

Carillon

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

Then, with deep sonorous clangor
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck...Read more of this...

Satire On The Earth

by Victor Hugo
 ("Une terre au flanc maigre.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xi., October, 1840.} 


 A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, 
 Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; 
 And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, 
 Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; 
 Made harder by their gloom...Read more of this...

August 17th

by Anne Sexton
 Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.

Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever...Read more of this...

Tortoise Shell

by D. H. Lawrence
 The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the...Read more of this...

to the seaside

by Rg Gregory
 to the seaside
to the seaside
to the change and peace of mind
to the easy la-
zy holiday
the leave-it-all-behind

to the seaside
to the sunshine
to the body-littered sands
to the deckchairs
and the funfairs
and the burst-your-ears brass bands

to the ice-cream
to the wasp-stings
to the sand-in-every-meal
to the castles
and the donkeys
and the plates of jellied eel

to the bosoms
and the bottoms
to the bodies-in-the-raw
to the he-men
and the paunches
to the what-the-butler-saw

(to the...Read more of this...

Cassidys Epitaph

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Here lies a bloke who's just gone West, 
A Number One Australian; 
He took his gun and did his best 
To mitigate the alien. 
So long as he could get to work 
He needed no sagacity; 
A German, Austrian, or Turk, 
Were all the same to Cassidy. 
Wherever he could raise "the stuff" 
-- A liquor deleterious -- 
The...Read more of this...

Fight to a Finish

by Siegfried Sassoon
 The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying, 
And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street 
To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, 
And hear the music of returning feet. 
‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.) 

Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob, 
Grim Fusiliers broke ranks...Read more of this...

The Fatal Sisters

by Thomas Gray
 Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of Hell prepares!)
Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air. 

Glittering lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe and Randver's bane. 

See the grisly texture grow,
('Tis of human entrails made!)
And the weights that play below,
Each a gasping warrior's head. 

Shafts for shuttles, dipped in...Read more of this...

72. Song—Young Peggy Blooms

by Robert Burns
 YOUNG Peggy blooms our boniest lass,
 Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass,
 With early gems adorning.
Her eyes outshine the radiant beams
 That gild the passing shower,
And glitter o’er the crystal streams,
 And cheer each fresh’ning flower.


Her lips, more than the cherries bright,
 A richer dye has graced them;
They charm th’ admiring gazer’s sight,
 And...Read more of this...

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