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Famous Barricades Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tebb, Barry
...out:

His image of the poet as violent man

Broke loose and in his turtle-necked

Seaman’s jersey he shouted,

"Man the barricades!"

A tirade of nature-paths and voters

For a poetry of love mixed it with

The chuckers-out; Kennedy, Morley

And Hulse suffered a sharp repulse.

Heath-Stubbs was making death stabs

With his blindman’s stick at the ankles

Of detractors from his position under

The high table of chivalry, intoning

A prayer to raise the spirit

Of Sidney Ke...Read more of this...



by Manrique, Jorge
...,
The pennon, and the battle-flag,
And bannered splendor,—
The castles with their turrets boasting,
Their walls and barricades to brag
And mock surrender,—

The cavern's ancient crypt of hiding,
Or secret passage, vault, or stair,—
What use affords it?
Since thou upon thy onslaught striding
Canst send a shaft unerring where
No buckler wards it!

O World that givest and destroyest
Would that the life which thou hast shown
Were worth the living!
But here, as go...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...eath won't settle for my hypochondrias,
because this errand we're on goes to one store.

That shopkeeper may put up barricades,
and he may advertise cognac and razor blades,
he may let you dally at Nice or the Tuileries,
he may let the state of our bowels have ascendancy,
he may let such as we flaunt our escapades,

swallow down our portion of whisky and dex,
salvage the day with some soup or some sex,
juggle our teabags as we inch down the hall,
let the blood out of our ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...nly eighty in number, that brave British band,
And brave Lieutenant Broomhead did them command;
He gave orders to erect barricades without delay,
"It's the only plan I can see, men, to drive four thousand savages away." 

Then the mealie bags and biscuit boxes were brought out,
And the breastwork was made quickly without fear or doubt,
And barely was it finished when some one cried in dismay,
"There's the Zulus coming just about twelve hundred yards away." 

Methinks ...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...hese sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.

Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under t...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...ntral Post Office

In its Edwardian grandeur are startled by the arching spumes

Or white water fountains and the steel barricades of Novotel

Rise from the ruins of a sixties office block.

I hurry past and join Boar Lane’s Friday crew

From Keighley and Dewsbury’s mills, hesitating

At the thought of being told I’m past my 

Sell-by-date and turned away by the West Indian

Bouncers, black-suited and city-council badged

Who checked my bag but smiled at ‘The Lights of 

...Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...tic, work-bound.)

Men and women, mortally wounded where we
love and nourish, dying at thirty, forty,
fifty, not on barricades, but in beds of
unfulfilled promise:

tell me, senators, what you call abnormal?
Each day's obits read as if there's a war on.
Fifty-eight-year-old poet dead of cancer:
warrior woman

laid down with the other warrior women.
Both times when the telephone rang, I answered,
wanting not to, knowing I had to answer,
go from two bodies'

infinit...Read more of this...

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