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Best Famous Far Flung Poems

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

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Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Recessional

1897


God of our fathers, known of old,
   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
   Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
   The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
   An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
   On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
   Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
   In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!


Written by Paul Muldoon | Create an image from this poem

Cows

 Even as we speak, there's a smoker's cough
from behind the whitethorn hedge: we stop dead in our tracks;
a distant tingle of water into a trough.

In the past half-hour—since a cattle truck
all but sent us shuffling off this mortal coil—
we've consoled ourselves with the dregs

of a bottle of Redbreast. Had Hawthorne been a Gael,
I insist, the scarlet A on Hester Prynne
would have stood for "Alcohol."

This must be the same truck whose taillights burn
so dimly, as if caked with dirt,
three or four hundred yards along the boreen

(a diminutive form of the Gaelic bóthar, "a road,"
from bó, "a cow," and thar
meaning, in this case, something like "athwart,"

"boreen" has entered English "through the air"
despite the protestations of the O.E.D.):
why, though, should one taillight flash and flare

then flicker-fade
to an afterimage of tourmaline
set in a dark part-jet, part-jasper or -jade?

That smoker's cough again: it triggers off from drumlin
to drumlin an emphysemantiphon
of cows. They hoist themselves onto their trampoline

and steady themselves and straight away divine
water in some far-flung spot
to which they then gravely incline. This is no Devon

cow-coterie, by the way, whey-faced, with Spode
hooves and horns: nor are they the metaphysicattle of Japan
that have merely to anticipate

scoring a bull's-eye and, lo, it happens;
these are earth-flesh, earth-blood, salt of the earth,
whose talismans are their own jawbones

buried under threshold and hearth.
For though they trace themselves to the kith and kine
that presided over the birth

of Christ (so carry their calves a full nine
months and boast liquorice
cachous on their tongues), they belong more to the line

that's tramped these cwms and corries
since Cuchulainn tramped Aoife.
Again the flash. Again the fade. However I might allegorize

some oscaraboscarabinary bevy
of cattle there's no getting round this cattle truck,
one light on the blink, laden with what? Microwaves? Hi-fis?

Oscaraboscarabinary: a twin, entwined, a tree, a Tuareg;
a double dung-beetle; a plain
and simple hi-firing party; an off-the-back-of-a-lorry drogue?

Enough of Colette and Céline, Céline and Paul Celan:
enough of whether Nabokov
taught at Wellesley or Wesleyan.

Now let us talk of slaughter and the slain,
the helicopter gunship, the mighty Kalashnikov:
let's rest for a while in a place where a cow has lain.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Sunshine

 I

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.
Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:
"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."

I have not slept for many, many days.
I close my eyes with weariness -- that's all.
I still have strength to feed the drift-wood blaze,
That flickers weirdly on the icy wall.
I still have strength to pray: "God rest her soul,
Here in the awful shadow of the Pole."

There in the cabin's alcove low she lies,
Still candles gleaming at her head and feet;
All snow-drop white, ash-cold, with closed eyes,
Lips smiling, hands at rest -- O God, how sweet!
How all unutterably sweet she seems. . . .
Not dead, not dead indeed -- she dreams, she dreams.

II

"Sunshine", I called her, and she brought, I vow,
God's blessed sunshine to this life of mine.
I was a rover, of the breed who plough
Life's furrow in a far-flung, lonely line;
The wilderness my home, my fortune cast
In a wild land of dearth, barbaric, vast.

When did I see her first? Long had I lain
Groping my way to life through fevered gloom.
Sudden the cloud of darkness left my brain;
A velvet bar of sunshine pierced the room,
And in that mellow glory aureoled
She stood, she stood, all golden in its gold.

Sunshine! O miracle! the earth grew glad;
Radiant each blade of grass, each living thing.
What a huge strength, high hope, proud will I had!
All the wide world with rapture seemed to ring.
Would she but wed me? YES: then fared we forth
Into the vast, unvintageable North.

III

In Muskrat Land the conies leap,
The wavies linger in their flight;
The jewelled, snakelike rivers creep;
The sun, sad rogue, is out all night;
The great wood bison paws the sand,
In Muskrat Land, in Muskrat Land.

In Muskrat Land dim streams divide
The tundras belted by the sky.
How sweet in slim canoe to glide,
And dream, and let the world go by!
Build gay camp-fires on greening strand!
In Muskrat Land, in Muskrat Land.

IV

And so we dreamed and drifted, she and I;
And how she loved that free, unfathomed life!
There in the peach-bloom of the midnight sky,
The silence welded us, true man and wife.
Then North and North invincibly we pressed
Beyond the Circle, to the world's white crest.

And on the wind-flailed Arctic waste we stayed,
Dwelt with the Huskies by the Polar sea.
Fur had they, white fox, marten, mink to trade,
And we had food-stuff, bacon, flour and tea.
So we made snug, chummed up with all the band:
Sudden the Winter swooped on Husky Land.

V

What was that ill so sinister and dread,
Smiting the tribe with sickness to the bone?
So that we waked one morn to find them fled;
So that we stood and stared, alone, alone.
Bravely she smiled and looked into my eyes;
Laughed at their troubled, stern, foreboding pain;
Gaily she mocked the menace of the skies,
Turned to our cheery cabin once again,
Saying: "'Twill soon be over, dearest one,
The long, long night: then O the sun, the sun!"

VI

God made a heart of gold, of gold,
Shining and sweet and true;
Gave it a home of fairest mould,
Blest it, and called it -- You.

God gave the rose its grace of glow,
And the lark its radiant glee;
But, better than all, I know, I know
God gave you, Heart, to me.

VII

She was all sunshine in those dubious days;
Our cabin beaconed with defiant light;
We chattered by the friendly drift-wood blaze;
Closer and closer cowered the hag-like night.
A wolf-howl would have been a welcome sound,
And there was none in all that stricken land;
Yet with such silence, darkness, death around,
Learned we to love as few can understand.
Spirit with spirit fused, and soul with soul,
There in the sullen shadow of the Pole.

VIII

What was that haunting horror of the night?
Brave was she; buoyant, full of sunny cheer.
Why was her face so small, so strangely white?
Then did I turn from her, heart-sick with fear;
Sought in my agony the outcast snows;
Prayed in my pain to that insensate sky;
Grovelled and sobbed and cursed, and then arose:
"Sunshine! O heart of gold! to die! to die!"

IX

She died on Christmas day -- it seems so sad
That one you love should die on Christmas day.
Head-bowed I knelt by her; O God! I had
No tears to shed, no moan, no prayer to pray.
I heard her whisper: "Call me, will you, dear?
They say Death parts, but I won't go away.
I will be with you in the cabin here;
Oh I will plead with God to let me stay!
Stay till the Night is gone, till Spring is nigh,
Till sunshine comes . . . be brave . . . I'm tired . . . good-bye. . . ."

X

For weeks, for months I have not seen the sun;
The minatory dawns are leprous pale;
The felon days malinger one by one;
How like a dream Life is! how vain! how stale!
I, too, am faint; that vampire-like disease
Has fallen on me; weak and cold am I,
Hugging a tiny fire in fear I freeze:
The cabin must be cold, and so I try
To bear the frost, the frost that fights decay,
The frost that keeps her beautiful alway.

XI

She lies within an icy vault;
It glitters like a cave of salt.
All marble-pure and angel-sweet
With candles at her head and feet,
Under an ermine robe she lies.
I kiss her hands, I kiss her eyes:
"Come back, come back, O Love, I pray,
Into this house, this house of clay!
Answer my kisses soft and warm;
Nestle again within my arm.
Come! for I know that you are near;
Open your eyes and look, my dear.
Just for a moment break the mesh;
Back from the spirit leap to flesh.
Weary I wait; the night is black;
Love of my life, come back, come back!"

XII

Last night maybe I was a little mad,
For as I prayed despairful by her side,
Such a strange, antic visioning I had:
Lo! it did seem her eyes were open wide.
Surely I must have dreamed! I stared once more. . . .
No, 'twas a candle's trick, a shadow cast.
There were her lashes locking as before.
(Oh, but it filled me with a joy so vast!)
No, 'twas a freak, a fancy of the brain,
(Oh, but to-night I'll try again, again!)

XIII

It was no dream; now do I know that Love
Leapt from the starry battlements of Death;
For in my vigil as I bent above,
Calling her name with eager, burning breath,
Sudden there came a change: again I saw
The radiance of the rose-leaf stain her cheek;
Rivers of rapture thrilled in sunny thaw;
Cleft were her coral lips as if to speak;
Curved were her tender arms as if to cling;
Open the flower-like eyes of lucent blue,
Looking at me with love so pitying
That I could fancy Heaven shining through.
"Sunshine," I faltered, "stay with me, oh, stay!"
Yet ere I finished, in a moment's flight,
There in her angel purity she lay --
Ah! but I know she'll come again to-night.
Even as radiant sword leaps from the sheath
Soul from the body leaps--we call it Death.

XIV

Even as this line I write,
Do I know that she is near;
Happy am I, every night
Comes she back to bid me cheer;
Kissing her, I hold her fast;
Win her into life at last.

Did I dream that yesterday
On yon mountain ridge a glow
Soft as moonstone paled away,
Leaving less forlorn the snow?
Could it be the sun? Oh, fain
Would I see the sun again!

Oh, to see a coral dawn
Gladden to a crocus glow!
Day's a spectre dim and wan,
Dancing on the furtive snow;
Night's a cloud upon my brain:
Oh, to see the sun again!

You who find us in this place,
Have you pity in your breast;
Let us in our last embrace,
Under earth sun-hallowed rest.
Night's a claw upon my brain:
Oh, to see the sun again!

XV

The Sun! at last the Sun! I write these lines,
Here on my knees, with feeble, fumbling hand.
Look! in yon mountain cleft a radiance shines,
Gleam of a primrose -- see it thrill, expand,
Grow glorious. Dear God be praised! it streams
Into the cabin in a gush of gold.
Look! there she stands, the angel of my dreams,
All in the radiant shimmer aureoled;
First as I saw her from my bed of pain;
First as I loved her when the darkness passed.
Now do I know that Life is not in vain;
Now do I know God cares, at last, at last!
Light outlives dark, joy grief, and Love's the sum:
Heart of my heart! Sunshine! I come . . . I come. . . .
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Full Fathom Five

 Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long

Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives

The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains

Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:

Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury

And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors

Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,

For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains

On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools

To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind

One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,

Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;

You defy godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.

Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The Native-Born

 We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
 We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
 (But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
 And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
 A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,
 But not their hearts that roam!
We learned from our wistful mothers
 To call old England "home";
We read of the English skylark,
 Of the spring in the English lanes,
But we screamed with the painted lories
 As we rode on the dusty plains!

They passed with their old-world legends --
 Their tales of wrong and dearth --
Our fathers held by purchase,
 But we by the right of birth;
Our heart's where they rocked our cradle,
 Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith and our hope and our honour
 We pledge to our native soil!

I charge you charge your glasses --
 I charge you drink with me
To the men of the Four New Nations,
 And the Islands of the Sea --
To the last least lump of coral
 That none may stand outside,
And our own good pride shall teach us
 To praise our comrade's pride,

To the hush of the breathless morning
 On the thin, tin, crackling roofs,
To the haze of the burned back-ranges
 And the dust of the shoeless hoofs --
To the risk of a death by drowning,
 To the risk of a death by drouth --
To the men ef a million acres,
 To the Sons of the Golden South!

To the Sons of the Golden South (Stand up!),
 And the life we live and know,
Let a felow sing o' the little things he cares about,
If a fellow fights for the little things he cares about
 With the weight o a single blow!

To the smoke of a hundred coasters,
 To the sheep on a thousand hills,
To the sun that never blisters,
 To the rain that never chills --
To the land of the waiting springtime,
 To our five-meal, meat-fed men,
To the tall, deep-bosomed women,
 And the children nine and ten!

And the children nine and ten (Stand up!),
 And the life we live and know,
Let a fellow sing o' the little things he cares about,
If a fellow fights for the little things he cares about
 With the weight of a two-fold blow!

To the far-flung, fenceless prairie
 Where the quick cloud-shadows trail,
To our neighbours' barn in the offing
 And the line of the new-cut rail;
To the plough in her league-long furrow
 With the grey Lake' gulls behind --
To the weight of a half-year's winter
 And the warm wet western wind!

To the home of the floods and thunder,
 To her pale dry healing blue --
To the lift of the great Cape combers,
 And the smell of the baked Karroo.
To the growl of the sluicing stamp-head --
 To the reef and the water-gold,
To the last and the largest Empire,
 To the map that is half unrolled!

To our dear dark foster-mothers,
 To the heathen songs they sung --
To the heathen speech we babbled
 Ere we came to the white man's tongue.
To the cool of our deep verandah --
 To the blaze of our jewelled main,
To the night, to the palms in the moonlight,
 And the fire-fly in the cane!

To the hearth of Our People's People --
 To her well-ploughed windy sea,
To the hush of our dread high-altar
 Where The Abbey makes us We.
To the grist of the slow-ground ages,
 To the gain that is yours and mine --
To the Bank of the Open Credit,
 To the Power-house of the Line!

We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her!
 We've drunk to our mothers'land;
We've drunk to our English brother
 (And we hope he'll understand).
We've drunk as much as we're able,
 And the Cross swings low for the morn;
Last toast-and your foot on the table! --
 A health to the Native-born!

A health to the Nativeborn (Stand up!),
 We're six white men arow,
All bound to sing o' the Little things we care about,
All bound to fight for the Little things we care about
 With the weight of a six-fold blow!
By the might of our Cable-tow (Take hands!),
 From the Orkneys to the Horn
All round the world (and a Little loop to pull it by),
All round the world (and a Little strap to buckle it).
 A health to the Native-born!


Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

Black Harrys Team

 No soft-skinned Durham steers are they, 
No Devons plump and red, 
But brindled, black and iron-grey 
That mark the mountain-bred; 
For mountain-bred and mountain-broke, 
With sullen eyes agleam, 
No stranger's hand could put a yoke 
On old Black Harry's team. 


Pull out, pull out, at break of morn 
The creeks are running white, 
And Tiger, Spot and Snailey-horn 
Must bend their bows by night; 
And axles, wheels, and flooring boards 
Are swept with flying spray 
As shoulder-deep, through mountain fords 
The leaders feel their way. 


He needs no sign of cross or kirn 
To guide him as he goes, 
For every twist and every turn 
That old black leader knows. 
Up mountains steep they heave and strain 
Where never wheel has rolled, 
And what the toiling leaders gain 
The body-bullocks hold. 


Where eagle-hawks their eyries make, 
On sidlings steep and blind, 
He rigs the good old-fashioned brake--- 
A tree tied on behind. 
Up mountains, straining to the full, 
Each poler plays his part--- 
The sullen, stubborn, bullock-pull 
That breaks a horse's heart. 


Beyond the farthest bridle track 
His wheels have blazed the way; 
The forest giants, burnt and black, 
Are ear-marked by his dray. 
Through belts of scrub, where messmates grow 
His juggernaut has rolled, 
For stumps and saplings have to go 
When Harry's team takes hold. 


On easy grade and rubber tyre 
The tourist car goes through, 
They halt a moment to admire 
The far-flung mountain view. 
The tourist folk would be amazed 
If they could get to know 
They take the track Black Harry blazed 
A Hundred Years Ago.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Wild Strawberries

 Strawberries that in gardens grow 
 Are plump and juicy fine, 
But sweeter far as wise men know 
 Spring from the woodland vine. 

No need for bowl or silver spoon, 
 Sugar or spice or cream, 
Has the wild berry plucked in June 
 Beside the trickling stream. 

One such to melt at the tongue's root, 
 Confounding taste with scent, 
Beats a full peck of garden fruit: 
 Which points my argument. 

May sudden justice overtake 
 And snap the froward pen, 
That old and palsied poets shake 
 Against the minds of men. 

Blasphemers trusting to hold caught 
 In far-flung webs of ink, 
The utmost ends of human thought 
 Till nothing's left to think. 

But may the gift of heavenly peace 
 And glory for all time 
Keep the boy Tom who tending geese 
 First made the nursery rhyme.
Written by Henrik Ibsen | Create an image from this poem

Mountain Life

 IN summer dusk the valley lies 
With far-flung shadow veil; 
A cloud-sea laps the precipice 
Before the evening gale: 
The welter of the cloud-waves grey 
Cuts off from keenest sight 
The glacier, looking out by day 
O'er all the district, far away, 
And crowned with golden light. 

But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow, 
Where gold and amber kiss, 
Stands up the archipelago, 
A home of shining peace. 
The mountain eagle seems to sail 
A ship far seen at even; 
And over all a serried pale 
Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail, 
Fronts westward threatening heaven. 

But look, a steading nestles, close 
Beneath the ice-fields bound, 
Where purple cliffs and glittering snows 
The quiet home surround. 
Here place and people seem to be 
A world apart, alone; -- 
Cut off from men by spate and scree 
It has a heaven more broad, more free, 
A sunshine all its own. 

Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays, 
Half shadow, half aflame; 
The deep, still vision of her gaze 
Was never word to name. 
She names it not herself, nor knows 
What goal my be its will; 
While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows 
It bears her where the sunset glows, 
Or, maybe, further still. 

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds 
Where close the glaciers jut; 
Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds 
Stone byre and pine-log hut. 
Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze 
The winter's well-worn tasks; -- 
But spin thy wool with cheerful face: 
One sunset in the mountain pays 
For all their winter asks.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Recessional (A Victorian Ode)

 God of our fathers, known of old --
 Lord of our far-flung battle line --
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
 Dominion over palm and pine --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies --
 The Captains and the Kings depart --
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
 An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away --
 On dune and headland sinks the fire --
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe --
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
 Or lesser breeds without the Law --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
 In reeking tube and iron shard --
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
 And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
 Amen.
Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

A Petition

 I pray to be the tool which to your hand
Long use has shaped and moulded till it be
Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly,
You take it for its service. I demand
To be forgotten in the woven strand
Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry
Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie
A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.
I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,
The railing to the stairway of the clouds,
To guard your steps securely up, where streams
A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds
Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby
You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry