Famous Barbarous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Game Of Chess

...ove the antique mantel was displayed
  As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
  The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
  So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale                             100
  Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
  And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
  "Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
  And other withered stumps of time
  Were told upon the walls; staring forms
  Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
  Foot...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)


Boadicea

...
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. 

`They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain's barbarous populaces,
Did they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating?
Shall I heed them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated?
Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us?
Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering?
Bark an answer, Britai...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Carmen De Boheme

...The slit, soft-pulling; -- -- -- and music follows cue. 

There is a sweep, -- a shattering, -- a choir 
Disquieting of barbarous fantasy. 
The pulse is in the ears, the heart is higher, 
And stretches up through mortal eyes to see. 

Carmen! Akimbo arms and smouldering eyes; -- 
Carmen! Bestirring hope and lipping eyes; -- 
Carmen whirls, and music swirls and dips. 
"Carmen!," comes awed from wine-hot lips. 

Finale leaves in silence to replume 
Bent wings, and Carmen with h...Read more of this...
by Crane, Hart

Comus

...l minstrelsy,
Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close
The wonted roar was up amidst the woods,
And filled the air with barbarous dissonance;
At which I ceased, and listened them awhile,
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds
That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep.
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,
And stole upon the air, that even Silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wis...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Corn

...teous aged crest
And seamy breast,
By restless-hearted children left to lie
Untended there beneath the heedless sky,
As barbarous folk expose their old to die.
Upon that generous-rounding side,
With gullies scarified
Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied,
Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil,
And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil.
Scorning the slow reward of patient grain,
He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain,
Then sat him down and waited for the rain.
He...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney


Harry Wilmans

...t,
Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs
Or the greatest power in Europe."
And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved
As he spoke.
And I went to the war in spite of my father,
And followed the flag till I saw it raised
By our camp in a rice field near Manila,
And all of us cheered and cheered it.
But there were flies and poisonous things;
And there was t...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Inferno (English)

...t, but none regards them. Yet more high 
 The strife, till bloodshed from their long contend 
 Shall issue at last: the barbarous Cerchi clan 
 Cast the Donati exiled out, and they 
 Within three years return, and more offend 
 Than they were erst offended, helped by him 
 So long who palters with both parts. The fire 
 Three sparks have lighted - Avarice, Envy, Pride, - 
 And there is none may quench it." 
 Here
 he ceased 
 His lamentable tale, and I replied, 
 "Of one thin...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Letter In November

...tons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----

My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy balls
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irr...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Meditation On Saviors

...relative to that?
But if a man could hold in his mind all the conditions at once,
 of man and woman, of civilized

And barbarous, of sick and well, of happy and under torture, of
 living and dead, of human and not
Human, and dimly all the human future: -what should persuade him
 to speak? And what could his words change?

The mountain ahead of the world is not forming but fixed. But
 the man's words would be fixed also,
Part of that mountain, under equal compulsion; under th...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson

Ode To a Lemon

...move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

Paradise Lost: Book 01

...n: 
A multitude like which the populous North 
Poured never from her frozen loins to pass 
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons 
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread 
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. 
Forthwith, form every squadron and each band, 
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood 
Their great Commander--godlike Shapes, and Forms 
Excelling human; princely Dignities; 
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones, 
Though on their names in He...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 07

...n morn 
Purples the east: still govern thou my song, 
Urania, and fit audience find, though few. 
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance 
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race 
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard 
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned 
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend 
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores: 
For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream. 
Say, Goddess, what ensu...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book

..., arts and arms,
And long renown, thou justly may'st prefer
Before the Parthian. These two thrones except,
The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Shared among petty kings too far removed;
These having shewn thee, I have shewn thee all
The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.
This Emperor hath no son, and now is old, 
Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired
To Capreae, an island small but strong
On the Campanian shore, with purpose there
His horrid lusts ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Comedian As The Letter C

...jay, still to the night-bird made their plea, 
94 As if raspberry tanagers in palms, 
95 High up in orange air, were barbarous. 
96 But Crispin was too destitute to find 
97 In any commonplace the sought-for aid. 
98 He was a man made vivid by the sea, 
99 A man come out of luminous traversing, 
100 Much trumpeted, made desperately clear, 
101 Fresh from discoveries of tidal skies, 
102 To whom oracular rockings gave no rest. 
103 Into a savage color he went on. 
...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

The Man of Laws Tale

...: "by God, I agree". It is
characteristic that the somewhat pompous Sergeant of Law
should couch his assent in the semi-barbarous French, then
familiar in law procedure.

4. Ceyx and Alcyon: Chaucer treats of these in the introduction
to the poem called "The Book of the Duchess." It relates to the
death of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the
poet's patron, and afterwards his connexion by marriage.

5. The Saintes Legend of Cupid: Now called "The Legend of
G...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Princess (part 2)

...the man; 
Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest.' 
Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon 
As emblematic of a nobler age; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; 
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines 
Of empire, and the woman's state in each, 
How far fr...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Princess (part 7)

...e still were loth to yield herself to one 
That wholly scorned to help their equal rights 
Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws. 
She prayed me not to judge their cause from her 
That wronged it, sought far less for truth than power 
In knowledge: something wild within her breast, 
A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 
And she had nursed me there from week to week: 
Much had she learnt in little time. In part 
It was ill counsel had misled the girl 
To vex true...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Siege of Corinth

...mantle gray, 
And the Noon will look on a sultry day. 
Hark to the trump, and the drum, 
And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, 
And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're borne, 
And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, 
And the clash and the shout, "They come, they come!" 
The horsetails are pluck'd from the ground, and the sword 
From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word. 
Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, 
Strike your tents, and t...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Triumph Of Death

...and the Roman Empire shake;My piercing sword sack'd Troy, how many rudeAnd barbarous people are by me subdued?Many ambitious, vain, and amorous thoughtMy unwish'd presence hath to nothing brought;Now am I come to you, while yet your stateIs happy, ere you feel a harder fate.""On these you have no power," she then replied,Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The Waste Land

...am.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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