Famous Belt Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Faerie Queene: Book I Canto I

by Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall...Read more of this...

The Sister

by Victor Hugo
 What has happened, my brothers? Your spirit to-day 
 Some secret sorrow damps 
 There's a cloud on your brow. What has happened? Oh, say, 
 For your eyeballs glare out with a sinister ray 
 Like the light of funeral lamps. 
 And the blades of your poniards are half unsheathed 
 In your belt—and ye frown on...Read more of this...

Gunga Din

by Rudyard Kipling
 You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The...Read more of this...

Death Fugue

by Paul Celan
 Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents
 he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden
 hair Margarete
he writes...Read more of this...

How the Land was Won

by Henry Lawson
 The future was dark and the past was dead 
As they gazed on the sea once more – 
But a nation was born when the immigrants said 
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore! 
In their loneliness they were parted thus 
Because of the work to do, 
A wild wide land to be won for us 
By hearts and hands so...Read more of this...

Jangling Memory

by Katherine Mansfield
 Heavens above! here's an old tie of your--
Sea-green dragons stamped on a golden ground.
Ha! Ha! Ha! What children we were in those days.

Do you love me enough to wear it now?
Have you the courage of your pristine glories?
Ha! Ha! Ha! You laugh and shrug your shoulders.

Those were the days when a new tie spelt a fortune:
We wore it in...Read more of this...

Accordion

by Robert William Service
 Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;
Of viol or of lute some make a song.
My battered old accordion, you're worthy of a rhyme,
You've been my friend and comforter so long.
Round half the world I've trotted you, a dozen years or more;
You've given heaps of people lots of fun;
You've set a host of happy feet a-tapping on...Read more of this...

The Pleiades

by Amy Lowell
 By day you cannot see the sky
For it is up so very high.
You look and look, but it's so blue
That you can never see right through.
But when night comes it is quite plain,
And all the stars are there again.
They seem just like old friends to me,
I've known them all my life you see.
There is the dipper first, and there
Is...Read more of this...

While The Bannock Bakes

by Robert William Service
 Light up your pipe again, old chum, and sit awhile with me;
I've got to watch the bannock bake -- how restful is the air!
You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three,
Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care.
The man-size mountains palisade us round on every side;
The river is a-flop with fish, and ripples silver-clear;
The midnight...Read more of this...

The Bohemian

by Robert William Service
 Up in my garret bleak and bare
I tilted back on my broken chair,
And my three old pals were with me there,
 Hunger and Thirst and Cold;
Hunger scowled at his scurvy mate:
Cold cowered down by the hollow grate,
And I hated them with a deadly hate
 As old as life is old.

So up in my garret that's near the sky
I smiled...Read more of this...

The Overland Mail

by Rudyard Kipling
 (Foot-Service to the Hills)
In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
 O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day --
 We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
Let the robber retreat -- let the tiger turn tail --
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!

With a jingle...Read more of this...

Pickle Belt

by Theodore Roethke
 The fruit rolled by all day.
They prayed the cogs would creep;
They thought about Saturday pay,
And Sunday sleep.

Whatever he smelled was good:
The fruit and flesh smells mixed.
There beside him she stood,--
And he, perplexed;

He, in his shrunken britches,
Eyes rimmed with pickle dust,
Prickling with all the itches
Of sixteen-year-old lust....Read more of this...

The Federal Bus Conductor and the Old Lady

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'The man who brought the railway through -- our friend the engineer.' 
They cheer his pluck and enterprise and engineering skill! 
'Twas my old husband found the pass behind that big red hill. 
Before the engineer was born we'd settled with our stock 
Behind that great big mountain chain, a line of range and rock -- 
A line that...Read more of this...

Hilaire Belloc - The South Country

by Hilaire Belloc
 When I am living in the Midlands
 That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
 My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
 Come back into my mind.

The great hills of the South Country
 They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
 That I could wish to be,
And...Read more of this...

Leipzig

by Thomas Hardy
 "OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--

--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine

"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...

The Haunted House

by Thomas Hood
 Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The...Read more of this...

I know where Wells grow -- Droughtless Wells

by Emily Dickinson
 I know where Wells grow -- Droughtless Wells --
Deep dug -- for Summer days --
Where Mosses go no more away --
And Pebble -- safely plays --

It's made of Fathoms -- and a Belt --
A Belt of jagged Stone --
Inlaid with Emerald -- half way down --
And Diamonds -- jumbled on --

It has no Bucket -- Were I rich
A Bucket...Read more of this...

School Smell

by Barry Tebb
 Composed of chalk dust,

Pencil shavings and

The sharp odour

Of stale urine;

It meets me now and then

Creeping down a creosoted corridor

Or waiting to be banged

With the dust from piles of books

On top of a cupboard.

The double desks heeled with iron

Having long been replaced;

The steel-nibbed pens and

Ink watered to pale grey

Gone too: the cane’s bamboo bite

Has nothing left to bite on

And David’s...Read more of this...

He put the Belt around my life

by Emily Dickinson
 He put the Belt around my life
I heard the Buckle snap --
And turned away, imperial,
My Lifetime folding up --
Deliberate, as a Duke would do
A Kingdom's Title Deed --
Henceforth, a Dedicated sort --
A Member of the Cloud.

Yet not too far to come at call --
And do the little Toils
That make the Circuit of the Rest --
And deal occasional smiles
To lives...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

To A Child

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a...Read more of this...

Making It Work

by Philip Levine
 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro 
along a conveyor belt, slow fish 
speaking the language of silence. 
On the roof, I in my respirator 
patching the asbestos gas lines 
as big around as the thick waist 
of an oak tree. "These here are 
the veins of the place, stuff 
inside's the blood." We work in rain, 
heat, snow, sleet. First...Read more of this...

Freedom

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 he drank wine all night of the 
28th, and he kept thinking of her: 
the way she walked and talked and loved 
the way she told him things that seemed true 
but were not, and he knew the color of each 
of her dresses 
and her shoes-he knew the stock and curve of 
each heel 
as well as the...Read more of this...

Replying to Subprefect Zhang

by Wang Wei
 Old age think good quiet 
Everything not concern heart 
Self attend without great plan 
Empty know return old forest 
Pine wind blow undo belt 
Hill moon light pluck qin 
Gentleman ask end open reason 
Fisherman song enter riverbank deep 


Now in old age, I know the value of silence, 
The world's affairs no longer stir my heart. 
Turning to...Read more of this...

Promise This -- When You be Dying --

by Emily Dickinson
 Promise This -- When You be Dying --
Some shall summon Me --
Mine belong Your latest Sighing --
Mine -- to Belt Your Eye --

Not with Coins -- though they be Minted
From an Emperor's Hand --
Be my lips -- the only Buckle
Your low Eyes -- demand --

Mine to stay -- when all have wandered --
To devise once more
If the Life be...Read more of this...

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