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Best Famous Fencing Poems

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

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Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

Victory

 Something spreading underground won't speak to us
under skin won't declare itself
not all life-forms want dialogue with the
machine-gods in their drama hogging down
the deep bush clear-cutting refugees
from ancient or transient villages into
our opportunistic fervor to search
 crazily for a host a lifeboat

Suddenly instead of art we're eyeing
organisms traced and stained on cathedral transparencies
cruel blues embroidered purples succinct yellows
a beautiful tumor

•

I guess you're not alone I fear you're alone
There's, of course, poetry:
awful bridge rising over naked air: I first
took it as just a continuation of the road: 
"a masterpiece of engineering
praised, etc." then on the radio: 
"incline too steep for ease of, etc."
Drove it nonetheless because I had to
this being how— So this is how
I find you: alive and more

•

As if (how many conditionals must we suffer?) 
I'm driving to your side
—an intimate collusion—
packed in the trunk my bag of foils for fencing with pain
glasses of varying spectrum for sun or fog or sun-struck
 rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden
poetries, old glue shredding from their spines

my time exposure of the Leonids
 over Joshua Tree

As if we're going to win this O because

•

If you have a sister I am not she
nor your mother nor you my daughter
nor are we lovers or any kind of couple
 except in the intensive care
 of poetry and
death's master plan architecture-in-progress
draft elevations of a black-and-white mosaic dome
the master left on your doorstep
with a white card in black calligraphy:
 Make what you will of this
 As if leaving purple roses

•

If (how many conditionals must we suffer?)
I tell you a letter from the master
is lying on my own doorstep
glued there with leaves and rain
and I haven't bent to it yet
 if I tell you I surmise
 he writes differently to me:

 Do as you will, you have had your life
 many have not

signing it in his olden script:

 Meister aus Deutschland

•

In coldest Europe end of that war
frozen domes iron railings frozen stoves lit in the
 streets
memory banks of cold

the Nike of Samothrace
on a staircase wings in blazing
backdraft said to me
: : to everyone she met
 Displaced, amputated never discount me

Victory
 indented in disaster striding
 at the head of stairs

 for Tory Dent


Written by Kenn Nesbitt | Create an image from this poem

Olympic Granny

When Grandma goes for gold in
The Olympic games this year,
She’ll laugh at her competitors
And make them quake with fear.
She’s ninety-nine years old
But, in athletics, she’s been blessed.
The trouble is she can’t decide
Which sport she plays the best.
She’s such an ace at archery.
She’s queen of the canoe.
She’s tough to top at taekwondo
And table tennis too.
She dominates the diving board.
She tromps the trampoline.
At lifting weights and wrestling
She’s the best you’ve ever seen.
She speeds across the swimming pool
To slake the summer heat.
On BMX and mountain bike
She simply can’t be beat.
She’s highest in the high jump,
And a champ at hammer throwing,
Magnificent in marathons,
Remarkable at rowing.
She beats the best at boxing.
At the pole vault she is peerless.
Her fencing is the finest;
She is positively fearless.
She’s masterful at basketball,
She truly rules the court,
And equally incredible
At every other sport.
But what we find astonishing
And something of a shocker
Is how she wins all contests
With her wheelchair and her walker.

 --Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2016. All Rights Reserved.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

An Abandoned Factory Detroit

 The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, 
An iron authority against the snow, 
And this grey monument to common sense 
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands, 
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow 
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence. 

Beyond, through broken windows one can see 
Where the great presses paused between their strokes 
And thus remain, in air suspended, caught 
In the sure margin of eternity. 
The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes 
Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought, 

And estimates the loss of human power, 
Experienced and slow, the loss of years, 
The gradual decay of dignity. 
Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour; 
Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears 
Which might have served to grind their eulogy.
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha

 An imaginary composer.]

I.

Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---

II.

I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up its ear!

III.

See, the church empties apace:
Fast they extinguish the lights.
Hallo there, sacristan! Five minutes' grace!
Here's a crank pedal wants setting to rights,
Baulks one of holding the base.

IV.

See, our huge house of the sounds,
Hushing its hundreds at once,
Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds!
O you may challenge them, not a response
Get the church-saints on their rounds!

V.

(Saints go their rounds, who shall doubt?
---March, with the moon to admire,
Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about,
Supervise all betwixt pavement and spire,
Put rats and mice to the rout---

VI.

Aloys and Jurien and Just---
Order things back to their place,
Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust,
Rub the church-plate, darn the sacrament-lace,
Clear the desk-velvet of dust.)

VII.

Here's your book, younger folks shelve!
Played I not off-hand and runningly,
Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve?
Here's what should strike, could one handle it cunningly:
HeIp the axe, give it a helve!

VIII.

Page after page as I played,
Every bar's rest, where one wipes
Sweat from one's brow, I looked up and surveyed,
O'er my three claviers yon forest of pipes
Whence you still peeped in the shade.

IX.

Sure you were wishful to speak?
You, with brow ruled like a score,
Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek,
Like two great breves, as they wrote them of yore,
Each side that bar, your straight beak!

X.

Sure you said---``Good, the mere notes!
``Still, couldst thou take my intent,
``Know what procured me our Company's votes---
``A master were lauded and sciolists shent,
``Parted the sheep from the goats!''

XI.

Well then, speak up, never flinch!
Quick, ere my candle's a snuff
---Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch---
_I_ believe in you, but that's not enough:
Give my conviction a clinch!

XII.

First you deliver your phrase
---Nothing propound, that I see,
Fit in itself for much blame or much praise---
Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
Off start the Two on their ways.

XIII.

Straight must a Third interpose,
Volunteer needlessly help;
In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp,
Argument's hot to the close.

XIV.

One dissertates, he is candid;
Two must discept,--has distinguished;
Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did;
Four protests; Five makes a dart at the thing wished:
Back to One, goes the case bandied.

XV.

One says his say with a difference
More of expounding, explaining!
All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance;
Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining:
Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.

XVI.

One is incisive, corrosive:
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant,
Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!

XVII.

Now, they ply axes and crowbars;
Now, they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?

XVIII.

_Est fuga, volvitur rota._
On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import---
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!

XIX.

What with affirming, denying,
Holding, risposting, subjoining,
All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ...
There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
Under those spider-webs lying!

XX.

So your fugue broadens and thickens,
Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
Till we exclaim---``But where's music, the dickens?
``Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens
``---Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?''

XXI.

I for man's effort am zealous:
Prove me such censure unfounded!
Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous---
Hopes 'twas for something, his organ-pipes sounded,
Tiring three boys at the bellows?

XXII.

Is it your moral of Life?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife?

XXIII.

Over our heads truth and nature---
Still our life's zigzags and dodges,
Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature---
God's gold just shining its last where that lodges,
Palled beneath man's usurpature.

XXIV.

So we o'ershroud stars and roses,
Cherub and trophy and garland;
Nothings grow something which quietly closes
Heaven's earnest eye: not a glimpse of the far land
Gets through our comments and glozes.

XXV.

Ah but traditions, inventions,
(Say we and make up a visage)
So many men with such various intentions,
Down the past ages, must know more than this age!
Leave we the web its dimensions!

XXVI.

Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf,
Proved a mere mountain in labour?
Better submit; try again; what's the clef?
'Faith, 'tis no trifle for pipe and for tabor---
Four flats, the minor in F.

XXVII.

Friend, your fugue taxes the finger
Learning it once, who would lose it?
Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,
Truth's golden o'er us although we refuse it---
Nature, thro' cobwebs we string her.

XXVIII.

Hugues! I advise _Me Pn_
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,
Blare out the _mode Palestrina._

XXIX.

While in the roof, if I'm right there,
... Lo you, the wick in the socket!
Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!
Down it dips, gone like a rocket.
What, you want, do you, to come unawares,
Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,
And find a poor devil has ended his cares
At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?
Do I carry the moon in my pocket?

* 1 A fugue is a short melody.
* 2 Keyboard of organ.
* 3 A note in music.
* 4 The daughters of Danaus, condemned to pour water
* into a sieve.
* 5 The Spanish casuist, so severely mauled by Pascal.
* 6 A quick return in fencing.
* 7 A closely woven fabric.
* 8 _Giovanni P. da Palestrina_, celebrated musician (1524-1594).
Written by Henry Lawson | Create an image from this poem

Mount Bukaroo

 Only one old post is standing -- 
Solid yet, but only one -- 
Where the milking, and the branding, 
And the slaughtering were done. 
Later years have brought dejection, 
Care, and sorrow; but we knew 
Happy days on that selection 
Underneath old Bukaroo. 

Then the light of day commencing 
Found us at the gully's head, 
Splitting timber for the fencing, 
Stripping bark to roof the shed. 
Hands and hearts the labour strengthened; 
Weariness we never knew, 
Even when the shadows lengthened 
Round the base of Bukaroo. 

There for days below the paddock 
How the wilderness would yield 
To the spade, and pick, and mattock, 
While we toiled to win the field. 
Bronzed hands we used to sully 
Till they were of darkest hue, 
`Burning off' down in the gully 
At the back of Bukaroo. 

When we came the baby brother 
Left in haste his broken toys, 
Shouted to the busy mother: 
`Here is dadda and the boys!' 
Strange it seems that she was able 
For the work that she would do; 
How she'd bustle round the table 
In the hut 'neath Bukaroo! 

When the cows were safely yarded, 
And the calves were in the pen, 
All the cares of day discarded, 
Closed we round the hut-fire then. 
Rang the roof with boyish laughter 
While the flames o'er-topped the flue; 
Happy days remembered after -- 
Far away from Bukaroo. 

But the years were full of changes, 
And a sorrow found us there; 
For our home amid the ranges 
Was not safe from searching Care. 
On he came, a silent creeper; 
And another mountain threw 
O'er our lives a shadow deeper 
Than the shade of Bukaroo. 

All the farm is disappearing; 
For the home has vanished now, 
Mountain scrub has choked the clearing, 
Hid the furrows of the plough. 
Nearer still the scrub is creeping 
Where the little garden grew; 
And the old folks now are sleeping 
At the foot of Bukaroo.


Written by Rabindranath Tagore | Create an image from this poem

The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside

 She dwelt on the hillside by edge
of a maize-field, near the spring that
flows in laughing rills through the
solemn shadows of ancient trees. The
women came there to fill their jars,
and travellers would sit there to rest
and talk. She worked and dreamed 
daily to the tune of the bubbling
stream.
One evening the stranger came down
from the cloud-hidden peak; his locks
were tangled like drowsy snakes. We
asked in wonder, "Who are you?"
He answered not but sat by the
garrulous stream and silently gazed at
the hut where she dwelt. Our hearts 
quaked in fear and we came back home
when it was night.
Next morning when the women
came to fetch water at the spring by
the deodar trees, they found the doors 
open in her hut, but her voice was gone
and where was her smiling face?
The empty jar lay on the floor and her
lamp had burnt itself out in the
corner. No one knew where she had
fled to before it was morning--and the
stranger had gone.
In the month of May the sun grew
strong and the snow melted, and we
sat by the spring and wept. We 
wondered in our mind, "Is there a
spring in the land where she has gone
and where she can fill her vessel in
these hot thirsty days?" And we
asked each other in dismay, "Is there
a land beyond these hills where we
live?"
It was a summer night; the breeze
blew from the south; and I sat in her
deserted room where the lamp stood
still unlit. When suddenly from
before my eyes the hills vanished like
curtains drawn aside. "Ah, it is
she who comes. How are you, my
child? Are you happy? But where
can you shelter under this open sky?
And, alas! our spring is not here to
allay your thirst."
"Here is the same sky," she said,
"only free from the fencing hills,--
this is the same stream grown into a
river,--the same earth widened into
a plain." "Everything is here," I
sighed, "only we are not." She
smiled sadly and said, "You are in
my heart." I woke up and heard the
babbling of the stream and the rustling
of the deodars at night.
Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

The Travelling Post Office

 The roving breezes come and go, the reed-beds sweep and sway, 
The sleepy river murmers low,and loiters on its way, 
It is the land of lots o'time along the Castlereagh. 
. . .. . . . . 

The old man's son had left the farm, he found it full and slow, 
He drifted to the great North-west, where all the rovers go. 
"He's gone so long," the old man said, "he's dropped right out of mind, 
But if you'd write a line to him I'd take it very kind; 
He's shearing here and fencing there, a kind of waif and stray-- 
He's droving now with Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh. 

"The sheep are travelling for the grass, and travelling very slow; 
Tey may be at Mundooran now, or past the Overflow, 
Or tramping down the black-soil flats across by Waddiwong; 
But all those little country towns would send the letter wrong. 
The mailman, if he's extra tired, would pass them in his sleep; 
It's safest to address the note to 'Care of Conroy's sheep,' 
For five and twenty thousand head can scarcely go astray, 
You write to 'Care of Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh.'" 


. . .. . . ... .. . ... 

By rock and ridge and riverside the western mail has gone 
Across the great Blue Mountain Range to take the letter on. 
A moment on the topmost grade, while open fire-doors glare, 
She pauses like a living thing to breathe the mountain air, 
Then launches down the other side across the plains away 
To bear that note to "Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh," 


And now by coach and mailman's bag it goes from town to town, 
And Conroy's Gap and Conroy's Creek have marked it "Further down." 
Beneath a sky of deepest blue, where never cloud abides, 
A speck upon the waste of plain the lonely mail-man rides. 
Where fierce hot winds have set the pine and myall boughs asweep 
He hails the shearers passing by for news of Conroy's sheep. 
By big lagoons where wildfowl play and crested pigeons flock, 
By camp-fires where the drovers ride around their restless stock, 
And pass the teamster toiling down to fetch the wool away 
My letter chases Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry