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Best Famous Clank Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Clank poems. This is a select list of the best famous Clank poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Clank poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of clank poems.

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Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

A Childs Nightmare

 Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, *****,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
"Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..." he said, "Cat! ... Cat!..."

When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
"Let that body be, he's dead!"
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!"


Written by Gwendolyn Brooks | Create an image from this poem

The Lovers of the Poor

 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they're told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they're done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They've never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat,"
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . . 
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings,"
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies'
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!--
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Give me the Splendid Silent Sun

 1
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; 
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; 
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; 
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; 
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking
 up
 at the
 stars; 
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk
 undisturb’d; 
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire; 
Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural,
 domestic
 life; 
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears
 only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! 
—These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by
 the
 war-strife;) 
These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, 
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; 
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up; 
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you give me forever faces; 
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; 
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.) 

2
Keep your splendid, silent sun;
Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; 
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards; 
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum; 
Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the
 trottoirs! 
Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day! 
Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan! 
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of the trumpets and
 drums! 
(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some, starting away, flush’d and
 reckless; 
Some, their time up, returning, with thinn’d ranks—young, yet very old, worn,
 marching,
 noticing nothing;)
—Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! 
O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! 
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! 
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession! 
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; 
Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; 
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the
 wounded;)

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied chorus, and light
 of the
 sparkling eyes; 
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
Written by Gregory Corso | Create an image from this poem

Gregory Corso

 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine Pushkin Dillinger Bogart
 And hath not St. Michael a burning sword St. George a lance David a sling
 Bomb you are as cruel as man makes you and you're no crueller than cancer
 All Man hates you they'd rather die by car-crash lightning drowning
Falling off a roof electric-chair heart-attack old age old age O Bomb
 They'd rather die by anything but you Death's finger is free-lance
 Not up to man whether you boom or not Death has long since distributed its
 categorical blue I sing thee Bomb Death's extravagance Death's jubilee
 Gem of Death's supremest blue The flyer will crash his death will differ
 with the climbor who'll fall to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork
Some die by swamp some by sea and some by the bushy-haired man in the night
 O there are deaths like witches of Arc Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff
 No-feeling deaths like birth-death sadless deaths like old pain Bowery
 Abandoned deaths like Capital Punishment stately deaths like senators
 And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx girls on Vogue covers my own
 I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is I can only imagine
 Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview I scope
 a city New York City streaming starkeyed subway shelter 
 Scores and scores A fumble of humanity High heels bend
 Hats whelming away Youth forgetting their combs
 Ladies not knowing what to do with their shopping bags
 Unperturbed gum machines Yet dangerous 3rd rail
 Ritz Brothers from the Bronx caught in the A train
 The smiling Schenley poster will always smile
 Impish death Satyr Bomb Bombdeath
 Turtles exploding over Istanbul
 The jaguar's flying foot
 soon to sink in arctic snow
 Penguins plunged against the Sphinx
 The top of the Empire state
 arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily
 Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens
 St. Sophia peeling over Sudan
 O athletic Death Sportive Bomb
 the temples of ancient times
 their grand ruin ceased
 Electrons Protons Neutrons 
 gathering Hersperean hair
 walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady
 joining marble helmsmen
 entering the final ampitheater
 with a hymnody feeling of all Troys
 heralding cypressean torches
 racing plumes and banners
 and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace
 Lo the visiting team of Present
 the home team of Past
 Lyre and tube together joined
 Hark the hotdog soda olive grape
 gala galaxy robed and uniformed 
 commissary O the happy stands
 Ethereal root and cheer and boo
 The billioned all-time attendance
 The Zeusian pandemonium
 Hermes racing Owens
 The Spitball of Buddha
 Christ striking out
 Luther stealing third
 Planeterium Death Hosannah Bomb
 Gush the final rose O Spring Bomb
 Come with thy gown of dynamite green
 unmenace Nature's inviolate eye
 Before you the wimpled Past
 behind you the hallooing Future O Bomb
 Bound in the grassy clarion air
 like the fox of the tally-ho
 thy field the universe thy hedge the geo
 Leap Bomb bound Bomb frolic zig and zag
 The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag
 Stick angels on your jubilee feet
 wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat
 You are due and behold you are due
 and the heavens are with you
 hosanna incalescent glorious liaison
 BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM
 Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace
 spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep
 set forth awful agenda
 Carrion stars charnel planets carcass elements
 Corpse the universe tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop
 over its long long dead Nor
 From thy nimbled matted spastic eye
 exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls
 From thy appellational womb
 spew birth-gusts of of great worms
 Rip open your belly Bomb
 from your belly outflock vulturic salutations
 Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps
 along the brink of Paradise
 O Bomb O final Pied Piper
 both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz
 God abandoned mock-nude
 beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse
 He cannot hear thy flute's
 happy-the-day profanations
 He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear
 His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax
 Clogged clarions untrumpet Him
 Sealed angels unsing Him
 A thunderless God A dead God
 O Bomb thy BOOM His tomb
 That I lean forward on a desk of science
 an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose
 half-smart about wars bombs especially bombs
 That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love 
 That I can't exist in a world that consents
 a child in a park a man dying in an electric-chair
 That I am able to laugh at all things
 all that I know and do not know thus to conceal my pain
 That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man
 knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men
 and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship
 That I am manifold
 a man pursuing the big lies of gold
 or a poet roaming in bright ashes
 or that which I imagine myself to be 
 a shark-toothed sleep a man-eater of dreams
 I need not then be all-smart about bombs
 Happily so for if I felt bombs were caterpillars
 I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies
 There is a hell for bombs
 They're there I see them there
 They sit in bits and sing songs
  mostly German songs
 And two very long American songs
 and they wish there were more songs
 especially Russian and Chinese songs
 and some more very long American songs
 Poor little Bomb that'll never be 
 an Eskimo song I love thee 
 I want to put a lollipop
 in thy furcal mouth
 A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean
 and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel
 along the Hollywoodian screen
 O Bomb in which all lovely things
 moral and physical anxiously participate
  O fairylike plucked from the 
 grandest universe tree 
 O piece of heaven which gives
 both mountain and anthill a sun
 I am standing before your fantastic lily door
 I bring you Midgardian roses Arcadian musk
 Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven
 Welcome me fear not thy opened door
 nor thy cold ghost's grey memory
 nor the pimps of indefinite weather
 their cruel terrestial thaw
 Oppenheimer is seated
 in the dark pocket of Light
 Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique
 Einstein his mythmouth
 a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head
 Let me in Bomb rise from that pregnant-rat corner
 nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world
 O Bomb I love you
 I want to kiss your clank eat your boom
 You are a paean an acme of scream
 a lyric hat of Mister Thunder
 O resound thy tanky knees
 BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
 BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns
 BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM
 nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM
 BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains
 go BANG ye lakes ye oceans BING
 Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM
 Ubangi BOOM orangutang 
 BING BANG BONG BOOM bee bear baboon
 ye BANG ye BONG ye BING
 the tail the fin the wing
 Yes Yes into our midst a bomb will fall
 Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching
 Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind
 Pinkbombs will blossom Elkbombs will perk their ears
 Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look
 Yet not enough to say a bomb will fall
 or even contend celestial fire goes out
 Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb
 that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born
 magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine all beautiful
 and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires
 fierce with moustaches of gold
Written by Arna Bontemps | Create an image from this poem

Southern Mansion

 Poplars are standing there still as death
And ghosts of dead men
Meet their ladies walking
Two by two beneath the shade
And standing on the marble steps.

There is a sound of music echoing
Through the open door
And in the field there is
Another sound tinkling in the cotton:
Chains of bondmen dragging on the ground.

The years go back with an iron clank,
A hand is on the gate,
A dry leaf trembles on the wall.
Ghosts are walking.
They have broken roses down
And poplars stand there still as death.


Written by Joyce Kilmer | Create an image from this poem

The Twelve-Forty-Five

 (For Edward J. Wheeler)

Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts --
And passes on, and leaves no trace.
For darkness holds its ancient place,
Serene and absolute, the king
Unchanged, of every living thing.
The houses lie obscure and still
In Rutherford and Carlton Hill.
Our lamps intensify the dark
Of slumbering Passaic Park.
And quiet holds the weary feet
That daily tramp through Prospect Street.
What though we clang and clank and roar
Through all Passaic's streets? No door
Will open, not an eye will see
Who this loud vagabond may be.
Upon my crimson cushioned seat,
In manufactured light and heat,
I feel unnatural and mean.
Outside the towns are cool and clean;
Curtained awhile from sound and sight
They take God's gracious gift of night.
The stars are watchful over them.
On Clifton as on Bethlehem
The angels, leaning down the sky,
Shed peace and gentle dreams. And I --
I ride, I blasphemously ride
Through all the silent countryside.
The engine's shriek, the headlight's glare,
Pollute the still nocturnal air.
The cottages of Lake View sigh
And sleeping, frown as we pass by.
Why, even strident Paterson
Rests quietly as any nun.
Her foolish warring children keep
The grateful armistice of sleep.
For what tremendous errand's sake
Are we so blatantly awake?
What precious secret is our freight?
What king must be abroad so late?
Perhaps Death roams the hills to-night
And we rush forth to give him fight.
Or else, perhaps, we speed his way
To some remote unthinking prey.
Perhaps a woman writhes in pain
And listens -- listens for the train!
The train, that like an angel sings,
The train, with healing on its wings.
Now "Hawthorne!" the conductor cries.
My neighbor starts and rubs his eyes.
He hurries yawning through the car
And steps out where the houses are.
This is the reason of our quest!
Not wantonly we break the rest
Of town and village, nor do we
Lightly profane night's sanctity.
What Love commands the train fulfills,
And beautiful upon the hills
Are these our feet of burnished steel.
Subtly and certainly I feel
That Glen Rock welcomes us to her
And silent Ridgewood seems to stir
And smile, because she knows the train
Has brought her children back again.
We carry people home -- and so
God speeds us, wheresoe'er we go.
Hohokus, Waldwick, Allendale
Lift sleepy heads to give us hail.
In Ramsey, Mahwah, Suffern stand
Houses that wistfully demand
A father -- son -- some human thing
That this, the midnight train, may bring.
The trains that travel in the day
They hurry folks to work or play.
The midnight train is slow and old
But of it let this thing be told,
To its high honor be it said
It carries people home to bed.
My cottage lamp shines white and clear.
God bless the train that brought me here.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Centenarian's Story The

 GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary; 
The hill-top is nigh—but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;) 
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years; 
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done; 
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.

Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means; 
On the plain below, recruits are drilling and exercising; 
There is the camp—one regiment departs to-morrow; 
Do you hear the officers giving the orders? 
Do you hear the clank of the muskets?

Why, what comes over you now, old man? 
Why do you tremble, and clutch my hand so convulsively? 
The troops are but drilling—they are yet surrounded with smiles; 
Around them, at hand, the well-drest friends, and the women; 
While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down;
Green the midsummer verdure, and fresh blows the dallying breeze, 
O’er proud and peaceful cities, and arm of the sea between. 
But drill and parade are over—they march back to quarters; 
Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping! 

As wending, the crowds now part and disperse—but we, old man,
Not for nothing have I brought you hither—we must remain; 
You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell. 

THE CENTENARIAN.
When I clutch’d your hand, it was not with terror; 
But suddenly, pouring about me here, on every side, 
And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran,
And where tents are pitch’d, and wherever you see, south and south-east and
 south-west, 
Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods, 
And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over), came again, and suddenly raged, 
As eighty-five years agone, no mere parade receiv’d with applause of friends, 
But a battle, which I took part in myself—aye, long ago as it is, I took part in it,
Walking then this hill-top, this same ground. 

Aye, this is the ground; 
My blind eyes, even as I speak, behold it re-peopled from graves; 
The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear; 
Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted;
I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay; 
I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes: 
Here we lay encamp’d—it was this time in summer also. 

As I talk, I remember all—I remember the Declaration; 
It was read here—the whole army paraded—it was read to us here;
By his staff surrounded, the General stood in the middle—he held up his
 unsheath’d
 sword, 
It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army. 

’Twas a bold act then; 
The English war-ships had just arrived—the king had sent them from over the sea; 
We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,
And the transports, swarming with soldiers. 

A few days more, and they landed—and then the battle. 

Twenty thousand were brought against us, 
A veteran force, furnish’d with good artillery. 

I tell not now the whole of the battle;
But one brigade, early in the forenoon, order’d forward to engage the red-coats; 
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d, 
And how long and how well it stood, confronting death. 

Who do you think that was, marching steadily, sternly confronting death? 
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and many of them known personally to the General. 

Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters; 
Till of a sudden, unlook’d for, by defiles through the woods, gain’d at night, 
The British advancing, wedging in from the east, fiercely playing their guns, 
That brigade of the youngest was cut off, and at the enemy’s mercy.

The General watch’d them from this hill; 
They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment; 
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle; 
But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them! 

It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General; 
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish. 

Meanwhile the British maneuver’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle; 
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle. 

We fought the fight in detachments;
Sallying forth, we fought at several points—but in each the luck was against us; 
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back to the works on
 this
 hill; 
Till we turn’d, menacing, here, and then he left us. 

That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong; 
Few return’d—nearly all remain in Brooklyn.

That, and here, my General’s first battle; 
No women looking on, nor sunshine to bask in—it did not conclude with applause; 
Nobody clapp’d hands here then. 

But in darkness, in mist, on the ground, under a chill rain, 
Wearied that night we lay, foil’d and sullen;
While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord, off against us encamp’d, 
Quite within hearing, feasting, klinking wine-glasses together over their victory. 

So, dull and damp, and another day; 
But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing, 
Silent as a ghost, while they thought they were sure of him, my General retreated.

I saw him at the river-side, 
Down by the ferry, lit by torches, hastening the embarcation; 
My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass’d over; 
And then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for the last time. 

Every one else seem’d fill’d with gloom;
Many no doubt thought of capitulation. 

But when my General pass’d me, 
As he stood in his boat, and look’d toward the coming sun, 
I saw something different from capitulation. 

TERMINUS.
Enough—the Centenarian’s story ends;
The two, the past and present, have interchanged; 
I myself, as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking. 

And is this the ground Washington trod? 
And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he cross’d, 
As resolute in defeat, as other generals in their proudest triumphs?

It is well—a lesson like that, always comes good; 
I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward; 
I must preserve that look, as it beam’d on you, rivers of Brooklyn. 

See! as the annual round returns, the phantoms return; 
It is the 27th of August, and the British have landed;
The battle begins, and goes against us—behold! through the smoke, Washington’s
 face; 
The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march’d forth to intercept the enemy; 
They are cut off—murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them; 
Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag, 
Baptized that day in many a young man’s bloody wounds,
In death, defeat, and sisters’, mothers’ tears. 

Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more valuable than your owners
 supposed; 
Ah, river! henceforth you will be illumin’d to me at sunrise with something besides
 the
 sun. 

Encampments new! in the midst of you stands an encampment very old; 
Stands forever the camp of the dead brigade.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

In Paths Untrodden

 IN paths untrodden, 
In the growth by margins of pond-waters, 
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, 
From all the standards hitherto publish’d—from the pleasures, profits,
 eruditions,
 conformities, 
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul;
Clear to me, now, standards not yet publish’d—clear to me that my Soul, 
That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices most in comrades; 
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world, 
Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic, 
No longer abash’d—for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would not dare
 elsewhere,
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest, 
Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment, 
Projecting them along that substantial life, 
Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love, 
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth-month, in my forty-first year,
I proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men, 
To tell the secret of my nights and days, 
To celebrate the need of comrades.
Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Create an image from this poem

Stanzas for the Times

 Is this the land our fathers loved, 
The freedom which they toiled to win? 
Is this the soil whereon they moved? 
Are these the graves they slumber in? 
Are we the sons by whom are borne 
The mantles which the dead have worn? 

And shall we crouch above these graves, 
With craven soul and fettered lip? 
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves, 
And tremble at the driver's whip? 
Bend to the earth our pliant knees, 
And speak but as our masters please? 

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel? 
Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow? 
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, 
The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow, 
Turn back the spirit roused to save 
The Truth, our Country, and the slave? 

Of human skulls that shrine was made, 
Round which the priests of Mexico 
Before their loathsome idol prayed; 
Is Freedom's altar fashioned so? 
And must we yield to Freedom's God, 
As offering meet, the *****'s blood? 

Shall tongue be mute, when deeds are wrought 
Which well might shame extremest hell? 
Shall freemem lock the indignant thought? 
Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell? 
Shall Honor bleed?- shall Truth succumb? 
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb? 

No; by each spot of haunted ground, 
Where Freedom weeps her children's fall; 
By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound; 
By Griswold's stained and shattered wall; 
By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade; 
By all the memories of our dead! 

By their enlarging souls, which burst 
The bands and fetters round them set; 
By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed 
Within our inmost bosoms, yet, 
By all above, around, below, 
Be ours the indignant answer,- No! 

No; guided by our country's laws, 
For truth, and right, and suffering man, 
Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause, 
As Christians may, as freemen can! 
Still pouring on unwilling ears 
That truth oppression only fears. 

What! shall we guard our neighbor still, 
While woman shrieks beneath his rod, 
And while he trampels down at will 
The image of a common God? 
Shall watch and ward be round him set, 
Of Northern nerve and bayonet? 

And shall we know and share with him 
The danger and the growing shame? 
And see our Freedom's light grow dim, 
Which should have filled the world with flame? 
And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, 
A world's reproach around us burn? 

Is't not enough that this is borne? 
And asks our haughty neighbor more? 
Must fetters which his slaves have worn 
Clank round the Yankee farmer's door? 
Must he be told, beside his plough, 
What he must speak, and when, and how? 

Must he be told his freedom stands 
On Slavery's dark foundations strong; 
On breaking hearts and fettered hands, 
On robbery, and crime, and wrong? 
That all his fathers taught is vain,- 
That Freedom's emblem is the chain? 

Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn! 
False, foul, profane! Go, teach as well 
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born! 
Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell! 
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice! 
Of Demons planting Paradise! 

Rail on, then, brethren of the South, 
Ye shall not hear the truth the less; 
No seal is on the Yankee's mouth, 
No fetter on the Yankee's press! 
From our Green Mountains to the sea, 
One voice shall thunder, We are free!
Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

Stretcher Case

 He woke; the clank and racket of the train 
Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain. 
Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again. 

At last he lifted his bewildered eyes 
And blinked, and rolled them sidelong; hills and skies,
Heavily wooded, hot with August haze, 
And, slipping backward, golden for his gaze, 
Acres of harvest. 

Feebly now he drags 
Exhausted ego back from glooms and quags 
And blasting tumult, terror, hurtling glare,
To calm and brightness, havens of sweet air. 
He sighed, confused; then drew a cautious breath; 
This level journeying was no ride through death. 
‘If I were dead,’ he mused, ‘there’d be no thinking— 
Only some plunging underworld of sinking,
And hueless, shifting welter where I’d drown.’ 

Then he remembered that his name was Brown. 

But was he back in Blighty? Slow he turned, 
Till in his heart thanksgiving leapt and burned. 
There shone the blue serene, the prosperous land,
Trees, cows and hedges; skipping these, he scanned 
Large, friendly names, that change not with the year, 
Lung Tonic, Mustard, Liver Pills and Beer.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry