Famous Battled Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Battled poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous battled poems. These examples illustrate what a famous battled poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...the right,
Steady in strong array,
With the sun on the bayonets gleaming bright,
The battalion marched away.
They battled, the old battalion,
Through the toil of the training camps,
Sweated and strove at lectures,
By the light of the stinking lamps.
Marching, shooting, and drilling;
Steady and slow and stern;
Awkward and strange, but willing
All of their job to learn.
Learning to use the rifle;
Learning to use the spade;
Deeming fatigue a trifle
During each...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way—was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows?...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...wept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI.
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with th...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...naked along the side of the house,
8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil
over my body, Jesus, have I come
to this?
I once battled in dark alleys for a
laugh.
now I'm not laughing.
I splash myself with oil and wonder,
how many years do you want?
how many days?
my blood is soiled and a dark
angel sits in my brain.
things are made of something and
go to nothing.
I understand the fall of cities, of
nations.
a small plane passes overhead.
I look upward as if it made sense to
look up...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...us ways,
And all the country heard thee with amaze.
Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow,
The awful tide that battled to and fro;
We ride amid a tempest of dispraise.
Now, when the waves of swift dissension swarm,
And Honour, the strong pilot, lieth stark,
Oh, for thy voice high-sounding o'er the storm,
For thy strong arm to guide the shivering bark,
The blast-defying power of thy form,
To give us comfort through the lonely dark....Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...or's gone to join you in the big camp where you are;
Roll up and give him welcome such as only diggers can,
For well he battled for the rights of miner and of Man.
In that bright golden country that lies beyond our sight,
The record of his honest life shall be his Miner's Right;
But many a bearded mouth shall twitch, and many a tear be shed,
And many a grey old digger sigh to hear that Lalor's dead.
Yet wipe your eyes, old fossickers, o'er worked-out fields that roam,
You nee...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...ve,
And thirst with passionate longing for the things
That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings.
Till ye have battled with great grief and fears,
And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years,
Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife,
Children, ye have not lived: for this is life....Read more of this...
by
Naidu, Sarojini
...oon like a demons' pantomine
The place was raging.
See the silhouettes agape,
See the glibbering shadows
Mixed with the battled arms on the wall.
See gargantuan hooked fingers
Pluck in supreme flesh
To smutch supreme littleness.
See the merry limbs in hot Highland fling
Because some wizard vermin
Charmed from the quiet this revel
When our ears were half lulled
By the dark music
Blown from Sleep's trumpet....Read more of this...
by
Rosenberg, Isaac
...reat timing, you'll allow."
Imagine this transcendant team arrive
At some hilarious banquet of the gods!
Their nations battled when they were alive,
And they were bitter foes - but what's the odd?
Actor and soldier, happy hand in hand,
By death close-linked, like loving brothers stand.
But how diverse! Our Will had gold and gear,
Chattels and land, the starshine of success;
The bleak Castilian fought with casque and spear,
Passing his life in prisons - more or less.
The Bar...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...
When I must fend again
In labour strife;
And toil with sweat and strain
For kids and wife.
The world is so upset
I battled for,
That grimly I regret
The peace of war.
The wounds are hard to heal
Of shell and shard,
But O the way to weal
Is bitter hard!
Though looking back I see
A gory path,
How bloody black can be
War's Aftermath!...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ts we'd sit together in the windy hut and fold,
And I helped the thing a little when I struck a patch of gold;
And we battled for the diggers as the papers seldom do,
Though when the diggers errored, why, we touched the diggers too.
Yet the paper took the fancy of that roaring mining town,
And the diggers sent a nugget with their sympathy to Brown.
Oft I sat and smoked beside him in the listening hours of night,
When the shadows from the corners seemed to gather round...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...The church flings forth a battled shade
Over the moon-blanched sward:
The church; my gift; whereto I paid
My all in hand and hoard;
Lavished my gains
With stintless pains
To glorify the Lord.
I squared the broad foundations in
Of ashlared masonry;
I moulded mullions thick and thin,
Hewed fillet and ogee;
I circleted
Each sculptured head
With nimb and canopy.
I called ...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...anding
has made me more discreet.
Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.
I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river....Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
...wall.
He vanished in the wilderness -- God knows where he was gone --
He hunted till his food gave out, but still he battled on.
His horses strayed ('twas well they did), they made towards the grass,
And down behind that big red hill they found an easy pass.
"He followed up and blazed the trees, to show the safest track,
Then drew his belt another hole and turned and started back.
His horses died -- just one pulled through with nothing much to spare;
God bless the b...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...wall.
He vanished in the wilderness -- God knows where he was gone --
He hunted till his food gave out, but still he battled on.
His horses strayed ('twas well they did), they made towards the grass,
And down behind that big red hill they found an easy pass.
"He followed up and blazed the trees, to show the safest track,
Then drew his belt another hole and turned and started back.
His horses died -- just one pulled through with nothing much to spare;
God bless the b...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
....
It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
A wreath of fennel wore.
Then in Life's goblet freely press,
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the colored waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress
New light and strength they give!
And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling buhbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...weigh what merit our causes had.
Putting our faith in being strong --
Above the level of good and bad --
For us, we battled and burned and killed
Because evolving Nature willed,
And it was our pride and boast to be
The instruments of Destiny.
There was a stately drama writ
By the hand that peopled the earth and air
And set the stars in the infinite
And made night gorgeous and morning fair,
And all that had sense to reason knew
That bloody drama must be gone throu...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...
Song.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Dream of fighting fields no more;
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...ught his land how great her loss
In him who triumph'd o'er the Cross,
'Gainst which he rear'd the Crescent high,
And battled to avenge or die.
V.
Coumourgi — he whose closing scene [3]
Adorn'd the triumph of Eugene,
When on Carlowitz' bloody plain,
The last and mightiest of the slain,
He sank, regretting not to die,
But cursed the Christian's victory —
Coumourgi — can his glory cease,
That latest conqueror of Greece,
Till Christian hands to Greece restore
The ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...or, famine, fear and flame,
Blasting from loveliness a living hell.
Barring the station towered a sentinel;
Trainward I battled, blind escape my aim.
ENGLAND! I cried. He kindled at the name:
With lion-leap he haled me. . . . All was well.
ENGLAND! they cried for aid, and cried in vain.
Vain was their valour, emptily they cried.
Bleeding, they saw their Cry crucified. . . .
O splendid soldier, by the last lone train,
To-day would you flame forth to fray me place?
Or - would ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
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